Before taking the stage at World Summit AI USA 2025 (June 18–19, San Francisco), Bernardo Flores shares why bridging academia and industry is critical now. From student-led tools for mental health to sustainable tech with IBM, he’s focused on using Artificial Intelligence to empower—not replace—human potential.
What’s your most compelling dream scenario for AI — a breakthrough that would fundamentally improve life on a global scale?
A dream scenario for me would be seeing AI applications and systems being used for social good. To empower individuals not just knowledge wise, but to allow them to find ways to solve or mitigate issues within their communities, in a way that it can be beneficial for all. For instance, something that gives me great hope is when my students, for their master project, want to focus on building multi-agentic AI systems for healthcare (e.g. mental health, wellbeing, ...), education (e.g. pre-school learning companions) and other causes that show the commitment that future work forces have to use AI for a greater good.
What’s a recent project or breakthrough you're especially proud of — and what kind of impact do you hope it will have in the real world?
Definitely a project called CarbonSense - powered by IBM Watsonx. Through a partnership between the department of Computer Engineering at SJSU, and the Skills Build team from IBM, we were able to use the IBM Cloud suite AI services (watsonx.ai, watsonx.data, to name a few) to build an assistant that empowers individuals to make better choices towards sustainability, by facilitating ways of reducing their carbon footprint. Not only this shows the importance of continuing with academia/industry collaborations, with AI, this partnership needs to be further enhanced, so we are able to further qualify our already skilled work forces and future ones to come.
What’s a use case for AI that you think more people should know about — something positive that’s flying under the radar?
Something that needs to be brought more to light is the fantastic work that has been done regarding AI for Senior Care, which is also a research area that I work on (Cybersecurity, AI and HCI for Senior/Elderly Citizens). This is an area that we still need to invest a lot more time and resources on, as this community is very important to all of us, and we need to continue to find ways to develop applications and systems that will enhance or simply enable a better quality of life for our senior citizens.
If you had to choose one nightmare scenario that keeps you up at night — whether realistic or speculative — what would it be, and what warning signs should we be watching for today?
Truthfully, assuming that AI is 'ready to go', making current and work forces obsolete. While we're seeing astounding new AI applications on the daily, there is still much to be done to be in a situation where we can be totally dependent on AI. However, what I not only believe, but strive for, is to empower current and future work forces to have AI knowledge as part of their skillset, and not in a way that does the work for them, but facilitates or automates a lot of the needed workflow to truly focus on causing a great impact in providing solutions that will contribute to a better, more efficient world.
Who or what do you think has the power to prevent your nightmare scenario above?
Us, quite frankly. Partnerships between academia and industry to be more exact. As mentioned before, this bridge has never been needed as it is now. There should be more frequent conversations between the two, establish industry advisory boards at universities to build better curricula and, on the flip side, to build mentorship programs that work closely with university members to better prepare students for industry's needs.
What are we not talking about enough in the AI conversation today — something you believe could be hugely important five years from now?
As someone with background in Cybersecurity, and as much as we're witnessing an evolution on the daily with AI applications, security and privacy concerns are still a thing. We're still witnessing issues such as deepfakes, prompt injection attacks that are affecting systems available to the public and we need to be more conscientious about this. We are at a moment of innovation, but we need to make AI overall more robust.
If you look ahead 10 years, what do you think will be the biggest change in our daily lives?
AI systems will be the next 'calculator' (back in my day), the next 'laptop', meaning AI will become a indispensable tool that will empower and enhance the workflow and/or the daily life of individuals. And that should always be the main focus, a tool to empower, never to replace.
Do you think AGI is near? When will we have AGI?
We're certainly getting close, but I don't think we're there yet nor soon. There are a lot of components to consider still, namely and as I was mentioning earlier, when to comes to security and privacy aspects, there is much to do here. Furthermore, in order to get to the 'G' aspect of an AI system, we need to make systems more explainable and transparent, we need to understand and consider if the decisions made by these systems are indeed ethical. In short, we need to support and research more on governance practices, so we can have an AGI that we truly trust and support.
Bernardo Flores, Assistant Professor in the Computer Engineering Department, San Jose State University
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