In an article for The New York Times, Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, underscores the need to create new technologies that are not only smart, but also socially responsible. “Unless we embed ethical and moral grounding, technology meant to advance our well-being could, in fact, end up amplifying the worst aspects of our society,” Ito explains.
Steven Melendez of NBC News writes that a new system developed by CSAIL researchers can predict the future by examining a photograph. Grad student Carl Vondrick explains that the system’s ability to forecast normal behavior could allow it to be used for applications like self-driving cars.
New Scientist reporter Victoria Turk writes that MIT researchers have developed a system that can predict the future based off of a still image. Turk writes that the system could enable “an AI assistant to recognize when someone is about to fall, or help a self-driving car foresee an accident.”
Boston Globe reporter Eric Moskowitz spotlights the work of Margaret Hamilton, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom who led the development of software for the Apollo missions while at MIT. President Barack Obama noted that Hamilton, “symbolizes that generation of unsung women who helped send humankind into space.”
Wired reporter Brian Barrett writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system that allows virtual reality headsets to operate wirelessly. The system uses “millimeter wave (mm wave) technology, a large band of spectrum whose potential has gone largely untapped,” Barrett explains.
Pimploy Phongsirivech of Boston Magazine writes about MIT’s Hacking Arts Festival, which brought together artists, entrepreneurs, engineers, designers and scientists working at the intersection of art and technology. Phongsirivech writes that the event was a “collaborative effort to not only envision but also to actualize the future.”
Bryan Marquard writes for The Boston Globe about the legacy of Prof. Emeritus Jay Forrester, a computing pioneer who died at age 98. Marquard writes that Forrester was a “trailblazer in computers in the years after World War II,” then “pivoted from computers into another new field and founded the discipline of system dynamics modeling.”
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey writes that Margaret Hamilton, a computing pioneer who led the development of the Apollo program’s on-board flight software during her time at MIT, has been named a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Coldewey writes that Hamilton is an inspiring figure “for anyone looking to enter the fields of computer science and engineering.”
Prof. Emeritus Jay Forrester, whose research on computing and organizations led to the field of computer modeling, died at age 98, reports Katie Hafner for The New York Times. Prof. John Sterman explained that thanks to Forrester’s work, “simulations of dynamic systems are now indispensable throughout the physical and social sciences.”
Hal Hodson writes for New Scientist that MIT researchers have developed a system that allows virtual reality headsets to operate wirelessly. To solve the problem posed by sending vast amounts of data wirelessly, the researchers used a “different wireless technology called millimeter wave (mmWave), which is in a higher band of the frequency spectrum to that used by Wi-Fi.”
Researchers at MIT have created an algorithm that transforms faces and popular landmarks into scarier versions with impressionistic, sketchy qualities, according to the BBC News. To help teach the algorithm about the concept of scariness, the researchers are asking people vote for the scariest images.
Just in time for Halloween, MIT researchers have launched a website that uses algorithms to generate scary images based off of pictures of popular landmarks and public figures, reports Rebecca Hersher for NPR. The deep-learning algorithm creates “artistic images of high perceptual quality based on examples of images created by humans,” Hersher reports.
Alyssa Newcomb writes for NBC News about the Nightmare Machine, a new system developed by MIT researchers that generates scary images based off of familiar faces and locations. “The Nightmare Machine gets scarier with help from humans, who are asked to vote on which images are the scariest,” Newcomb explains.
Writing for The Huffington Post, Adi Gaskell highlights how CSAIL researchers have developed system to help robots work together successfully. Gaskell explains that the system allows three robots to “work successfully together to ensure items are delivered accurately in an unpredictable environment.”
CSAIL researchers have a developed a system that can predict human emotions by using wireless signals to monitor breathing and heartbeats, writes Edd Gent in a Scientific American article. "The idea is that you can enable machines to recognize our emotions so they can interact with us at much deeper levels," says graduate student Fadel Adib.