Researchers at MIT have developed “PhotoGuard,” a tool that can be used to protect images from AI manipulation, reports Catherine Thorbecke for CNN. The tool “puts an invisible ‘immunization’ over images that stops AI models from being able to manipulate the picture,” writes Thorbecke.
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman speaks with alumnus Jeremy Wertheimer, co-founder of ITA Software, about the state of AI innovation in the Greater Boston area, reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “Back in the day, we called it good old-fashioned AI,” says Wertheimer. “But the future is to forget all that clever coding. You want to have an incredibly simple program with enough data and enough computing power.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with Delphine Strauss of the Financial Times about the risks AI poses to jobs and job quality, but also the technology’s potential to help rebuild middle-class jobs. “The good case for AI is where it enables people with foundational expertise or judgment to do more expert work with less expertise,” says Autor. He adds, “My hope is that we can use AI to reinstate the value of skills held by people without as high a degree of formal education.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Boston Globe reporters Alex Kantrowitz and Douglas Gorman about how to address the advance of AI in the workplace. “We know from many areas that have rapidly automated that they don’t deliver the types of returns that they promised,” says Acemoglu. “Humans are underrated.”
Prof. Simon Johnson speaks with Reuters reporter Mark John about the impact of AI on the economy. “AI has got a lot of potential – but potential to go either way,” says Johnson. “We are at a fork in the road.”
At CSAIL’s Imagination in Action event, CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus Bob Metcalfe '69 showcased how the many individual bits of innovation that emerged from the Telnet Protocol later become the foundation for email, writes Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, for Forbes. “Looking ahead to the future of connectivity, Metcalfe spoke of the challenges of limited network bandwidth, and the importance of keeping connectivity firmly in mind when developing any new computing technologies,” writes Rus.
AP reporter Ronald Blum spotlights the premiere of Prof. Jay Scheib’s augmented reality-infused production of Wagner’s “Parsifal” at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. “We sort of focus on a future society in which myth has become possible again," says Scheib. "But at the same time, we’re not that far in the future and the third act is set around a broken lithium-ion field. We’re set in a world that is somehow post-planet and post-collapse of energy production.”
At CSAIL’s Imagination in Action event, Prof. Stefanie Jegelka’s presentation provided insight into “the failures and successes of neural networks and explored some crucial context that can help engineers and other human observers to focus in on how learning is happening,” reports research affiliate John Werner for Forbes.
Researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed “Sybil,” an AI tool that can detect the risk of a patient developing lung cancer within six years, reports Mary Kekatos for ABC News. “Sybil was trained on low-dose chest computer tomography scans, which is recommended for those between ages 50 and 80 who either have a significant history of smoking or currently smoke,” explains Kekatos.
Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, emphasizes the central role universities play in fostering innovation and the importance of ensuring universities have the computing resources necessary to help tackle major global challenges. Rus writes, “academia needs a large-scale research cloud that allows researchers to efficiently share resources” to address hot-button issues like generative AI. “It would provide an integrated platform for large-scale data management, encourage collaborative studies across research organizations, and offer access to cutting-edge technologies, while ensuring cost efficiency,” Rus explains.
Writing for Forbes, research affiliate John Werner spotlights Prof. Stefanie Mueller’s presentation at the CSAIL Imagination in Action event on her work developing a new type of paint that allows users to change the color and pattern of different objects. “The long-term vision here, really, is to give those physical objects the same capabilities as we have in digital,” said Mueller. “I hope in the future we will all get some free stuff, and we would just have an [app] where we can download different textures we can apply, and change our outfits.”
Forbes reporter Stuart Anderson spotlights a number of international students who became founders of top U.S. AI companies, including MIT alumni Sébastien Boyer MS '16 and Aditya Khosla PhD '16. Boyer co-founded “FarmWise, which employs AI for precision weeding on farms,” and Khosla co-founded PathAI, a biotech startup that uses AI to “optimize the analysis of patient tissue samples and for other clinical and diagnostic purposes,” writes Anderson.
Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with Nicole Estephan of WCVB-TV’s Chronicle about her work developing new AI systems that could be used to help diagnose breast and lung cancer before the cancers are detectable to the human eye.
Writing for Forbes, Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, makes the case that liquid neural networks “offer an elegant and efficient computational framework for training and inference in machine learning. With their compactness, adaptability, and streamlined computation, these networks have the potential to reshape the landscape of artificial intelligence and drive further breakthroughs in the field.”
Researchers at MIT have developed PIGINet (Plans, Images, Goal and Initial facts), a neural network designed to bring task and motion planning to home robotics, reports Brian Heater for Tech Crunch. “The system is largely focused on kitchen-based activities at present. It draws on simulated home environments to build plans that require interactions with various different elements of the environment, like counters, cabinets, the fridge, sinks, etc,” says Heater.