Elon Musk thinks artificial intelligence poses a mortal danger to human civilization. Alibaba founder Jack Ma thinks AI could be responsible for World War III. Bill Gates supports a robot tax. Mark Zuckerberg believes AI will make our lives better. But as the debate over the possibly apocalyptic consequences of building human-like intelligence rolls on, one thing has been curiously absent: the voices of engineers with actual, hands-on experience in designing AI. "Artificial intelligence" is a bit of a catch-all term today.

A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of strategy business. On the Stanford University campus, you could practically throw a rock and hit 100 graduate students who are building apps that enable people to communicate more effectively. But Terry Winograd is particularly enthusiastic about the app one of his graduate students, Catalin Voss, is working on. Voss, a native of Germany who completed his bachelor's and master's degrees last June at the age of 21, is working on an app that deploys Google Glass, linked to a smartphone, to help autistic children recognize human emotions through facial expressions. Venture capitalists weren't interested, even though Voss had created and sold a startup that used eye-tracking technology to monitor attentiveness to a Toyota subsidiary while still a freshman. But Terry Winograd was interested. "It runs, it has AI [artificial intelligence]," says Winograd, who 20-odd years ago advised another graduate student on the then nascent field of searching the World Wide Web. "It's at a stage where we've actually put 30 devices into homes. Our goal is to have 100 in the trial." Voss says his objective is to build a medical product that insurers will be willing to pay for. "We want to prove the investors wrong, who didn't believe in it, and build an aid for people with autism, and other mental disorders as well," he says. "We believe we've built a fairly holistic system for mental health."

On the Stanford University campus, you could practically throw a rock and hit 100 graduate students who are building apps that enable people to communicate more effectively. But Terry Winograd is particularly enthusiastic about the app one of his graduate students, Catalin Voss, is working on. Voss, a native of Germany who completed his bachelor's and master's degrees last June at the age of 21, is working on an app that deploys Google Glass, linked to a smartphone, to help autistic children recognize human emotions through facial expressions. Venture capitalists weren't interested, even though Voss had created and sold a startup that used eye-tracking technology to monitor attentiveness to a Toyota subsidiary while still a freshman. But Terry Winograd was interested. "It runs, it has AI [artificial intelligence]," says Winograd, who 20-odd years ago advised another graduate student on the then nascent field of searching the World Wide Web. "It's at a stage where we've actually put 30 devices into homes. Our goal is to have 100 in the trial." Voss says his objective is to build a medical product that insurers will be willing to pay for. "We want to prove the investors wrong, who didn't believe in it, and build an aid for people with autism, and other mental disorders as well," he says. "We believe we've built a fairly holistic system for mental health." Winograd was Voss's first choice for an advisor even though the 70-year-old professor retired from teaching three years ago.

On the Stanford University campus, you could practically throw a rock and hit 100 graduate students who are building apps that enable people to communicate more effectively. But Terry Winograd is particularly enthusiastic about the one his graduate student, Catalin Voss, is working on.