Artificial intelligence

Prof. David Autor speaks with Tony Dokoupil of CBS News about how the rise of artificial intelligence could change the quality of jobs. "What we've seen over the last four decades in the U.S. and many industrialized economies is what economists call labor market polarization, which means the hollowing out of the middle set of jobs,” says Autor. The "hollowing out" of the middle has led to some in the labor market moving up and making more money, while others are now making less — and "that's especially where the pain happens," Autor adds. 

Washington Post reporter Michael Andor Brodeur spotlights Prof. Tod Machover’s work exploring the concepts and techniques needed to advance the future of music, including using AI to help “exponentially increase access to music and creative tools for making it.” Machover explains that to him “pieces of music aren’t just pieces of sound. They’re because some human being thought something was important to communicate and express.”

Prof. David Autor speaks with ABC News reporter Max Zahn about whether new AI technologies could displace workers. "The thing we shouldn't be worried about at present or for quite a while is the quantity of jobs," said Autor. "We should be worried about the quality of jobs."

Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights several MIT startups that are using AI to generate 3-D environments. Common Sense Machines, an MIT startup, is “trying to enhance the creativity of its app by adding a bit of, well, common sense,” writes Pressman. “Human babies form an understanding of the world by developing abstract models. Common Sense Machines is trying to add similar models to its 3D world builder.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a drone that can be controlled using hand gestures, reports Mashable. “I think it’s important to think carefully about how machine learning and robotics can help people to have a higher quality of life and be more productive,” says postdoc Joseph DelPreto. “So we want to combine what robots do well and what people do well so that they can be more effective teams.”

Motherboard reporter Tatyana Woodall writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that AI models that can learn to perform new tasks from just a few examples create smaller models inside themselves to achieve these new tasks. “Learning is entangled with [existing] knowledge,” graduate student Ekin Akyürek explains. “We show that it is possible for these models to learn from examples on the fly without any parameter update we apply to the model.”

Researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed “Sybil” – an artificial intelligence tool that can predict the risk of a patient developing lung cancer within six years, reports Mallika Marshall for CBS Boston. 

CSAIL researchers are developing a drone that could be used to assist humans in search and rescue operations, reports Mashable. “If you are trying to detect someone in an avalanche and you can maybe just send a drone, and if they can find them out and then fly towards them and send a help signal. It would be probably be something that would be beneficial to people as an immediate application.”

Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, speaks with Popular Science reporter Charlotte Hu about the field of artificial intelligence, explaining the difference between AI, robotics and machine learning, and exploring the future of AI. “[AI algorithms] can do really extraordinary things much faster than we can. But the way to think about it is that they’re tools that are supposed to augment and enhance how we operate,” says Rus. “And like any other tools, these solutions are not inherently good or bad. They are what we choose to do with them.”

Researchers at MIT have developed an autonomous vehicle with “mini sensors to allow it to see the world and also with an artificially intelligent computer brain that can allow it to drive,” explains postdoctoral associate Alexander Amini in an interview with Mashable. “Our autonomous vehicles are able to learn directly from humans how to drive a car so they can be deployed and interact in brand new environments that they’ve never seen before,” Amini notes.

MIT researchers have developed a new AI tool called Sybil that could help predict whether a patient will get lung cancer up to six years in advance, reports Pranshu Verma for The Washington Post.  “Much of the technology involves analyzing large troves of medical scans, data sets or images, then feeding them into complex artificial intelligence software,” Verma explains. “From there, computers are trained to spot images of tumors or other abnormalities.”

Researchers at MIT developed SoFi, a soft robotic fish designed to study underwater organisms and their environments, reports Mashable. “The soft robotic fish serves a nice purpose for hopefully minimizing impact on the environments that we’re studying and also helps us study different types of behaviors and also study the actual mechanics of these organisms as well,” says graduate student Levi Cai.

Prof. Nick Montfort speaks with GBH All Things Considered host Arun Rath about ChatGPT, its potential impact on the future of academia and how instructors could adapt their courses in light of this new technology.

Research fellow Michael Schrage speaks with Fortune reporter Sheryl Estrada about how generative A.I. will impact finance. “I think, increasingly, we’re going to be seeing generative A.I. used for financial forecasts and scenario generation,” says Schrage.

National Geographic reporter Maya Wei-Haas explores how the ancient art of origami is being applied to fields such a robotics, medicine and space exploration. Wei-Haas notes that Prof. Daniela Rus and her team developed a robot that can fold to fit inside a pill capsule, while Prof. Erik Demaine has designed complex, curving fold patterns. “You get these really impressive 3D forms with very simple creasing,” says Demaine.