In honor of “Back to the Future II,” in which Marty McFly travels 30 years into the future, BBC reporter Jane O’Brien speaks with Media Lab Director Joi Ito about how technology might advance over the next 30 years. Ito says that his “dream invention is machine learning artificial intelligence that connects directly to my brain in some non-invasive way.”
MIT researchers have created an algorithm that outperforms humans when searching for patterns in data sets, reports Rachel Feltman for The Washington Post. The algorithm uses “raw datasets to make models predicting things such as when a student would be most at risk of dropping an online course.”
Seung Lee writes for Newsweek that MIT researchers have developed an algorithm that can outperform humans in finding patterns in data sets. The system takes “two to 12 hours for what a human could only do over the course of several months.”
MIT researchers have developed a new system that can help identify patterns in data sets, reports Tomas Morzon for UPI. The researchers explained that the new system could be a “crucial asset in finding what components of a data set should be analyzed in order to draw conclusions.”
Richard Waters of the Financial Times writes about Prof. David Mindell’s new book, “Our Robots, Ourselves,” which examines robotics and automation. Waters writes that, “Mindell brings an altogether refreshing perspective to a field that can sometimes get lost in the ‘what if.’”
In this video, the BBC’s LJ Rich reports on the 3-D printed, soft robotic hand developed by researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Rich explains that the robotic hand can “handle objects as delicate as an egg and as thin as a compact disk.”
Washington Post reporter Rachel Feltman writes that MIT researchers have designed a new robotic hand with soft, 3-D printed fingers that can identify and lift a variety of objects. Prof. Daniela Rus explains that her group’s robotic hand operates in a way that is “much more analogous to what we do as humans."
Writing for Popular Science, Mary Beth Griggs reports on the soft robotic gripper developed by researchers at MIT CSAIL. “The silicone fingers are equipped with sensors that analyze the object they are touching and compare it to other items in its database,” Griggs writes.
MIT CSAIL researchers have developed a silicon gripper that allows robots to grasp a wide variety of items, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. Subbaraman explains that the hand expands “to accommodate a shape, and grasps radially – surrounding an object instead of picking it up with pincers.”
Matt McFarland writes for The Washington Post about Prof. David Mindell’s new book, in which he argues that automation can take away from the enjoyment of working. “The most advanced (and difficult) technologies are not those that stand apart from people, but those that are most deeply embedded in, and responsive to, human and social networks,” Mindell explains.
Researchers at MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital are developing a new technique to convert images from MRI scans into physical models of the human heart, writes Lindsay Kalter for The Boston Herald. “This can definitely impact clinical practice in terms of helping surgeons plan more efficiently,” explains graduate student Danielle Pace.
“Researchers from MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital say they’ve come up with a better, faster way to build heart models,” writes Barb Darrow for Fortune. The team has devised a method for 3-D printing model hearts from MRI scans that takes three to four hours compared to the 10 hours typically required using current methods.
Prof. Max Tegmark speaks with David Pogue of Scientific American about his views on the future of artificial intelligence. “AI also has enormous upsides…if we get it right. Let's not just drift into this like a sailboat without its sail up properly. Let's chart our course, carefully planned,” Tegmark says.
Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee write for BBC News about how advances in automation and robotics can aid in the creation of new and better jobs for humans. They write that the answer “is not to slow the pace of technological progress, but to speed up our institutions so that entrepreneurs, managers and workers alike can thrive.”
Richard Waters of The Financial Times reports that Toyota is funding new research centers at MIT and Stanford to research technologies that could enable computer-assisted driving. Waters explains that the goal behind the new centers is to give “drivers the choice one day of handing over full control to the AI ‘brains’ in their vehicles.”