Smithsonian reporter Emily Matchar highlights how MIT researchers have developed a new system that enables data sharing between underwater and airborne devices. Prof. Fadel Adib explains that the technology could be used to “study marine life and have access to a whole new world that is still pretty much out of our reach today.”
Fortune reporters Aaron Pressman and Adam Lashinsky highlight graduate student Joy Buolamwini’s work aimed at eliminating bias in AI and machine learning systems. Pressman and Lashinsky note that Buolamwini believes that “who codes matters,” as more diverse teams of programmers could help prevent algorithmic bias.
Writing for NOVA Next, Nafisa Syed highlights how Prof. Kerry Emanuel is working on creating a new risk assessment paradigm for severe weather events like Hurricane Florence. Syed writes that Emanuel is trying to “understand what, for example, a 100-year storm is going to look like in the year 2100.”
CNBC reporter Catherine Clifford writes that MIT researchers have started a project to spotlight creative collaborations between humans and machines. Postdoctoral associate Pinar Yanardag explains that the project is aimed at showing the public that “we can work together with AI to achieve the most creative and productive outcomes.”
Boston Globe reporter Martin Finucane writes that MIT researchers have developed sensors that can track dopamine levels in the brain. The sensors could eventually be used to monitor “Parkinson’s patients who receive a treatment called deep brain stimulation,” Finucane explains, adding that the sensors could “help deliver the stimulation only when it’s needed.”
BBC Click reports on an AI system developed by CSAIL researchers that simplifies image editing. “Instead of requiring the user to select the pixels very accurately, our system can just detect it and give the opacities for every object in the image automatically, which can then be used for editing the images in a realistic way,” explains visiting researcher Yagiz Aksoy.
CSAIL researchers have created a system that allows robots to see and pick up objects they have never encountered without assistance from humans, writes Jason Murdock for Newsweek. The researchers are now working on teaching the system to “move objects with a specific goal in mind, such as cleaning a desk,” reports Murdock.
MIT researchers have developed a model that can help detect depression by analyzing an individual’s speech patterns, reports Kaveh Waddell for Axios. Waddell explains that the researchers, “trained an AI system using 142 recorded conversations to assess whether a person is depressed and, if so, how severely.”
CSAIL researchers have developed a new system that gives robots a greater visual understanding of the world around them, reports Heather Kelly for CNN. “We want robots to learn by themselves how to very richly and visually understand lots of objects that are useful for lots of tasks,” explains graduate student Pete Florence.
Wired reporter Matt Simon writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system that allows robots to be able to visually inspect and then pick up new objects, all without human guidance. Graduate student Lucas Manuelli explains that the system is “all about letting the robot supervise itself, rather than humans going in and doing annotations.”
MIT researchers have found that a role-playing game can motivate people to address climate change, reports James Rainey for NBC News. Prof. John Sterman explains that the game helps people to “discover the urgency of this issue for themselves and to be motivated to get out and to create the grassroots support that is needed to make a change.”
Prof. Neri Oxman, the recipient of the Design Innovation Medal at the London Design Festival, speaks with Financial Times reporter Annalisa Quinn about her work, which melds art and science. The “imbalance between innovations achieved in fields such as synthetic biology and the primitive state of digital fabrication in product and architectural design shaped my ambition,” Oxman shares with Quinn.
A study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that robots can develop prejudices against other robots not working on their team, writes John Biggs for TechCrunch. The researchers also found that, like humans, prejudices were reduced when there were “more distinct subpopulations being present within a population.”
Axios reporter Ben Geman writes that MIT researchers have found the most effective way to reduce emissions from electricity sources is to use a mix of renewable and other low-carbon tech options. “It’s not about specific technologies. It’s about those key roles that we need filled on the low-carbon team,” explains study co-author Jesse Jenkins.
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters highlights how MIT researchers have developed a robot that can swim through pipes and identify leaks. Peters writes that alumnus You Wu estimates that “if half of the leaks in the world could be found and fixed, that would recover enough water to support 1 billion people.”