Fast Company reporter Mark Sullivan spotlights QuEra Computing as one of the 15 startups to watch in 2022. “Research breakthroughs by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University led to the launch of QuEra Computing, which uses a unique quantum architecture and laser techniques to arrange and direct the tiny qubits or quantum bits, in its 256-qubit system,” writes Sullivan.
Wall Street Journal reporter Mark Hulbert writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that most investors “can do much better than the one-size-fits-all approach to equity allocations that target-date funds offer for your retirement portfolio.”
Gramophone contributor Laurence Vittes spotlights Prof. Tod Machover’s “Death and the Powers,” an opera about robots and humans that has recently been released as an “electrifying surround-sound thriller.” Vittes writes that “Machover’s arsenal of music stands triumphantly on its own, fusing and defusing technoflash from the composer’s MIT Media Lab with rich writing for Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra ensemble.”
Researchers from MIT and the Berklee College of Music “have started a blockchain platform called RAIDAR, designed to help musicians connect with potential clients (perhaps filmmakers or video game designers who need theme music) and get paid for their work without losing ownership,” reports Newsweek.
Wired reporter Matt Simon spotlights CSAIL’s ‘Evolution Gym,’ a virtual environment where robot design is entirely computer generated. “There’s a potential to find new, unexpected robot designs, and it also has potential to get more high-performing robots overall,” says Prof. Wojciech Matusik. “If you start from very, very basic structures, how much intelligence can you really create?”
STAT reporter Katie Palmer writes that MIT researchers have developed a new machine learning model that can "flag treatments for sepsis patients that are likely to lead to a ‘medical dead-end,/ the point after which a patient will die no matter what care is provided.”
MIT researchers have created a virtual environment for optimizing the design and control of soft robots, reports Prachi Patel for Scientific American. “The future goal is to take any task and say, ‘Design me an optimal robot to complete this task,’” says undergraduate Jagdeep Bhatia.
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights Prof. Tim Berners-Lee’s startup, Inrupt, for creating open-sourced based software applications that protect and maintain digital data. “The idea is that a person or company could stash important personal or business data in a digital space, kind of like an online locker,” writes Pressman.
Ikigai, an MIT startup, is building automated workflows where human decision making will be a part of the process, reports Ron Miller for Tech Crunch. “What we saw is that there are use cases… [that involve] manual processes in the organizations that were extremely difficult to automate because a fundamental step involved humans making judgements or decisions with data, and where both the data and rules they’re operating on would change very often,” co-founder and CEO Vinayak Ramesh M.Eng ‘18, ‘12 tells Miller.
Tech Crunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights how CSAIL researchers have unveiled a testing simulator for soft robotic designs. “It offers some interesting insights into how compliant robots can adapt to different environmental changes,” writes Heater.
Writing for Popular Science, Sarah Scoles spotlights DAILy (Developing AI Literacy) initiative, a project by MIT researchers and students aimed at teaching middle schoolers “the technical, creative, and ethical implications of AI, taking them from building PB&Js to totally redesigning YouTube’s recommendation algorithm.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Amrith Ramkumar spotlights MIT startup Presto, which is combining with a special-purpose acquisitions company and going public. “Presto offers several different technologies that it says automate restaurants and improve the dining experience,” writes Ramkumar.
Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues make the case in a piece for Wired that using the Turing test to help develop AI technologies for businesses has led to a “fundamental mismatch between the needs of business and the way AI is currently being conceived by many in the technology sector.” They write: “Businesses that find a productive way of using machine intelligence will lead by example, and their example can be followed by other companies and researchers freeing themselves from the increasingly unhelpful AI paradigm.”
Prof. Julie Shah speaks with Washington Post reporter Tatum Hunter about whether AI technologies will ever surpass human intelligence. “Any positive or negative use or outcome of this technology isn't predetermined. We have a lot of choices that we make,” Shah says. “And these should not be decisions that are left solely to technologists. Everybody needs to be involved because this technology has such a broad impact on all of us.”
Nene Anagbogu ’18 and Colin Webb ’18 cofounded Sauce, a startup that provides analytics and dynamic pricing for restaurants, reports Frederick Daso for Forbes. “We’re the perfect combination of restaurant, data and product,” Anagbogu and Webb tell Daso. “Our families started small businesses, and we worked in restaurants, so we know what our customers are going through.”