Research

Forbes reporter Joe McKendrick spotlights a study by researchers from the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence evaluating “the performance of humans alone, AI alone, and combinations of both.” The researchers found that “human–AI systems do not necessarily achieve better results than the best of humans or AI alone,” explains graduate student Michelle Vaccaro and her colleagues. “Challenges such as communication barriers, trust issues, ethical concerns and the need for effective coordination between humans and AI systems can hinder the collaborative process.”

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have compared 12 large language models (LLMs) against 925 human forecasters for a three-month forecasting tournament to help predict real-world events, including geopolitical events, reports Tomas Gorny for Forbes. "Our results suggest that LLMs can achieve forecasting accuracy rivaling that of human crowd forecasting tournaments,” the researchers explain.

MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative Program Scientist Scott Odell speaks with USA Today reporter Kate Petersen about the impact of renewable energy mining. “We can really reduce the amount of virgin metal we need to mine just by using the old metal we've already got,” says Odell. “We need to design our systems such that we have the capacity to recycle those metals.”

Forbes reporter John M. Bremen spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that “shows the most skilled scientists and innovations benefitted the most from AI – doubling their productivity – while lower-skilled staff did not experience similar gains.” The study “showed that specialized AI tools foster radical innovation at the technical level within a domain-specific scope, but also risk narrowing human roles and diversity of thought,” writes Bremen. 

Inspired by his daily walks, Prof. Elfatih Eltahir and his colleagues have developed a new way to measure how climate change is likely to impact the number of days when it is comfortable to be outdoors, reports Maddie Browning for WBUR. “I find people walking, jogging, cycling and enjoying the outdoors,” says Eltahir. “That's what motivated me to start looking at how climate change could really constrain some of those activities.”

Financial Times reporter Clive Cookson spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a “new filtration material based on natural silk and cellulose that removes a wide range of PFAS, while having antimicrobial properties that prevent fouling by bacteria and fungi.” 

Using cephalopods, like squid, as inspiration, researchers from MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Novo Nordisk have developed a capsule that can deliver drugs directly into the digestive track without using needles, writes Corinna Singleman for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. “The capsule design is highly adaptable and was intentionally developed to handle a wide range of drug types,” said Prof. Giovanni Traverso. 

Research Scientist Susan Amrose speaks with Knowable Magazine reporter Lele Nargi about the use of inland desalination for farming communities. Amrose, who studies inland desalination in the Middle East and North Africa, is “testing a system that uses electrodialysis instead of reverse osmosis,” explains Nargi. “This sends a steady surge of voltage across water to pull salt ions through an alternating stack of positively charged and negatively charged membranes.” 

Prof. Arnold Barnett speaks with Bloomberg reporter Charley Locke about the increased safety of air travel. “These events we fear have become extraordinarily rare,” says Barnett. “Of course these events are unnerving, but generally, as soon as they happen, the pilots know what to do and bring the plane back safely.” 

The Economist covers new work by Prof. Giovanni Traverso and his colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Novo Nordisk, who have developed an ingestible capsule that can “get medication into patients without having to jab them at all, by copying the jet-propulsion techniques used by squid and their kin.” 

Prof. Giovanni Traverso and his colleagues have developed a new device, inspired by sea creatures, that can deliver drugs orally by using jets to “eject drugs into the tissue lining the digestive tract," reports Anil Oza for STAT. “We want to make it easier for patients to receive medication,” says Traverso. “The challenge with drugs like insulin and monoclonal antibodies is that they require an injection. That in and of itself can be a barrier for receiving that medication.” 

WCVB reporter Jessica Brown spotlights how researchers from the MIT AgeLab explored the most effective way to communicate with elderly individuals about driver retirement. The researchers found that “35% of older drivers are more likely to listen to a spouse who asks them to give up the keys,” explains Brown. 

Prof. Benjamin Weiss, director of the MIT Paleomagnetism Lab, speaks with Forbes reporter Bruce Dorminey about the use of paleomagnetism to track the geographic origins of stromatolites. Weiss notes that he and his colleagues published a paper examining the magnetization of stromatolites in the Strelley Pool Chert in Australia’s Pilbara region. The team’s measurements show that these stromatolites formed within 8 degrees latitude of the equator, Weiss explains. 

Research from the Data Provenance Initiative, led by MIT researchers, has “found that many web sources used for training AI models have restricted their data, leading to a rapid decline in accessible information,” reports Gary Drenik for Forbes. 

Researchers at MIT have developed a new AI model capable of assessing a patient’s risk of pancreatic cancer, reports Erez Meltzer for Forbes. “The model could potentially expand the group of patients who can benefit from early pancreatic cancer screening from 10% to 35%,” explains Meltzer. “These kinds of predictive capabilities open new avenues for preventive care.”