MIT researchers have created an AI system that allows users to automatically erase people and objects from photos, writes Mark Wilson for Fast Company. Wilson writes that the researchers have “built a remarkably simple front-end interface to control [the system]. In one column, you select what you’d like to remove from your photos, and in the right column, you select your source material.”
Prof. Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, writes for Wired about what he calls the Great Digitization Event (GDE), during which the internet is quickly killing off systems, but also allowing new organizations to emerge. “I see the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements also using new versions of the same methods to begin the long path to ending centuries of patriarchal power,” Ito writes.
Adam Vaccaro of The Boston Globe writes that Prof. Joi Ito’s opening keynote address at HUBweek’s Change Maker Conference focused on how society adapts to major changes. “You can try to get companies to behave carefully by changing regulations, but you’re not going to fundamentally change the outcome unless you change the goals,” explains Ito.
CNN reporter Susan Scutti writes that MIT researchers have found that climate change could cause an increase in mental health issues. During a 30-day period, exposure to hotter temperatures and higher rates of precipitation “produced increases in the probability that people were going to report some mental health problem in that period,” explains research scientist Nick Obradovich.
MIT researchers find that hotter and more extreme weather can negatively impact a person’s mental health, reports Karen Kaplan for The Los Angeles Times. The researchers explain that, “given the vital role that sound mental health plays in personal, social, and economic well-being, our findings provide added evidence that climatic changes pose substantial risks to human systems.”
New York Times reporter Penelope Green profiles Prof. Neri Oxman, spotlighting her work with material ecology. Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the MoMA, says that the “reason why she is a gift to the field of architecture and design is that her science works, her aesthetics work, and her theory works.”
Prof. Iyad Rahwan speaks with New Scientist reporter Sean O’Neill about his work investigating the ethics of artificial intelligence. “I’m pushing for a negotiated social-contract approach,” explains Rahwan. “As a society we want to get along well, but to do it we need property rights, free speech, protection from violence and so on. We need to think about machine ethics in the same way.”
The Media Lab will host a patent archive with Google, Cisco, and the Patent and Trademark Office, writes Bloomberg BNA reporter Malathi Nayak. “This archive really can help individuals who don’t have any clout to reach patent examiners to get their work in front of them and to block bad patents from being issued,” explains research specialist Kate Darling.
Researchers from the MIT Media Lab, Google, Cisco, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office are working together to create an archive for IT industry patents, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. Heater explains that the MIT-hosted “Prior Art Archive” will help patent applicants “find easily accessible examples of prior art and other technical information for reference.”
Wall Street Journal reporters Annie Gasparro and Jesse Newman spotlight the Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative, where Caleb Harper is at work developing a Food Computer. Harper explains that the Food Computer, a controlled environment where all of a plant’s needs are controlled and tracked, is a “fundamentally different way of thinking about where we plant things and why.”
In an article for Forbes, Charles Towers-Clark spotlights how MIT researchers developed a surgical technique that allows amputees to receive feedback from prosthetic limbs. The technique, Towers-Clark writes, “uses a muscle graft from another part of the body to complete the muscle pair, avoiding rejection which currently occurs in around 20% of cases, and allowing the patient to communicate naturally with the new limb.”
MIT spinout Affectiva Inc. has developed a new system that can study a driver’s face to help assess their mental state, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. Bray explains that the system “analyzes facial expressions to determine if a driver is distracted, angry, scared, sleepy, or drunk.”
The Clubhouse Network, which the MIT Media Lab helped launch 25 years ago, has opened its flagship headquarters in Dudley Square, reports Allison Hagan for The Boston Globe. Now in 100 cities in the U.S. and other countries, the program helps “young people to use technology for creative self-expression and collaborate with their peers and mentors,” explains Hagan.
Robotic furniture produced by MIT spinout Ori, which created a furniture system that reconfigures itself with the push of a button or voice commands, could be the solution to living in small spaces, writes Candace Jackson for The New York Times.
Keith Powers highlights Prof. Tod Machover’s new opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood,” in WBUR’s guide to the most innovative operas being performed in Boston this fall. Powers writes that in the opera, Machover “investigates the improbable but true story of Schoenberg, the leader of the Second Viennese School, who actually did flee to Hollywood to escape the Nazis.”