Computer science and technology

Letter regarding the Schwarzman College of Computing Task Force update

August 15, 2019

Researchers are examining how quickly drivers can detect and correctly respond to road hazards, to improve safety of “semiautonomous” cars.

Study measures how fast humans react to road hazards

In “semiautonomous” cars, older drivers may need more time to take the wheel when responding to the unexpected.

August 7, 2019

Researchers at MIT demonstrated gloves fabricated by a system for automating knitted garments.

Computer-aided knitting

New research from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory uses machine learning to customize clothing designs.

August 6, 2019

A new MIT-developed model automates a critical step in using AI for medical decision making, where experts usually identify important features in massive patient datasets by hand. The model was able to automatically identify voicing patterns of people with vocal cord nodules (shown here) and, in turn, use those features to predict which people do and don’t have the disorder.

Automating artificial intelligence for medical decision-making

Model replaces the laborious process of annotating massive patient datasets by hand.

August 5, 2019

A model developed at MIT predicts the cognitive decline of patients at risk for Alzheimer’s disease by forecasting their cognition test scores up to two years in the future, which could help zero in on the right patients to select for clinical trials.

Model predicts cognitive decline due to Alzheimer’s, up to two years out

Researchers hope the system can zero in on the right patients to enroll in clinical trials, to speed discovery of drug treatments.

August 1, 2019

MIT graduate students Logan Engstrom (left) and Andrew Ilyas have published five papers together exploring the vulnerabilities of computer vision systems, and they have half a dozen more in the pipeline.

Why did my classifier just mistake a turtle for a rifle?

Two longtime friends explore how computer vision systems go awry.

July 31, 2019

A course called Machine Learning for Healthcare introduces students to the technical and ethical challenges of using automated tools to diagnose and treat patients.

Want to know what software-driven health care looks like? This class offers some clues.

A course that combines machine learning and health care explores the promise of applying artificial intelligence to medicine.

July 24, 2019

“I hope to save a lot of people a lot of time doing boring, repetitive work by automating programming work as well as decreasing the cost of building secure, reliable systems,” says Associate Professor Adam Chlipala.

Making it easier to program and protect the web

Professor Adam Chlipala builds tools to help programmers more quickly generate optimized, secure code.

July 20, 2019

Fernando "Corby" Corbató led the development of early “time-sharing” operating systems, including Multics and the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS).

Professor Emeritus Fernando Corbató, MIT computing pioneer, dies at 93

Longtime MIT professor developed early “time-sharing” operating systems and is widely credited as the creator of the world’s first computer password.

July 15, 2019

A new MIT-invented system automatically designs and 3-D prints complex robotic actuators optimized according to an enormous number of specifications, such as appearance and flexibility. To demonstrate the system, the researchers fabricated floating water lilies with petals equipped with arrays of actuators and hinges that fold up in response to magnetic fields run through conductive fluids.

Automated system generates robotic parts for novel tasks

When designing actuators involves too many variables for humans to test by hand, this system can step in.

July 12, 2019

Luis Videgaray PhD ’98, former foreign minister and finance minister of Mexico, is coming to MIT to spearhead an effort that aims to help shape global AI policies, focusing on how such rising technologies will affect people living in all corners of the world.

Visiting lecturer to spearhead project exploring the geopolitics of artificial intelligence

At MIT, Luis Videgaray, alumnus and former foreign minister of Mexico, will launch project to help shape international AI policies.

July 12, 2019

The GANpaint system developed at MIT can easily add features to an existing image. At left, the original photo of a kitchen; at right, the same kitchen with the addition of a window. Co-author Jun-Yan Zhu believes better understanding of GANs will help researchers be able to better stamp out fakery: “This understanding may potentially help us detect fake images more easily.”

Teaching artificial intelligence to create visuals with more common sense

An MIT/IBM system could help artists and designers make quick tweaks to visuals while also helping researchers identify “fake” images.

July 1, 2019

For years, researchers from MIT and Brown University have been developing an interactive system that lets users drag-and-drop and manipulate data on any touchscreen, including smartphones and interactive whiteboards. Now, they’ve included a tool that instantly and automatically generates machine-learning models to run prediction tasks on that data.

Drag-and-drop data analytics

System lets nonspecialists use machine-learning models to make predictions for medical research, sales, and more.

June 27, 2019

Users feed Gen relatively short code defining a target task, and the system automatically generates the results.

New AI programming language goes beyond deep learning

General-purpose language works for computer vision, robotics, statistics, and more.

June 26, 2019

A new study by researchers from MIT, Boston Children’s Hospital, and elsewhere shows that a “social robot,” named Huggable (pictured), can be used in support sessions to boost positive emotions in hospitalized children.

Study: Social robots can benefit hospitalized children

Interacting with a robotic teddy bear invented at MIT boosted young patients’ positive emotions, engagement, and activity level.