Ayanna Howard

Roboticist and School Chair for Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Ayanna Howard is an educator, researcher, and innovator. Her academic career is highlighted by her focus on technology development for intelligent agents that must interact with and in a human-centered world, as well as on the education and mentoring of students in the engineering and computing fields. Dr. Howard has made significant contributions in the technology areas of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and robotics. Her published research, currently numbering over 250 peer-reviewed publications, has been widely disseminated in international journals and conference proceedings. She has over 20 years of R&D experience covering a number of projects that have been supported by various agencies including: National Science Foundation, Procter and Gamble, NASA, ExxonMobil, Intel, and the Grammy Foundation. She continues to produce novel research and ideas focused on applications that span from assistive robots in the home to therapy gaming apps to remote robotic exploration of extreme environments. By working at NASA before entering the academic world, she brings a unique perspective to the academic environment.

Currently, Dr. Howard is the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Professor and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. She also holds a faculty appointment in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering where she functions as the Director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab (HumAnS). In 2015, she founded and now directs the $3M traineeship initiative in healthcare robotics and functions as the lead investigator on the NSF undergraduate summer research program in robotics.

10:00 - 11:00 EDT

16 June 2020 16 June 2020

The Ethical Questions Raised by the Rise of AI

Ayanna Howard, world-renowned roboticist and Chair for Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, will help you step into the future to explore how AI and robotics will impact on the development of humanity in the near future and the fundamental questions they raise about what we should do with these systems, what we should allow them to do, what risks they involve, and how we can manage these. This session will be moderated by Robert Wolcott, co-founder of The World Innovation Network, and professor of innovation at Chicago Booth. The conversation will explore topic such as:

  • Privacy and surveillance
  • Biases in decision making
  • Human-robot interaction
  • Automation’s impact on employment
  • The opacity of AI systems and algorithms
10:00 - 11:00 EDT

16 June 2020 16 June 2020 - Links

The Ethical Questions Raised by the Rise of AI

Ayanna Howard, world-renowned roboticist and Chair for Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, will help you step into the future to explore how AI and robotics will impact on the development of humanity in the near future and the fundamental questions they raise about what we should do with these systems, what we should allow them to do, what risks they involve, and how we can manage these. This session will be moderated by Robert Wolcott, co-founder of The World Innovation Network, and professor of innovation at Chicago Booth. The conversation will explore topic such as:

  • Privacy and surveillance
  • Biases in decision making
  • Human-robot interaction
  • Automation’s impact on employment
  • The opacity of AI systems and algorithms

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THIS SESSION