Robin Podmore (NAE) is president, Incremental Systems Corp. (IncSys). Anjan Bose (NAE) is Regents Professor, School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Washington State University.

Fiza Shaukat is a native of Pakistan living in the United States. As a biomedical engineer, she was eager to improve her country’s medical devices and digital health strategies. She approached us in 2018 seeking expertise in clinical engineering, which focuses on the point-of-care intersection between the use of health technology and the expertise needed for optimal support and resource management.

Human control over technology was a concern thousands of years ago when early humans sought to ensure safe use of fire. Later, control over horse-drawn wagons and eventually steam engines led to debates about how to make the most of their benefits while limiting dangers. Now questions of control are central in the design of AI-infused technologies, for which some advocates envision full machine autonomy while others promote human autonomy.

Today, more urgently than ever, we need to augment our thinking. The world faces enormous challenges of unprecedented complexity—problems that intertwine in a dizzyingly interconnected, interdependent, and changing landscape. Few of them—especially those dealing with energy, environment, and social structures—admit clean solutions with clear endpoints.