Claire chatted to Chad Jenkins from University of Michigan about how robots can learn from people and assist us in our daily lives. Odest Chadwicke Jenkins is a Professor of Robotics and a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. His research addresses problems in robot learning from demonstration and human-robot interaction, primarily focused on dexterous mobile manipulation and robot perception. In 2022, he founded the Robotics Major Degree Program for undergraduates at the University of Michigan. He was awarded the 2024 ACM/CMD-IT Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing.

Professor Chad Jenkins has been elected a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Jenkins specializes in mobile manipulation robots and human-robot interaction. His research explores how to enable robots to learn from human demonstration in complex environments. His work has been supported through a number of prestigious awards, including a PECASE award, an NSF CAREER Award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, and a Sloan Research Fellowship. Jenkins is also devoted to ensuring that the fields of robotics and AI are accessible to everyone.

In this technical talk, Chad Jenkins from the University of Michigan posed the following question: "who will pay the cost for the likely mistakes and potential misuse of AI systems?" As he states, "we are increasingly seeing how AI is having a pervasing impact on our lives, both for good and for bad. So, how do we ensure equal opportunity in science and technology?" It would be great to talk about the many compelling ideas, innovations, and new questions emerging in robotics research. I am fascinated by the ongoing NeRF Explosion, prospects for declarative robot programming by demonstration, and potential for a reemergence of probabilistic generative inference.