“When I was in middle school I went to the movie theater to watch a movie: The Time Machine. Although I later forgot most of it, there was one particular scene and character that got stuck on my mind. Vox, a holographic person (librarian) displayed on a glass panel, appears to be sentient, interacts with people as a real person, and claims to have access to all human knowledge.

Years later I would come to realize that this is one of the very few examples where extremely powerful technology is not portrayed as a problem, but rather a solution (the system goes to teach humanity’s few post-apocalyptic survivors about history, science, and the world). I grew up believing this was possible. Unfortunately at that time we only had dial-up internet connections, and we were still more than a decade away from the Internet of Things (IoT), mainstream artificial intelligence or augmented reality, and Industry 4.0.

When I started my Ph.D. in 2012 things had changed and accessibility to information and technology had improved. My research was in a very niche area in human-computer interaction called embodied conversational agents. For over three years I tried to take just one small step and make one positive change in this direction by working on building and measuring trust and rapport between humans and machines.

Fast forward to today and we are now working in projects I couldn’t even imagine a few years back, bordering in what was once considered science fiction, with one of the best teams of researchers, developers, and industry experts in the world. Although we are still far from Vox, I do believe we will get to see it, or better yet, to build it during my lifetime.”