RETHINKING Humans and Machines

Chris Luebkeman is the leader of the Strategic Foresight Hub in the Office of the President at ETH Zurich. He combines an attitude of pragmatic optimism with curiosity and a deep sense of planetary responsibility to all of his collaborations. Dr Luebkeman’s career to date has spanned professions and geographies. His multidisciplinary education (geology, civil engineering, structural engineering, entrepreneurship and a Doctorate in Architecture) was encouraged by his Mid-​Western family of educators. His journey included Vanderbilt, Cornell and ETH Zurich. Before his assignment as Head of Foresight at ETH Zurich, he joined the global engineering consultancy Arup in London to lead the Research and Development group in 1999. He became a corporate intrapreneur by founding the Foresight, Innovation and Incubation teams.

Liat Grayver is a Berlin-based cross-disciplinary painter and media artist, investigating methods to redefine one of the primitive forms of art — painting — within the current technology-based era. Since January 2016, Grayver has been collaborating with the University of Konstanz on the development of the e-David painting robot, exploring various approaches to integrate robotic and computer languages in the processes of painting and creative image-making. She is an active member of SALOON — Network for Women of Berlin’s Art Scene, and an associate artist researcher at the Epistemologien ästhetischer Praktiken programme at ETH Zurich. In 2022 she co-founded the group EACVA – Embodied Agents in Contemporary Visual Art, a multi-disciplinary collaboration between artists, philosophers, psychologists and computer/robotics engineers dedicated to explore the use of robots at an interactive painterly tool, and how it influences the attribution of creativity, authorship, and agency to artificial systems.

Alexander Ilic is the Executive Director and a co-founder of the ETH AI Center. He completed his habilitation at University of St. Gallen (HSG), holds a PhD from ETH Zurich, and a MSc from TU Munich. Alex is a Swiss-German deep tech entrepreneur, researcher, and investor. He co-founded the computer vision start-up Dacuda which was acquired by Augmented Reality pioneer Magic Leap in 2017. He served as head of Magic Leap Switzerland from Feb 2017 to August 2020 where he built up the R&D Center of Excellence for Computer Vision & Deep Learning in Zurich and a R&D Center of Excellence for Advanced Photonics in Lausanne. He was named twice “Entrepreneur of the Year” (2011 by HSG, 2012 by EY) and won several entrepreneurship prizes including the Swiss Economic Award.

Adina Popescu is a pioneer in VR/AR, philosopher, and a creative technologist. She has advised Apple & Conservation International and Paramount Studios as early as 2014 on Virtual Reality, the Metaverse and storytelling, has advised Deutsche Bank and has trained McKinsey consultants on VR/AR. Over time she started publishing extensively on data privacy in a growing digitally connected world, based on her experiences in VR, real time data and digital twinning with a growing concern for privacy and human rights infringements. As a public speaker at the Energy Transition Dialogue, UNESCO and GEZ she advocated for decentralised digital frameworks and has advised the German Government on privacy preserving protocols. Adina is the Founder of ÆRTH: a decentralised environmental data lake that aims to simulate regeneration solutions for our planet – open sourced and distributed. Scientists, citizens, nationstates, industry and NGO´s will be equally able to access the same standardized environmental health models – with the goal of scaling solutions and aligning the flow of funds visibly.