Daniela Rus

Artificial intelligence (AI) headlines promise revolutionary changes daily and leaders are facing a monumental task: making good decisions by discerning the hype about emerging technology from the actionable reports.

“Business leaders are beginning to understand that AI will transform everything, but they don’t actually know how yet,” explains Daniela Rus, the Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), which is regarded as one of the world’s most influential AI and robotics labs, and of MIT’s AI Accelerator. “As the AI field advances, we can create AI tools that bring value to us – while taking the societal and economic aspects of what we’re doing into consideration.”

As the first woman to lead CSAIL —MIT’s largest interdisciplinary and interdepartmental laboratory with over 1800 researchers — Rus has transformed how people interact with technology. Under her leadership, the lab has pioneered research that creates the future of AI and computing and developed collaborative programs with companies that make AI more accessible and applicable across diverse industries. A researcher, teacher, futurist and practitioner, she investigates how industry and society alike can move toward a future in which intelligent machines are integrated into the very fabric of life, helping people with cognitive and physical work. A MITRE senior visiting fellow, she also served as a USA expert member for GPAI (Global Partnerships in AI), a member of the board of advisers for Scientific American, a member of the Defense Innovation Board, and a member of several other boards of technical companies. A captivating speaker, her 2024 TED Talk, “How AI Will Step Off the Screen and Into the Real World,” provides a point of entry into the paradigm-shifting knowledge she brings to government, business and non-profit leaders around the world. Her accolades, including a MacArthur Fellowship and memberships in the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Academie National de Medicine de France, underscore her profound impact on the field.

Author of “The Mind’s Mirror: Risk and Reward in the Age of AI” and “The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots,” both released in 2024, Rus’s work explains the complex world of AI in an easy to understand way, delivering an accessible playbook for how companies can effectively approach AI transformation by understanding the costs, resources and potential value to be gained. As a frenzy of businesses ask what steps they need to take to adopt AI into their organizations, Rus’s clear blueprint for thoughtful AI implementation leaves leaders confident they can make decisions that align with their core values and enhance collaboration and innovation while raising the bottom line.

Strategic AI Deployment for Business Impact

The co-founder of multiple technology startups including Liquid AI, Themis AI and Venti Technologies, and a member of several boards, Rus has a proven history of transforming academic research into actionable results. Rus brings leaders a clear framework for assessing the economic viability of AI technologies that is applicable across industry groups.

“I believe it’s important for leaders to understand what AI is, what the AI tools can and cannot do, and what they should and should not do,” Rus emphasizes. “Just because there’s an AI solution to a problem doesn’t mean it makes economic sense to build and use it. If companies aren’t careful, they might invest in the wrong direction.”

The Director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center, whose focus is the advancement of AI research and its applications to intelligent vehicles, Rus uses vivid examples to illustrate the importance of understanding AI’s capabilities and limitations, ensuring investments are driven by value rather than novelty. Her approach involves a step-by-step playbook that leaders can use to evaluate AI opportunities and assess the potential return on investment, helping them avoid costly missteps and focus resources on technologies that offer substantial economic benefits.

Dreaming of a Better Life With Machines

In her vision of the future, Rus sees AI as a key player in sustainable development, rather than a net negative drain on the planet. She provides new energy-efficient AI solutions and a path to intelligently integrating AI in a way that can enhance efficiency without sacrificing ecological responsibility. Her leadership extends to advising how businesses can deploy AI in ways that align with their sustainability goals, ensuring that technological advancement does not come at the expense of our world.

Ultimately, Rus charts a course for the responsible development and deployment of AI while inspiring a new generation of technologists and business leaders to think critically about the role of technology in society. Her commitment to creating a synergistic relationship between humans and machines paves the way for an era where AI enhances rather than overshadows human capabilities.

“The future of work will bring us more expansive, advanced tools than we have today, and these tools will be able to enhance the workforce,” Rus concludes. “Everyone can dream of a better life with machines – whether AI is used for an individual, an enterprise, or for the planet and society as a whole.”

Daniela Rus, Ph.D., is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and Deputy Dean of Research for Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT. Rus’ research interests are in robotics, artificial intelligence, and data science.

The focus of her work is developing the science and engineering of autonomy, toward the long-term objective of enabling a future with machines pervasively integrated into the fabric of life, supporting people with cognitive and physical tasks. Rus’ research addresses some of the gaps between where robots are today and the promise of pervasive robots: increasing the ability of machines to reason, learn, and adapt to complex tasks in human-centered environments, developing intuitive interfaces between robots and people, and creating the tools for designing and fabricating new robots quickly and efficiently. The applications of this work are broad and include transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, monitoring the environment, underwater exploration, smart cities, medicine, and in-home tasks such as cooking.

Rus serves as Director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center, whose focus is the advancement of AI research and its applications to intelligent vehicles. She is a MITRE senior visiting fellow, served as a USA expert member for GPAI (Global Partnerships in AI), a member of the board of advisers for Scientific American, a member of the Defense Innovation Board, and a member of several other boards of technical companies.

Rus is a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of ACM, AAAI and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the recipient of the 2017 Engelberger Robotics Award from the Robotics Industries Association, the IEEE Edison Medal and the John Scott Medal. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Rus has also worked on two collaborative projects with the Pilobolus Dance company at the intersection of Technology and Art. Seraph, a pastoral story about human-machine friendship, was choreographed in 2010 and performed in 2010-2011 in Boston and New York City. The Umbrella Project, a participatory performance exploring group behavior, was choreographed in 2012 and performed at PopTech 2012, in Cambridge, Baltimore, and Singapore.

Daniela Rus is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.