In a TED talk, Prof. Kevin Slavin speaks about the potential dangers surrounding the growing influence of computer algorithms in finance, and the physical environment. “We’ve lost the sense of what’s actually happening in this world that we’ve made,” says Slavin.
GIFGIF, a project by graduate students Kevin Hu and Travis Rich, maps human emotions by asking people to select which GIFS best represent a specific feeling, reports Jon Christian for Wired. Hu and Rich hope that all of the data collected through GIFGIF “will make it easier to write programs that deal with emotional content.”
Spencer Kelly of BBC News visits the MIT Distributed Robotics Lab to see how researchers have developed software that allows robots to build Ikea furniture. Kelly explains that the goal of the research is to “work towards robots that can work together collaboratively to build complex structures.”
Peter Shadbolt of CNN reports that MIT researchers have incorporated social networking into clothing, creating a T-shirt that displays the wearer's interests and associations. "We wanted to examine more tangible ways of representing ourselves in social media," explains graduate student Viirj Kan.
Professor Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, speaks with Timothy Aeppel of The Wall Street Journal about why robots cannot perform tasks humans regularly perform, like folding laundry. While Rus explains that it would be difficult to predict when robots will be able to match the skill set of humans, “compared to now, what we had just two years ago was nothing, so I don’t think it’s going to take that long.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Timothy Aeppel spoke with faculty members across the Institute about how advances in automation could impact the labor market. Aeppel notes that MIT economists and roboticists meet regularly to gain a better interdisciplinary view of the current state of automation.
Graduate student Greg Borenstein speaks with BBC News about his efforts to make chess more appealing as a spectator sport. “There’s really something magical about the ability to use computation and statistics to take that drama and that excitement and those brilliant moments and make them visible,” Borenstein explains.
MIT researchers have developed a garden filled with origami robots, LED flowers that can bloom on command and mechanical insects, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. The garden was developed in an effort to make programming more accessible to children.
WBUR’s Zeninjor Enwemeka speaks with MIT junior David Sukhin about the Snow Day Calculator, a tool he created in middle school to predict school closures. Sukhin still updates the calculator, “adding new features that I think would be a cool thing to explore and a benefit to users.”
Matt Lee writes for The Boston Globe about the cybersecurity contest between stduents from MIT and University of Cambridge to devise better cybersecurity technologies and platforms. The competition will allow students an opportunity to tackle real-world cybersecurity challenges, Lee explains
Students from MIT and the University of Cambridge will compete in a cybersecurity competition called “Cambridge v Cambridge” this fall, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. “Each team will race as they seek access to coded secrets, while earning points for offensive and defensive strategies,” writes Subbaraman.
Steve Annear writes for Boston Magazine about a cybersecurity contest between students from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the University of Cambridge. “The competition is part of the two allied nations’ efforts to team up and improve the cyber security infrastructure worldwide, and better respond to cyber incidents and threats,” writes Annear.
Financial Times reporter Kiran Stacey writes about how in an effort to combat global cyberattacks, students from MIT and the University of Cambridge will face off in a cybersecurity competition this fall. The event will be “a test of cyber skills lasting several days,” Stacey reports.
CSAIL PhD students Elena Glassman, Neha Narula and Jean Yang write for Wired about their recent Reddit Ask Me Anything session and gender disparities in STEM. “By raising awareness and generating discussion, we hope to help women and other minorities feel more supported pursuing careers in STEM,” write Glassman, Narula and Yang.
Vijee Venkatraman writes for BetaBoston about Kumbhathon, a tech buildathon co-founded by Professor Ramesh Raskar to address problems specific to the Kumbh Mela religious gathering in India. “This is a bottom-up approach to innovation,” says Raskar.