Prof. Fox Harrell speaks with New York Times reporter Joshua Rothkopf about the educational potential of deepfake technology. “To have the savvy to negotiate a political media landscape where a video could potentially be a deepfake, or a legitimate video could be called a deepfake, I think those are cases people need to be aware of,” says Harrell.
MIT Press and the University of California at Berkeley are launching a journal that will offer peer reviews of Covid-19 research, reports Paul Baskin for Times Higher Education. “We want to align with what the research community is doing and what it wants,” says Amy Brand, director of MIT Press. “But we also want to build in more quality control and more accountability.”
MIT researchers have developed an AI-enabled machine known as DeepRole that can beat human players in an online multiplayer game where each player’s true motives and roles are kept secret from one another. This “is the first gaming bot that can win online multiplayer games in which the participants' team allegiances are initially unclear,” reports Xinhua.
MIT researchers have developed an AI system that can predict Alzheimer’s risk by forecasting how patients will perform on a test measuring cognitive decline up to two years in advance, reports Casey Ross for STAT.
Writing for Science, Derek Lowe spotlights how MIT researchers are developing a platform that could be used to automate the production of molecules for use in medicine, solar energy and more. “The eventual hope is to unite the software and the hardware in this area,” reports Lowe, “and come up with a system that can produce new compounds with a minimum of human intervention.”
Smithsonian reporter Emily Matchar spotlights AlterEgo, a device developed by MIT researchers to help people with speech pathologies communicate. “A lot of people with all sorts of speech pathologies are deprived of the ability to communicate with other people,” says graduate student Arnav Kapur. “This could restore the ability to speak for people who can’t.”
WGBH’s Cristina Quinn visits an AI Ethics camp for middle school-aged kids co-hosted by the MIT Media Lab and local STEM organization Empow Studios. “I love to think about a future where the students in this workshop make up the majority of the people who work in Silicon Valley or the majority of the people who work on Wall Street,” says graduate research assistant Blakeley H. Payne, a leader at the camp.
WGBH reporter Cristina Quinn visits MIT to learn about a new ethics of AI workshop offered to middle school-aged children this summer. “I don't want the ethics piece to go to an elite few,” says graduate research assistant Blakeley H. Payne of the importance of offering an education in AI ethics. “And then you're just perpetuating these systems of inequality over and over again.”
Verge reporter James Vincent writes that researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab have developed an algorithm that can transform selfies into artistic portraits. The algorithm is “trained on 45,000 classical portraits to render your face in faux oil, watercolor, or ink, “Vincent explains.
Writing for The New York Times, research scientists Chelsea Barabas and Karthik Dinakar argue that risk assessment algorithms designed to help predict people’s future criminal behavior are “fundamentally flawed. They give judges recommendations that make future violence seem more predictable and more certain than it actually is. In the process, risk assessments may perpetuate the misconceptions and fears that drive mass incarceration.”
STAT reporter Rebecca Robbins spotlights how the MIMIC database of de-identified medical records has helped advance AI research in medicine. “If you are developing an algorithm, let’s say for decision support or prediction, and you’re using machine learning, then you need a huge number of examples — and there are virtually no open-source databases like this,” explains Prof. Roger Mark. It’s the only one in town, pretty much.”
New York Times reporter Katie Hafner memorializes the life and work of Professor Emeritus Fernando Corbató, known for his work on computer time-sharing systems. Hafner notes that Corbató’s work on “computer time-sharing in the 1960s helped pave the way for the personal computer, as well as the computer password.”
CSAIL’s RoboRaise robot can successfully execute the Bottle Cap Challenge, removing a bottle cap with a well-placed kick, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. Etherington explains that the robot, “can mirror the actions of a human just by watching their bicep. This has a number of practical applications, including potentially assisting a person to lift large or awkward objects.”
Writing for The Atlantic, Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, examines the potential impacts of AI on human culture, history and civilization. “We should accept that AI is bound to become increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous, and ask ourselves: How will its evolution affect human perception, cognition, and interaction? What will be its impact on our culture and, in the end, our history?”
Writing for The Atlantic, Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, examines the potential impacts of AI on human culture, history and civilization. “We should accept that AI is bound to become increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous, and ask ourselves: How will its evolution affect human perception, cognition, and interaction? What will be its impact on our culture and, in the end, our history?”