Explore topics and issues related to building trust in a world shaped by AI
Led by David Niño, Brian Subirana, and Carlos Torres Vila. (Bios below.)
Grad students are welcome to register for either Jan. 22 or Jan. 29 or both.*
Undergrads are welcome to register only for Jan. 29.
*These workshops count toward the requirements for GradEL’s Graduate Certificate in Technical Leadership. (You must attend at least the first session on January 22 to receive credit.)
Leading Engineering AI and Trust
The central question is no longer only “Do we trust AI?” but, more broadly: “How does AI engineering leadership shape whether others—human or machine—trust us, our work, our organizations, and our brands?”
The Jan. 22 workshop will focus on the trustor:
David Niño and Brian Subirana will lead this workshop. Increasingly, this first question affects all of us—and it is a daunting one. The first workshop addresses it directly. How can we trust AI when it acts as the architect and engineer of record for an entire building? Or when it builds a full software component with thousands of lines of code? What does a meaningful code review look like in such contexts? We will explore how trust is created, led, and engineered in a world shaped by intelligent systems – one increasingly saturated with adversarial attacks and mediated, deepfake, and hallucinated content. Students will engage in interactive leadership activities to develop a practical framework for action, alongside exposure to AI engineering approaches to increase the trustworthiness of end-to-end generative AI applications.
The Jan. 29 workshop will focus on the trustee:
David Niño and Brian Subirana will lead this workshop, which will also feature Carlos Torres Vila (BS ’88, SM ’90), Chairman of BBVA, an $800B global financial group pioneering a large-scale AI transformation. Carlos is among—and very likely—the highest-ranking MIT alumni currently serving in CEO-level leadership within the global financial sector, and he will have just attended the World Economic Forum. As Chairman of BBVA, he recently signed a strategic AI partnership agreement with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. He will address the second question introduced above, offering an executive perspective on leading AI engineering efforts to build trust within and beyond his organization—and on what drives corporate leaders to entrust one AI provider rather than another with their AI engineering stack.
David Niño is a Senior Lecturer in MIT’s Daniel J. Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership Program. He started the program with a single class and led its expansion into a portfolio of highly-rated academic offerings and a new graduate certificate in engineering leadership. His contributions were recognized with the School of Engineering’s Infinite Mile Award, and in 2022, the program secured a $10 million gift of support.
Niño has designed and delivered MIT leadership programs online to a global audience of more than 1,000 professionals annually, offered in multiple languages. Nationally, he has been a leading figure in the field, serving as Chair of the Engineering Leadership Development Division of the American Society of Engineering Education.
Before joining MIT, he was a Professor of the Practice at Rice University and an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his Ph.D., M.A., B.B.A., and B.A. degrees.
Brian Subirana is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at EADA Business School and a member of the faculty for MIT’s Designing and Building AI Products and Services course, which he conceived and developed. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
He has served on the faculty of the MIT School of Engineering, MIT Sloan and Harvard University. At MIT, he was also Director of the MIT Auto-ID Lab and the founding Director of the MIT–Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology. Before entering academia, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and he has since founded three startups.
Carlos Torres Vila is the current Chair of BBVA, a $800B global financial group pioneering a large-scale AI transformation.
Carlos graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.S. in Management from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he later also earned a M.S. at the MIT Sloan School of
Management. He also graduated in Law from UNED (Spain).
He was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he worked for 12 years. He joined Endesa in 2002
as Corporate Director of Strategy and member of its Executive Committee, and became company
CFO in 2007.
In September 2008, Carlos joined BBVA as Head of Strategy and Corporate Development, and
member of the bank’s Management Committee. In March 2014 he was appointed Head of Digital
Banking, until May 2015 when he became Chief Executive Officer of the bank.
Carlos was appointed Chair of BBVA and of the BBVA Foundation in December 2018.
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