Computer science and technology

Eric Schmidt provides support to MIT Intelligence Quest

Gift will help launch new Institute-wide initiative in human and machine intelligence research.

March 1, 2018

Photo of MIT's Building 10 at an angle with trees in front

MIT rates No. 1 in 12 subjects in 2018 QS World University Rankings

MIT ranked within top 5 in 19 out of 48 subject areas.

February 28, 2018

SenseTime, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company founded by MIT alumnus Xiao’ou Tang PhD ’96, is joining MIT's efforts to define the next frontier of human and machine intelligence.

MIT and SenseTime announce effort to advance artificial intelligence research

Alliance will be part of new MIT Intelligence Quest.

February 28, 2018

Generally, a browser won’t know where the data it downloaded has ended up. Even if it did, it wouldn’t necessarily have authorization from the operating system to delete it.

Private browsing gets more private

New system patches security holes left open by web browsers’ private-browsing functions.

February 22, 2018

MIT researchers have developed a special-purpose chip that increases the speed of neural-network computations by three to seven times over its predecessors, while reducing power consumption 93 to 96 percent. That could make it practical to run neural networks locally on smartphones or even to embed them in household appliances.

Neural networks everywhere

New chip reduces neural networks’ power consumption by up to 95 percent, making them practical for battery-powered devices.

February 13, 2018

MIT researchers have built a new chip, hardwired to perform public-key encryption, that consumes only 1/400 as much power as software execution of the same protocols would. It also uses about 1/10 as much memory and executes 500 times faster.

Energy-efficient encryption for the internet of things

Special-purpose chip reduces power consumption of public-key encryption by 99.75 percent, increases speed 500-fold.

February 12, 2018

Joy Buolamwini, a researcher in the MIT Media Lab's Civic Media group

Study finds gender and skin-type bias in commercial artificial-intelligence systems

Examination of facial-analysis software shows error rate of 0.8 percent for light-skinned men, 34.7 percent for dark-skinned women.

February 11, 2018

Eric Schmidt (pictured), who until January was the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, will join MIT as a visiting innovation fellow for one year, starting in Spring.

Eric Schmidt to join MIT as visiting innovation fellow

Former Google leader offers insights of a storied career to MIT’s entrepreneurial community

February 5, 2018

New software identified five different families of microstructures, each defined by a shared “skeleton” (blue), that optimally traded off three mechanical properties.

Automating materials design

With new approach, researchers specify desired properties of a material, and a computer system generates a structure accordingly.

February 2, 2018

Letter regarding the MIT Intelligence Quest

February 1, 2018

At a time of rapid advances in intelligence research across many disciplines, the MIT Intelligence Quest will encourage researchers to investigate the societal implications of their work as they pursue hard problems lying beyond the current horizon of what is known.

Institute launches the MIT Intelligence Quest

New Institute-wide initiative will advance human and machine intelligence research.

February 1, 2018

Students in the initial class examine electronics components as they begin their year-long course of studies.

New program from MIT offers refugees a career boost

ReACT will award credentials in computer and data science through online and in-person instruction.

January 23, 2018

Giant Otter Technologies, founded by artificial intelligence video game developer Jeff Orkin, an MIT Media Lab alumnus, has developed a platform that uses AI algorithms and crowdsourced annotators to build a natural-language database that helps chatbots expertly navigate human conversations.

Bots that talk more like people

AI platform allows chatbots to draw on robust language database to better navigate human conversation.

January 23, 2018

A new theoretical analysis of wireless localization systems represents settings of a wireless network (yellow) and measurement error (purple) as three-dimensional spaces. The intersection of the two spaces defines the network’s optimal configuration.

Location detection when GPS doesn’t work

Theoretical study shows how to make wireless localization much more accurate.

January 22, 2018

Engineers design artificial synapse for “brain-on-a-chip” hardware

Design is major stepping stone toward portable artificial-intelligence devices.