December 12th, 2020 Tobias Schwarz / reuters The robots are evolving. Up until now they’ve been little more than rank automatons under the direct supervision of a human “in the loop.” But as AI and machine learning continue to advance, a new generation of robots is sure to emerge, more capable and independent than their predecessors and able to fill a wider variety of service positions than they do today — from delivering take-out orders to autonomously managing shipping warehouses. , by Motional CTO Laura Major and Julie Shah, director of the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT, explores how these transformative advances will require society to rethink its relationship with the working robots of tomorrow. In the excerpt below, Major and Shah explore the user experience, how companies leverage it to attract and maintain customers, and how allowing users to define their own experiences can lead to disastrous design outcomes.