Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau stressed the importance of investing in artificial intelligence at the MIT Solve conference, reports the Associated Press. Trudeau noted that “leaders also have a responsibility to shape the rules and principles to guide the development of artificial intelligence.”
Julian Goldman writes for Gizmodo about the growing popularity of knitting among e-textile makers. “Knitting has this exquisite control that you get along with the [full] garment capability,” explains Prof. Yoel Fink. “There’s many more degrees of freedom in knitting in terms of being able to build structures.”
An international research team led by postdoctoral fellow Carl Rodriguez has found that within a group of star clusters, black hole collisions can actually create larger black holes, writes Nola Taylor Redd for Fox News. A simulation showed that these black holes “should grow to be more than 50 times as massive as Earth's sun if they collide with other black holes.”
A new study co-authored by Prof. Emilio Castilla suggests that MBA candidates with informal endorsements, rather than letters of recommendation, are more likely to be interviewed for a program, writes Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed. “Significantly, the researchers found that the endorsed candidates were not otherwise superior to those without endorsements,” explains Jaschik.
During remarks at the MIT Solve conference, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau highlighted his country’s role in the future of AI. Trudeau believes Canada’s scientific accomplishments and cultural diversity will “ensure that AI systems will be programmed by teams with a broader understanding of human needs,” writes Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe.
NASA’s planet-hunting satellite TESS has “snapped its first test shot — an incredibly clear, star-studded image centered on the Southern constellation of Centaurus,” writes Bruce Dorminey for Forbes. “We are truly excited about how well the TESS cameras are working,” said George Ricker, the mission’s principal investigator and a senior research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute.
The Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner discusses the impact of Cambridge biotech company Biogen, cofounded by Prof. Phil Sharp, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. “The company has become the biggest oak tree of the Massachusetts biotech sector,” writes Kirsner, “not only because it is still standing after four decades, but because it has dropped a lot of acorns.”
Allison Katz speaks with WBUR’s Pamela Reynolds about her new exhibit, “Diary w/o Dates,” which is on display through July 29th at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. As Katz explains, the work is about “calibrating various ways of internalizing time,” particularly compared to “the evenly-paced grid of the calendar/clock/grid model.”
Xinhua news agency reports that MIT researchers have developed a robotic glider based on an albatross that can skim along the water’s surface “while surfing the waves like a sailboat.” “The researchers hope that in the near future, such compact and speedy robotic water-skimmers may be deployed in teams to survey large swaths of the ocean.”
MIT researchers are using virtual reality to train autonomous drones to fly in a variety of environments, writes Steven Melendez for Fast Company. Future tests may train the drone to fly safely around humans “as if they were in the same area, enabling it to practice sharing a space without actually endangering any human lives,” Melendez notes.
The Economist reports on a new method for retirement income developed by Prof. Robert Merton and his colleague at France’s EDHEC Business School.
WBUR’s Carey Goldberg recommends a video with neuroscientists at the McGovern Institute “for a quick, light and smart explanation” of the ‘Yanny vs. Laurel’ debate. “The same acoustic information is hitting everyone’s ears,” says graduate student Kevin Sitek. “But the brain is then going to interpret that differently, based on experience.”
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that MIT researchers have designed a kit that allows scientists to develop diagnostic tests quickly and cheaply. The kit, “uses modular blocks that can be connected in different patterns to replicate the function that would typically be built into a manufactured test for pregnancy, glucose, or an infection or other disease.”
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, writes for Forbes about challenges facing the children of Baby Boomers, who will eventually need to care for their parents. “[W]hile the Baby Boomers may be aging, they are far from done,” writes Coughlin. “It may be our best gift to our children to develop care plans, options, savings, and innovations today to care for us tomorrow.”
Bloomberg’s Noah Smith profiles Prof. Parag Pathak, who was recently awarded the John Bates Clark medal for his work using economic theory to improve the allocation of students to New York City public schools. “Pathak isn’t just a theorist,” writes Smith, “in keeping with economics’ age of data, he also does a lot of empirical work.”