In an article for The New Yorker, Nathan Heller highlights research specialist Kate Darling’s work examining how humans interact with robots. Darlings’ research suggests that “our aversion to abusing lifelike machines comes from “‘societal values.’”
Michael Casey, a senior advisor for the Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative, suggests a solution to the increasing popularity of fake news in a Daily Beast article. Casey writes that we need “the software to distinguish between ‘fake,’ manufactured networks and those composed of people who honestly and independently choose to follow a content provider and share their work.”
Scott Clement of The Washington Post writes that researchers at the Laboratory for Social Machines have found that while the majority of Twitter conversation concerning the presidential campaign has centered around Donald Trump over the past week and a half, “battlegrounds differed in what particular issues or themes they focused on.”
In an interview with Wired’s Editor-in-Chief Scott Dadich, President Barack Obama sits down with Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. “Everybody needs to understand that how AI behaves is important,” says Ito. “Because the question is, how do we build societal values into AI?”
Kate Rogers of CNBC tours an apartment equipped with robotic furniture developed by Ori, a Media Lab spinoff. The system can also be synced with a smart home or office device in order to control the furniture with voice commands, explains Rogers.
Daniel Akst of The Wall Street Journal writes that by bouncing electromagnetic waves off of pages, MIT researchers have developed a way to read closed books. The system could potentially be used also be used to count stacks of money and detect counterfeit currency, Akst explains.
Writing for Nature, Gary Stager spotlights the work of Prof. Seymour Papert, who dedicated his career to using technology to help children learn. Stager writes that Papert “built a bridge between progressive educational traditions and the Internet age to maintain the viability of schooling, and to ensure the democratization of powerful ideas.”
Prof. Ramesh Raskar has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT prize for his “trailblazing work which includes the co-invention of an ultra-fast imaging camera that can see around corners, low-cost eye-care solutions and a camera that enables users to read the first few pages of a book without opening the cover,” writes Krishna Pokharel for The Wall Street Journal.
A new device developed by MIT researchers can read the pages of a book without opening the cover, reports Nsikan Akpan for the PBS NewsHour. The tool may “unlock the secrets of old books or ancient texts too fragile to be disturbed by human touch.”
MIT researchers have developed a system that uses terahertz waves to read the pages of a closed book, reports Michael Casey for the AP. Research scientist Barmak Heshmat explains that the system works better than X-rays, as “it can contrast between the blank paper and the part that has ink.”
Writing for CBS News, Charles Choi explores a system developed by MIT researchers that can identify letters in a closed book. The system could be used to examine ancient books or to “scan through large amounts of documents without having to mechanically separate the pages, which could be useful for libraries, banks and others,” says research scientist Barmak Heshmat.
Salon reporter Scott Eric Kaufman writes that MIT researchers have created a system that can read the pages of a closed book and could be used to examine manuscripts too fragile to handle. “The system works by shooting pulses of radiation from a terahertz camera and measuring how long it takes for them to bounce back."
MIT researchers have developed a new computational imaging technique that can read closed books, reports G. Clay Whittaker for Popular Science. The technique could be useful for “rare book research, where opening a book may be impossible due to damage, or not worth the risk of damage.”
MIT researchers have found that immigration has been dominating election conversations on Twitter, writes John West in a Washington Post article. “Tweets on immigration soared to almost 60 percent of the election-related Twitter conversation after Donald Trump’s statements about a potential 'softening', his visit to Mexico and then his address on the topic.”
Liz Stinson writes for Wired that MIT researchers are using bees to help map the microbial makeup of cities around the world. “The goal in all of this is to produce an imagination around the microbiome,” explains Prof. Kevin Slavin.