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Writing for The Boston Globe, graduate students Manuj Dhariwal SM '17 and Shruti Dhariwal SM '18 highlight new efforts to reframe the language used to describe the ways humans are interacting with AI technologies. “It is a subtle reframing, but one that we urgently need as AI systems become interwoven with our creative, social, and emotional worlds,” they write. “The point is not necessarily to choose one over the other — but to clearly distinguish one from the other.”
Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, speaks with Financial Times reporter Michael Peel about ongoing efforts to balance autonomous vehicles’ “efficient operation with the need for them to minimize damage in collisions.” Rus notes that a new framework offers a “potential path towards AVs that can navigate complex, multi-agent scenarios with an awareness of differing levels of vulnerability among road users,” says Rus.
Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Isabelle Bousquette about her vision for the future of robots as soft, squishy, flexible and maybe even edible. Bousquette notes that Rus is a “pioneer” in the field of soft robotics and Steve Crowe, chair of the Robotics Summit and Expo, emphasizes: “there’s literally nobody in the world that knows more about this stuff than Daniela Rus.” “I really wanted to broaden our view of what a robot is,” says Rus. “If you have a mechanism that’s made out of paper and that moves, is that a robot or not? If you have an origami flower that you attach to a motor, is that a robot or not? To me, it’s a robot.”
Christian Lau PhD SM ’20, PhD ’22 and Vaikkunth Mugunthan SM ’19, PhD 22, co-founders of Dynamo AI, have been named to the 2025 Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list, reports Yue Wang, John Kang for Forbes. “Dynamo AI offers software to run tests on AI programs to identify potential risks, and prevent the models from accessing sensitive data,” they write.
Prof. Pulkit Agrawal speaks with Darian Woods and Geoff Brumfiel of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money about his work developing a simulator that can be used to train robots. “The power of simulation is that you can collect, you know, very large amounts of data,” explains Agrawal. “For example, in three hours', you know, worth of simulation, we can collect 100 days' worth of data.”
MIT researchers have developed a superconducting circuit that can increase the speed of quantum processing, reports Aamir Khollam for Interesting Engineering. “This device is a superconducting circuit designed to produce extremely strong nonlinear interactions between particles of light (photons) and matter (qubits),” explains Khollam. “This breakthrough could make operations up to 10 times faster, bringing fault-tolerant, real-world quantum computing a major step closer.”
Researchers at MIT believe they have demonstrated the strongest non-linear light-matter coupling in a quantum system, reports Bill Bell for Quantum Campus. “Their novel superconducting circuit architecture showed coupling about an order of magnitude stronger than prior demonstrations,” writes Bill. “It could significantly improve the measurements and error corrections needed to increase the accuracy and reliability of quantum computers.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a “small, hopping robot designed to traverse challenging environments,” reports Emmett Smith for Mashable. “The robot utilizes a spring-loaded leg for propulsion and incorporates flapping wing modules for stability and control,” explains Smith. “This design enables movement across diverse surfaces and the ability to carry loads exceeding its own weight.”
Graduate student Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao and City University of Hong Kong Prof. Pakpong Chirarattananon have developed a “hopping robot that can leap over tall obstacles and jump across slanted or uneven surfaces, while using far less energy than an aerial robot,” writes Andrew Corselli for Tech Briefs Magazine. “One of the biggest challenges is our robot is still connected with a power cable,” explains Hsiao. “I think going into power autonomy — which means we carry a battery and a sensor onboard — will be the next step. And this robot has really opened the opportunities for us to do that.”
Researchers at MIT have concluded that AI does not develop “value systems” over time, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “For me, my biggest takeaway from doing all this research is to now have an understanding of models as not really being systems that have some sort of stable, coherent set of beliefs and preferences,” says graduate student Stephen Casper. “Instead, they are imitators deep down who do all sorts of confabulation and say all sorts of frivolous things.”
MIT researchers have made a key advance in the creating a practical quantum computer by demonstrating “remote entanglement—an essential step in building distributed quantum networks—by sending photons between two quantum processors,” reports Military & Aerospace Electronics. “This breakthrough lays the groundwork for large-scale quantum computing networks and could extend to other quantum computing platforms and the quantum internet.”
“AT MIT innovation ranges from awe-inspiring technology to down-to-earth creativity,” notes Chronicle during a visit to campus to peek behind the scenes at the innovations underway at the Institute. Classes taught by Prof. Erik Demaine are a “mix of rigorous math and creative collaboration,” host Anthony Everett explains, highlighting how Demaine’s work in computational origami has found its way into practical applications in such fields as medicine, architecture and space exploration. “I think origami provides a really powerful tool for making transformable shapes,” Demaine relates.
Prof. Pulkit Agrawal speaks with NPR Short Wave host Regina Barber and science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel about his work developing a new technique that allows robots to train in simulations of scanned home environments. “The power of simulation is that we can collect very large amounts of data,” explains Agrawal. “For example, in three hours' worth of simulation, we can collect 100 days' worth of data.”
Rachel Feltman of Scientific American’s “Science Quickly” podcast visits MIT.nano to learn more about MIT’s “clean laboratory facility that is critical to nanoscale research, from microelectronics to medical nanotechnology.” Prof. Vladimir Bulović, director of MIT.nano, explains: “Maybe a fifth of all of M.I.T.’s research depends on this facility…from microelectronics to nanotechnology for medicine to different ways of rethinking what will [the] next quantum computation look like. Any of these are really important elements of what we need to discover, but we need all of them to be explored at the nanoscale to get that ultimate performance.”
Prof. David Sontag, Monica Agrawal PhD '23, Luke Murray SM '22, and Divya Gopinath '19, MEng '20 co-founded Layer Health - an AI healthcare startup that is applying large language models (LLMs) to help clinicians with medical chart reviews and data abstraction, reports Seth Joseph for Forbes. “The same chart review problem we’re solving with our clinical registry module is faced by clinicians at the point of care,” says Sontag. “For example, one of our next modules will focus on real-time clinical decision support to help automate clinical care pathways, leading to more reliable, high-quality care."