For as far as we’ve come with AI and robotics, there’s still a huge gap when it comes to combining the two. AI excels in the digital space, and in the physical world, robots are often pre-programmed. That’s where physical AI comes in. It’s critical for things that can’t tolerate the kinds of mistakes that are common in today’s statistics based AI, like self driving cars or managing the power grid. In the latest installment of our oral history project, we meet a central figure in these efforts, MIT’s Daniela Rus.
We Meet:
Daniela Rus is the Director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Credits:
This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.
Jennifer Strong is an independent journalist covering the impact of artificial intelligence on the way we live and work. She’s the creator of top technology podcasts for public radio’s PRX, The Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, ProPublica, and others. Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times and recognized by awards juries dozens of times, including six Webby and three Podcast Academy Award nominations. Her narrative podcasts about AI have been finalist selections at the New York Festivals the last three years, winning bronze in 2024.
Her current projects include serving as host and executive producer of a radio documentary for NPR stations called The Race to Superintelligence and of the podcast SHIFT with Jennifer Strong. She was a 2023 AI Accountability Fellow with the Pulitzer Center and she's been a keynote stage host and moderator for the MIT Media Lab, UN General Assembly, AI for Good Global Summit, The Future of Everything Festival, Web Summit and many other events worldwide.
Strong previously led long-form audio for The Wall Street Journal, where she created and hosted The Future of Everything podcast, among other shows. She also created In Machines We Trust, a podcast about the applications of artificial intelligence, and The Extortion Economy podcast about the ransomware epidemic. She's produced a business show for NPR and reported on national security topics for PRI.
