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.”
Colleges and tech companies are beginning to use blockchain technology to develop “trustworthy, quickly verifiable digital diplomas and résumés,” writes Henry Williams of The Wall Street Journal. MIT recently started issuing blockchain diplomas in addition to traditional ones, which provides “the ability to give the student stewardship over their own records,” says Registrar and Senior Associate Dean Mary Callahan.
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.
AI leader SenseTime is the first company to join the MIT Intelligence Quest since its launch, writes Xinhua editor Xiang Bo. “As the largest provider of AI algorithms in China, we are very excited to work with MIT to lead global AI research into the next frontier,” said Xu Li, CEO of SenseTime.
Veil, an incognito browsing system developed at CSAIL, can eliminate trace evidence of internet usage. “Veil takes things further than perhaps any other anonymous browsing method by masking the page you’re viewing not just from would-be attackers, but from your own operating system,” writes Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch.
In a recent paper, CSAIL researchers propose a new system, Veil, which uses servers to conceal private web browsing data from internet service providers, reports Rob Verger of Popular Science. Through this system, the provider “would only see the connection to the blinding server, which hosts the actual content” and not the website the user is visiting, explains Verger.
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.’”
An article in The Economist states that new research by MIT grad student Joy Buolamwini supports the suspicion that facial recognition software is better at processing white faces than those of other people. The bias probably arises “from the sets of data the firms concerned used to train their software,” the article suggests.
Dave Gershgorn writes for Quartz, highlighting congress’ concerns around the dangers of inaccurate facial recognition programs. He cites Joy Buolamwini’s Media Lab research on facial recognition, which he says “maintains that facial recognition is still significantly worse for people of color.”
MIT researchers have designed a new chip to enhance the functionality of neural networks while simultaneously reducing the consumption of power, writes Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch. “The basic concept involves simplifying the chip design so that shuttling of data between different processors on the same chip is taken out of the equation,” he explains.
Molly Wood at Marketplace speaks with Media Lab graduate student Joy Buolamwini about the findings of her recent research, which examined widespread bias in AI-supported facial recognition programs. “At the end of the day, data reflects our history, and our history has been very biased to date,” Buolamwini said.
Profs. James DiCarlo and Daniela Rus talk to the BBC’s Click about MIT Intelligence Quest. As they explain, the program aims to encourage discoveries in the areas of natural and artificial intelligence.
As noted by the Associated Press, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be joining MIT as an innovation fellow beginning this Spring, where he will advise the recently launched MIT Intelligence Quest.
Speaking to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang and Selina Wang, Lecturer Luis Perez-Breva suggests that fear of AI stems from confusing it with automation. Perez-Breva explains that in his view, “we need to make better businesses that actually use this technology and AI to take advantage of the automation and create new jobs.”
Graduate student Joy Buolamwini is featured on NPR’s TED Radio Hour explaining the racial bias of facial recognition software and how these problems can be rectified. “The minimum thing we can do is actually check for the performance of these systems across groups that we already know have historically been disenfranchised,” says Buolanwini.