Professor Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, speaks with Timothy Aeppel of The Wall Street Journal about why robots cannot perform tasks humans regularly perform, like folding laundry. While Rus explains that it would be difficult to predict when robots will be able to match the skill set of humans, “compared to now, what we had just two years ago was nothing, so I don’t think it’s going to take that long.”
MIT researchers have developed a garden filled with origami robots, LED flowers that can bloom on command and mechanical insects, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. The garden was developed in an effort to make programming more accessible to children.
Professor Erik Brynjolfsson speaks with Tom Ashbrook of WBUR’s On Point about the future of the American workforce as new technologies automate jobs traditionally performed by people. “People get a lot of value out of work beyond the paycheck,” says Brynjolfsson. “We’re looking at ways to keep people working.”
Gary Beach writes for The Wall Street Journal about Professor Erik Brynjolfsson’s predictions on how technology will change the workforce. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one-third, or more, jobs were eliminated by new technologies in the next decade,” says Brynjolfsson. “Millions of new jobs, however, will be created.”
Professor John Leonard speaks with Cory Johnson of Bloomberg Television about the potential for new developments in the field of robotics in 2015. “This year I think we’ll see some really exciting developments,” says Leonard. “I think it might take a little more than a year to see the real explosion.”
The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) plans to test a system that allows people to hail electric, autonomous cars, reports Kelly O’Brien for Boston.com. These “cars would be an efficient way to get people from their homes to a T stop or commuter rail station,” O'Brien explains.
Professors Erik Brynjolfsson and David Autor speak with Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times about how artificial intelligence is impacting the job market. “This is the biggest challenge of our society for the next decade,” says Brynjolfsson.
The Financial Times features an excerpt from Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and Dr. Andrew McAfee’s book “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies” on their shortlist of for the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger writes about research by Professor David Autor on the impact of technology on the workforce presented at this year’s Jackson Hole Federal Reserve Symposium. Autor argues that artificial intelligence still struggles to perform tasks that require flexibility, judgment and common sense.
Boston Magazine reporter Steve Annear writes about a new robot, designed by MIT undergraduate Patrick McCabe, that can play the game Connect Four. “It’s kind of a magical thing with computer science and technology, being able to leverage that to actually make something smarter than you are,” said McCabe of the device, which can beat its creator.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Jack Newsham interviews Professor John Leonard about the many challenges facing self-driving cars in a city like Boston. “Robots should just be able to navigate the way we navigate,” Leonard explains. “That’s been a challenge in robotics for 40 years.”
“Lexington-based MicroCHIPS, a developer of implantable drug delivery devices, has been quietly working on a birth control product that can be embedded in a woman’s body,” writes Steve Annear of Boston Magazine. The technology was originally developed in Professor Robert Langer’s lab.
In a piece for Wired, Robert McMillan examines new MIT research showing that computers “powered by the latest ‘deep learning’ algorithms,” are catching up in tests that compare their intelligence to those of monkeys.
In a piece for New Scientist about teaching robots to communicate like humans, Aviva Rutkin highlights how researchers from MIT developed a new approach to communicating with a robot called inverse semantics. Using this approach, “the robot tries to choose the right words by looking at its environment,” Rutkin writes.
Steve Lohr writes for The New York Times about Luminoso, a text analysis and artificial intelligence startup out of the MIT Media Lab. Luminoso analyzed social media communications before, during, and after the U.S.-Germany World Cup soccer match to create a minute-by-minute picture of peoples’ emotions.