Artificial intelligence

The startup Fireflies.ai is helping people get the most out of their meetings with a note-taking, information-organizing virtual assistant named Fred.

Fireflies helps companies get more out of meetings

Startup makes meeting data searchable and shareable, and automates data entry into workplace apps.

May 21, 2020

The researchers ran hundreds of atom-by-atom simulations of the propagation of cracks through different kinds of layered material, to see which ones were most effective at stopping the cracks from making it all the way through the material. Shown here are a variety of simulation runs showing different outcomes.

Machine-learning tool could help develop tougher materials

Engineers develop a rapid screening system to test fracture resistance in billions of potential materials.

May 20, 2020

White blood cells are among the first to mount an attack against sepsis, a deadly complication of Covid-19. In a project led by MIT Professor Daniela Rus, researchers are developing a machine learning system to detect an activated immune response to sepsis which could lead to earlier, more aggressive treatment. Here, a white blood cell attacks malaria.

Marshaling artificial intelligence in the fight against Covid-19

The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab is funding 10 research projects aimed at addressing the health and economic consequences of the pandemic.

May 19, 2020

MIT researchers have developed a kind of creativity test for generative models to see how far they can go in visualizing objects in photos from various angles and in different colors. The tool shows how much the model's imagination depends on the variety of images it has seen.

Visualizing the world beyond the frame

Researchers test how far artificial intelligence models can go in dreaming up varied poses and colors of objects and animals in photos.

May 6, 2020

New research by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu shows that since 1987, automation has taken away jobs from lower-skill workers without being replaced by an equivalent number of labor-market opportunities.

Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality

Job-replacing tech has directly driven the income gap since the late 1980s, economists report.

May 5, 2020

A new study co-authored by an MIT professor shows firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly.

Robots help some firms, even while workers across industries struggle

Study finds manufacturing companies that are quick to automate can thrive, but overall employment drops.

May 5, 2020

MIT professor Daron Acemoglu is co-author of a new study showing that each robot added to the workforce has the effect of replacing 3.3 jobs across the U.S.

How many jobs do robots really replace?

MIT economist Daron Acemoglu’s new research puts a number on the job costs of automation.

May 4, 2020

MIT researchers have proposed a technique for shrinking deep learning models that they say is simpler and produces more accurate results than state-of-the-art methods. It works by retraining the smaller, pruned model at its faster, initial learning rate.

A foolproof way to shrink deep learning models

Researchers unveil a pruning algorithm to make artificial intelligence applications run faster.

April 30, 2020

MIT researchers used machine learning to find entirely new algorithms for encoding exploration. Their machine-designed algorithms outperformed human-designed algorithms on the wide range of simulated tasks and environments shown here.

Automating the search for entirely new “curiosity” algorithms

Researchers show that computers can “write” algorithms that adapt to radically different environments better than algorithms designed by humans.

April 28, 2020

Mathai Mammen, head of R&D at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, was the keynote speaker at the Jameel Clinic's AI Powered Drug Discovery and Manufacturing Conference in February.

MIT conference reveals the power of using artificial intelligence to discover new drugs

Inaugural AI Powered Drug Discovery and Manufacturing Conference drew pharmaceutical companies, government regulators, and pioneering drug researchers.

April 27, 2020

Lead author Joseph DelPreto controls a "Conduct-A-Bot" drone with his arm muscles.

Muscle signals can pilot a robot

CSAIL's Conduct-A-Bot system uses muscle signals to cue a drone’s movement, enabling more natural human-robot communication.

April 27, 2020

Marija Ilic — a senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, affiliate of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, senior staff in MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Energy Systems Group, and Carnegie Mellon University professor emerita — is a researcher on a mission: making electric energy systems future-ready.

Shedding light on complex power systems

Senior Research Scientist Marija Ilic is making electric energy systems future-ready.

April 23, 2020

MIT researchers have developed a new automated AI system with improved computational efficiency and a much smaller carbon footprint. The researchers’ system trains one large neural network comprising many pretrained subnetworks of different sizes that can be tailored to diverse hardware platforms without retraining.

Reducing the carbon footprint of artificial intelligence

MIT system cuts the energy required for training and running neural networks.

April 23, 2020

In this lidar map, AI algorithms have identified roads (red). By pairing this map with OpenStreetMaps, users can plan routes around roads that are deemed impassable and can do so at the scale of an entire sortie, which here covers about 400 square miles.

With lidar and artificial intelligence, road status clears up after a disaster

Automated tools can help emergency managers make decisions, plan routes, and quantify road damage at city scales.

April 21, 2020

Daniela Rus is the director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), deputy dean of research for the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

Professor Daniela Rus named to White House science council

CSAIL director and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing deputy dean of research will serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.