computer science

In a recent case study, Steven Gonzalez Monserrate PhD ’22 makes the case that the environmental cost of computer science, specifically computer cloud storage and data centers, are huge and will only continue to rise, reports Naomi Oreskes for Scientific American. “The cloud, he [Monserrate] contends, is a ‘carbonivore’: a single data center can use the same amount of electricity as 50,000 homes,” writes Oreskes. “The entire cloud has a greater carbon footprint than the entire airline industry.”

Researchers at MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality have created a deepfake video of President Richard Nixon discussing a failed moon landing. “[The video is] meant to serve as a warning of the coming wave of impressively realistic deepfake false videos about to hit us that use A.I. to convincingly reproduce the appearance and sound of real people,” write Aaron Pressman and David Z. Morris for Fortune.

A new AI prediction model developed at MIT could detect breast cancer up to five years in advance. The researchers hope this technique “can also be used to improve detection of other diseases that have similar problems with existing risk models, with far too many gaps and lower degrees of accuracy,” writes Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch.

The new MIT-Air Force AI Accelerator “will look at improving Air Force operations and addressing larger societal needs, such as responses to disasters and medical readiness,” reports Breanne Kovatch for The Boston Globe. “The AI Accelerator provides us with an opportunity to develop technologies that will be vectors for positive change in the world,” says Prof. Daniela Rus.

In a piece about the growing field of origami, The Economist highlights Prof. Erik Demaine’s work proving that “any straight-sided figure—an octagon, a cityscape silhouette or a blocky Bart Simpson—can be extracted with exactly one straight cut if you fold the paper up the right way first.”

MIT researchers have developed a way to prevent the theft of sensitive data hidden on a computer’s memory, writes TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker. Storing sensitive data in different memory locations creates “clear boundaries for where sharing should and should not happen, so that programs with sensitive information can keep that data reasonably secure,” explains graduate student Vladimir Kiriansky.

Prof. Tim Berners-Lee discusses his new startup Inrupt, which is “the first major commercial venture built off of Solid, a decentralized web platform he and others at MIT have spent years building,” writes Katrina Brooker for Fast Company. Inrupt’s mission is “to decentralize the web and take back power from the forces that have profited from centralizing it,” says Brooker.

MIT researchers have developed a virtual reality environment in order to train drones, writes Logan Booker of Gizmodo. “It's a neat use of an emerging technology, one that makes a lot of sense when you think about it,” Booker concludes.

In an effort to determine how different data impacts the view of AI, Media Lab researchers used gruesome images to train a system, which ultimately created a psychopathic AI, writes BBC reporter Jane Wakefield. "It highlights the idea that the data we use to train AI is reflected in the way the AI perceives the world and how it behaves," says Prof. Iyad Rahwan.

Prof. Patrick Winston is teaching a computer to read a truncated version of Macbeth in an effort to determine “how to build computer systems that can simulate the human mind’s unique powers of perception and insight,” writes Andy Rosen for The Boston Globe. Winston believes understanding stories is “a fundamental differentiating capability of us humans. And machines don’t have it yet.”

Paul Solman of PBS NewsHour talks with computer scientist Neha Narula to explain how Bitcoin works. “Part of Bitcoin’s threat model is that no single entity ends up getting a majority of the processing power in the network,” says Narula. “If somebody got 51 percent of the processing power in the network, they could theoretically rewrite history and change the state of transactions in the ledger.”

Nellie Bowles of The New York Times writes about Dropbox CEO Drew Houston ’05, one of the few tech startup founders who stayed with their company from inception to its initial public offering. “Founders like him [typically] get pushed aside for someone with a finance or management background,” said Jeffrey Mann, a VP at research firm Gartner. “But he managed to stay there.”

Alumnus Mark Ethier ’01 talks to NECN’s Brian Burnell about his startup, iZotope, that allows musicians of all levels to record professional grade audio. “I was a passionate musician, who wanted to make recordings, and I understood the technology, but the tools out there were really complicated,” Ethier said.

Spencer Buell of Boston Magazine speaks with graduate student Joy Buolamwini, whose research shows that many AI programs are unable to recognize non-white faces. “‘We have blind faith in these systems,’ she says. ‘We risk perpetuating inequality in the guise of machine neutrality if we’re not paying attention.’”

Appearing on WCVB-TV’s Chronicle, Provost Marty Schmidt explains why Kendall Square is a hub for innovation, highlighting how the region brings together organizations working on everything from computer science and biotech to brain and cognitive sciences. Schmidt explains that Kendall Square’s innovation ecosystem means research “coming out of MIT (can) be immediately translated to impact.”