Boston.com reporter Nik DeCosta-Klipa speaks with Bernard Fabrot about the cryptographic puzzle -- developed by Prof. Ron Rivest -- that he recently solved. Fabrot explains that he realized “basically that the way computers evolved 15 years after the puzzle was created meant that it was possible to solve it on a regular PC much faster than what was expected in 1999.”
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.
Writing for Quanta Magazine, Joshua Sokol spotlights the untold story and seminal role of two MIT computer programmers, Ellen Fetter and Margaret Hamilton, in developing the “specific programs that revealed the signatures of chaos.”
WCVB-TV’s Mike Wankum visits the Media Lab to learn more about a new wearable device that allows users to communicate with a computer without speaking by measuring tiny electrical impulses sent by the brain to the jaw and face. Graduate student Arnav Kapur explains that the device is aimed at exploring, “how do we marry AI and human intelligence in a way that’s symbiotic.”
Fast Company reporter Eillie Anzilotti highlights how MIT researchers have developed an AI-enabled headset device that can translate silent thoughts into speech. Anzilotti explains that one of the factors that is motivating graduate student Arnav Kapur to develop the device is “to return control and ease of verbal communication to people who struggle with it.”
Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney writes about the opening of a time capsule housed at MIT’s Stata Center. The capsule held an “array of tech treasures, including the original 1992 proposal for the World Wide Web; a 1979 user manual for VisiCalc, an early spreadsheet program developed by MIT alumni Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin; and an Altair BASIC interpreter that was donated by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.”
CSAIL unsealed a time capsule containing artifacts from computing history at MIT after a self-taught programmer cracked the capsule’s cryptopuzzle, reports Kathryn Sotnik for NECN. MIT alumnus, Bob Frankston, who programmed the first electronic spreadsheet, noted “it’s really a reminder in a sense how long ago it was, and how much people today take these things for granted.”
Eric Kane reports for 7 News on how a time capsule at the Stata Center was unsealed at MIT this week after a Belgium programmer solved the cryptopuzzle sealing the container. The time capsule contained “MIT computing artifacts and material relating to the invention of the Internet, the ethernet, and the digital spreadsheet.”
MIT researchers have identified a method to help AI systems avoid adversarial attacks, reports Matthew Hutson for Science. When the researchers “trained an algorithm on images without the subtle features, their image recognition software was fooled by adversarial attacks only 50% of the time,” Hutson explains. “That compares with a 95% rate of vulnerability when the AI was trained on images with both obvious and subtle patterns.”
Bloomberg News reporter Carol Massar spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a robot that can identify and sort recyclables. “The system includes a soft Teflon hand that uses tactile sensors to detect the size of an object and the pressure needed to grasp it,” Massar reports. “From there it can determine if it’s made of metal, paper or plastic.”
Researchers at MIT have found that adversarial examples, a kind of optical illusion for AI that makes the system incorrectly identify an image, may not actually impact AI in the ways computer scientists have previously thought. “When algorithms fall for an adversarial example, they’re not hallucinating—they’re seeing something that people don’t,” Louise Matsakis writes for Wired.
MIT researchers have identified a new method to engineer neural networks in a way that allows them to be a tenth of the size of current networks without losing any computational ability, reports Avery Thompson for Popular Mechanics. “The breakthrough could allow other researchers to build AI that are smaller, faster, and just as smart as those that exist today,” Thompson explains.
Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney writes that a programmer has cracked a 20-year-old cryptographic puzzle that was created to celebrate 35 years of research at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science (now CSAIL). When he created the puzzle, Prof. Ron Rivest expected it would require “35 years of continuous computation to solve, with the computer being replaced every year by the next fastest model available.”
A cryptographic puzzle used to seal a time capsule at the Stata Center has been solved, reports Tim Caputo for WHDH News. Prof. Ron Rivest explains that the puzzle is based on a fairly simple operation. “Multiply a number by itself, divide by a third number and take the remainder,” he explains. “But, you do that over and over and over again.”
A cryptographic puzzle developed to honor MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science (now CSAIL) has been cracked by a programmer from Belgium, reports Spencer Buell for Boston Magazine. Buell explains that the answer to the puzzle reveals a “‘secret message’ that unlocks a time capsule designed by architect Frank Gehry, which contains geeky artifacts contributed by early computing luminaries, including Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee.”