The Heart and the Chip

Daniela Rus, a leading roboticist and computer scientist, explores how we can use a new generation of smart machines to help humankind.

There is a robotics revolution underway. A record 3.1 million robots are working in factories right now, doing everything from assembling computers to packing goods and monitoring air quality and performance. A far greater number of smart machines impact our lives in countless other ways—improving the precision of surgeons, cleaning our homes, extending our reach to distant worlds—and we’re on the cusp of even more exciting opportunities.

In The Heart and the Chip, roboticist Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone provide an overview of the interconnected fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and reframe the way we think about intelligent machines while weighing the moral and ethical consequences of their role in society. Robots aren’t going to steal our jobs: they’re going to make us more capable, productive, and precise.

At once optimistic and realistic, Rus and Mone envision a world in which these technologies augment and enhance our skills and talents, both as individuals and as a species—a world in which the proliferation of robots allows us all to be more human.

About the Authors:

Daniela Rus is a pioneering roboticist and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, where she is the director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. A global leader in robotics and AI, she is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow. 

Gregory Mone, a former editor at Popular Science, adapted Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and Daniel James Brown's Boys in the Boat for young readers. He is the coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers.