Prof. Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli speaks with The Atlantic reporter Matteo Wong about the current state of artificial intelligence technologies and how the technology might be used in medical care going forward. “Scientists use the tools that are out there for information processing and summarization,” says Gómez-Bombarelli. “Everybody does that; that’s an established win.”
Forbes contributor Tracey Follows spotlights how MIT Media Lab researchers are exploring how AI can “support, rather than replace, human flourishing” as part of the Media Lab’s new Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) research program. “We are creating AI and AI in turn will shape us. We don’t want to make the same mistakes we made with social media,” says Prof. Patti Maes. “It is critical that we think of AI as not just a technical problem for engineers and entrepreneurs to solve, but also as a human design problem, requiring the expertise from human-computer interaction designers, psychologists, and social scientists for AI to lead to beneficial impact on the human experience.”
Forbes reporter Tracey Follows spotlights the MIT Media Lab’s Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) project, a “new research program asking how can we design AI to support human flourishing.” At the launch event, Prof. Sherry Turkle “raised a specific and timely concern: what is the human cost of talking to machines that only pretend to care?”
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.”
Graduate students Chuck Downing and Zhichu Ren PhD '24 highlight the potential uses of AI in the research process, reports Amanda Heidt for Nature. “I didn’t know much going in, but I learnt quite a bit, and so I use these deep dives all the time now,” says Downing on using deep-research tools when approaching unfamiliar topics. “It’s better than anything else I’ve used so far at finding good papers and in presenting the information in a way that I can easily understand.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new robot aimed at assisting first-responders called SPROUT (short for Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit), reports WHDH. The robot has a built-in camera and motion sensors so that first responders could “scope out a site, before sending rescue teams in to save survivors.” The robot operates with a “soft, air-inflated tube that unfolds into small spaces,” explains WHDH. “It can maneuver around sharp corners in disaster zones.”
“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.”
Boston Magazine reporter Wyndham Lewis spotlights the MIT AgeLab, where researchers are focused on making aging better by studying age-related issues so “products can be modified accordingly for older people, allowing them to do the things they’ve always done." AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin explains: “MIT is about envisioning and inventing the future. I want the AgeLab to write a new narrative of a 100-year life.” He adds that it’s about “setting the agenda for what 100 good years could be.”
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."
Materials World Magazine reporter Sarah Morgan spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new material that can reduce the hazardous materials produced during aluminum manufacturing. “Our membrane, which has a positively charged coating, repels aluminum while letting the less positively-charged sodium ions pass through,” explains undergraduate student Trent Lee. “This process allows us to concentrate and recover aluminum, so it can be put back into the production process instead of being wasted.”
A new study by researchers at MIT explores how AI chatbots can impact people’s feelings and mood, reports Matthew Gault for Gizmodo. “One of the big takeaways is that people who used the chatbots casually and didn’t engage with them emotionally didn’t report feeling lonelier at the end of the study,” explains Gault. “Yet, if a user said they were lonely before they started the study, they felt worse after it was over.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that “heavy users of ChatGPT tend to be lonelier, more emotionally dependent on the AI tool and have fewer offline social relationships,” reports Rachel Hall for The Guardian. “The researchers wrote that the users who engaged in the most emotionally expressive personal conversations with the chatbots tended to experience higher loneliness – though it isn’t clear if this is caused by the chatbot or because lonely people are seeking emotional bonds,” explains Hall.
Graduate student Cathy Fang speaks with CBS News reporter Lindsey Reiser about her research studying the effects of AI chatbots on people’s emotional well-being. Fang explains that she and her colleagues found that how the chatbot interacts with the user is important, “but also how the user interacts with the chatbot is equally important. Both influence the user’s emotional and social well-being.” She adds: “Overall, we found that extended use is correlated with more negative outcomes.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found “that frequency chatbot users experience more loneliness and emotional dependence,” reports Beatrice Nolan for Fortune. “The studies set out to investigate the extent to which interactions with ChatGPT impacted users’ emotional health, with a focus on the use of the chatbot’s advanced voice mode,” explains Nolan.