A new paper co-authored by Prof. David Rand shows that people are more likely to buy solar panels if the salesperson actually uses them. Study participants believed the salesperson’s personal behavior “was a stronger signifier of their beliefs than any sales pitch, no matter how sincere,” reports Tarpley Hitt for The Daily Beast.
MIT researchers used an online platform known as the “Moral Machine” to gauge how humans respond to ethical decisions made by artificial intelligence, reports Jamie Leventhal for PBS NewsHour. According to postdoc Edmond Awad, two goals of the platform were to foster discussion and “quantitatively [measure] people’s cultural preferences.”
MIT alumni Aman Narang and Steve Fredette speak with NECN’s Brian Burnell about their startup Toast, which provides cloud-based, restaurant management software. Narang explains that Toast was created to replace outdated restaurant technology and “build something from the ground up that could connect their diners, their guests, their employees, and make the restauranteur’s life more efficient.”
Researchers from MIT are using the brittle nature of graphene to mass produce cell-sized robots, writes David Grossman of Popular Mechanics. Called “syncells” or synthetic cells, the researchers hope they can be used in biomedical testing. “Inject hundreds into the bloodstreams and let the data fly back into sensors,” explains Grossman.
MIT students, who were disappointed by articles depicting AI as a fast-approaching threat, are training AI to create new ideas in fashion, food, art, and dance that are then created by humans, writes Kaveh Waddell of Axios. MIT postdoc Pinar Yanardag, the project founder, envisions a future where humans work with AI to boost their creativity.
Boston Herald reporter John Connolly spotlights the MIT football team, which is undefeated thus far this season. “We have 75 MIT football players. They’re smart. They don’t need us to tell them what to do,” explains coach Brian Bubna. “I’ve been here since 2010 and we’re moving in the right direction.”
MIT researchers have made electrical recordings of individual brain cells, which may provide insight into human intelligence, reports Hannah Osborne of Newsweek. Researchers discovered that human cells have fewer ion channels, which allow electrical currents to enter and exit cells, potentially increasing “the resistance of human dendrites, making the cell better at processing information,” explains Osborne.
MIT was ranked the number one college in the nation by WalletHub, reports WHDH-TV. WHDH notes that “MIT had the highest return of educational investment, along with the highest post-attendance median salary, according to the study.”
Fortune reporter Aaron Pressman highlights how Prof. Julie Shah is working on making human-robot collaboration on the assembly line more effective through the use of collaborative robots, dubbed cobots. Pressman writes that Shah “is working on software algorithms developed with machine learning that will teach cobots how and when to communicate by reading signals from the humans around them.”
Popular Science reporter Rob Verger highlights how an MIT spinout and MIT researchers are developing tools to detect depression. “The big vision is that you have a system that can digest organic, natural conversations, and interactions, and be able to make some conclusion about a person’s well-being,” says grad student Tuka Alhanai.
MIT startup Nesterly is connecting young people looking for cheaper rents with older residents looking for assistance at home, reports Dugan Arnett for The Boston Globe. Arnett explains that Nesterly “works roughly on the principles of a dating app, with searchable online profiles and features that help work out details of a lease.”
MIT researchers have found that the large size of neurons in the human brain allows for electrical compartmentalization, which may contribute to the human brain’s complex cognitive capabilities, writes UPI reporter Brooks Hays.
UCLA Prof. Leonard Kleinrock, an MIT alumnus, speaks with PC Mag reporter S.C. Stuart about his work developing the mathematical theory of packet networks during his graduate studies at MIT. Kleinrock recounts how “that was a golden era at MIT and elsewhere in the research groups in the sixties, and I'll be forever grateful to ARPA's enlightened funding culture.”
Axios reporter Joann Muller spotlights Rivian, an electric-vehicle startup founded by MIT graduate RJ Scaringe. “If Rivian succeeds, the sharing of its technology could be one of the biggest reasons,” writes Muller. “Imagine companies like Amazon, Starbucks or Apple launching their own mobility fleets on top of a generic platform.”
IEEE Spectrum reporter Mark Anderson highlights how Prof. Jeehwan Kim’s research group has developed techniques to produce ultrathin semiconducting films and harvest the materials necessary to manufacture 2-D electronics. Anderson explains that the group’s advances could make possible such innovations as high-efficiency solar cells attached to a car’s exterior and low-power, long-lasting wearable devices.