re:MARS Luminaries

Bethany Ehlmann talks about how studying other planets like Mars allows us to not only understand the universe better, but Earth as well - and provides us with a reminder that life and beauty on Earth exists due to a fragile balance that must be protected.

Artificial intelligence provides us with so many opportunities to enhance our quality of life, but as new applications of AI develop, Ayanna Howard reminds us that that opportunity comes with a responsibility to ensure that implicit and unconscious biases are not programmed into the algorithms.

Hao Li talks about the challenges involved in creating AI-driven, virtual human avatars as well as the possibilities and responsibilities that arise as we become a more seamlessly digital society.

Maja Mataric discusses the field of "socially-assistive robotics," which aims to create robots that are programmed to have more empathy for human beings and provide specialized assistance to those in need.

Callisto is an ambitious new test partnership between Amazon and Lockheed Martin to study the feasibility of integrating Alexa into the Orion spacecraft architecture to help spacefarers navigate the challenges of working off-world.

Tom Soderstrom talks about how evolving technologies on earth can help us answer the question, what exists outside of our world?