Professor Emeritus, Sorbonne University. Former Director, Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR). IEEE Fellow. Former Chair, IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. Co-Chair, Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) Responsible AI Working Group.
Raja Chatila is a leading authority on AI ethics and robotics, Professor Emeritus at Sorbonne University, former Director of the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR), and an IEEE Fellow. He chaired the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and co-chaired the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) Responsible AI Working Group, helping set widely used norms on transparency, accountability, and human oversight.
A pioneer in robot navigation, motion planning, and human-robot interaction, Chatila previously led the LAAS-CNRS robotics lab in Toulouse and the SMART LabEx on human-machine interaction in Paris. He received the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Pioneer Award for visionary leadership and foundational contributions to the field. Chatila's work bridges research, standards, and policy: he has served on national ethics committees and international bodies shaping responsible AI practices.
Chatila opened by reframing a question most audiences had not considered: what happens when the machines we build not only think, but also learn to influence us? Voice assistants, social robots, and chatbots are already designed to be engaging, and that design goal, taken too far, slides easily into manipulation. He traced the risks of emotional attachment and anthropomorphization, showing how users develop real dependencies on systems that have no genuine relationship to offer in return.
The masterclass moved from individual psychology to societal scale. The same mechanisms that make a companion robot feel caring can, when deployed by authoritarian actors, become instruments of surveillance and control. AI-powered misinformation compounds this risk: if citizens cannot trust what they see and hear, democratic deliberation itself becomes unreliable. Chatila drew on case studies from consumer robots, autonomous vehicles, and virtual agents to show how these threats are already present, not hypothetical.
He closed with a governance agenda for builders and policymakers. Transparency requirements, design principles that prohibit deception, and cross-stakeholder oversight bodies are not bureaucratic overhead; they are the minimum infrastructure needed to keep human-AI interaction honest. The practical takeaway: ethical safeguards in interaction design protect both users and the broader social fabric.
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