MIT researchers have developed “a robotic system that can rotate different types of fruit and vegetable using its fingers on one hand, while the other arm is made to peel,” reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist. “These additional steps of doing rotation are something which is very straightforward to humans, we don’t even think about it,” Prof. Pulkit Agrawal. “But for a robot, this becomes challenging.”
Prof. Sherry Turkle shares the benefits of being polite when interacting with AI technologies, reports Webb Wright for Scientific American, underscoring the risks of becoming habituated to using crass, disrespectful and dictatorial language. “We have to protect ourselves,” says Turkle. “Because we’re the only ones that have to form relationships with real people.”
Penny Abeywardena of Forbes spotlights Joy Buolamwini PhD '22 and her work focused on the impacts of AI technologies on privacy. “We have to think about what we do when something goes wrong for the people I call the excoded, or in other words, those harmed by AI systems,” says Buolamwini. “We need to have pathways for redress and design with redress in mind.”
Prof. Stuart Madnick speaks with CNN reporter Allison Morrow about cybersecurity concerns stemming from the recent global technology outage. “There are organizations that we’re heavily dependent upon that we don’t even realize how dependent we are until they stop functioning,” says Madnick.
Forbes reporter Rodger Dean Duncan spotlights “The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines,” a new book by Research Affiliate Matt Bean SM '14, PhD '17. Duncan “explains Beane’s take on AI tools, collaboration and remote work, who suggests traditional mentoring is at risk in the workplace. Beane says today’s successful people have ‘discovered new tactics that others can use to get skills without throwing out the benefits of hybrid working arrangements.’”
Researchers from the Data Provenance Initiative, a research group led by MIT engineers, have found that “important web sources used for training AI models have restricted the use of their data,” reports Kevin Roose for The New York Times. . “We’re seeing a rapid decline in consent to use data across the web that will have ramifications not just for A.I. companies, but for researchers, academics and noncommercial entities,” explains graduate student Shayne Longpre.
Prof. Stuart Madnick speaks with Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray about how the CrowdStrike update caused a global IT outage. Madnick “expects the hits to keep on coming because so many companies depend on certain IT vendors,” writes Bray. “This is happening more and more often, and the consequences are even larger and larger,” cautions Madnick.
Visiting Scientist Ariel Ekblaw speaks with Scientific American’s Andrew Chapman about a microgravity water cooker called the H0TP0T, part of a mock space habitat set to open in Boston in early August. For the project “Ekblaw and a colleague interviewed nearly two dozen astronauts—who often mentioned better cooking options and tastier food as important ways to improve their well-being,” Chapman explains.
Prof. Armando Solar-Lezama speaks with The Wall Street Journal reporter Isabelle Bousquette about large language models (LLMs) in academia. Instead of building LLMs from scratch, Solar-Lezama suggests “students and researchers are focused on developing applications and even creating synthetic data that could be used to train LLMs,” writes Bousquette.
Prof. Michael Cusumano speaks with Associated Press reporters Matt O’Brien and Sarah Parvini about a new approach to AI acquisitions and the impact on smaller AI startups. “To acquire only some employees or the majority, but not all, license technology, leave the company functioning but not really competing, that’s a new twist,” says Cusumano.
Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with CNBC Last Call host Brian Sullivan about what he describes as exaggerated claims about the macroeconomic effects of AI. “I am completely convinced that there are some impressive changes and there are some things that AI can really help us with, but it's not going to suddenly revolutionize everything we do,” Acemoglu says. “And if it's going to do it, it's going to take a while.”
Prof. David Rand speaks with New York Times reporters Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson about the challenges of stopping the spread of misinformation. “It seems like an easy enough problem: there’s the true stuff and there’s the false stuff, and if the platforms cared about it, they would just get rid of the false stuff,” says Rand. “Then we started working on it and it was like, ‘Oh God.’ It’s actually way more complicated.”
Forbes reporter Ulrich Boser spotlights Prof. Rosalind Picard and her work toward advancing “the capability of computers to recognize human emotions.” “AI can enhance learning, and chatbots can supplement many aspects of teaching and tutoring but true success lies in establishing better tutoring platforms to support – not replace – teachers,” writes Boser.
MIT scientists studying parrots have discovered higher intelligence than previously thought, with some birds besting five-year-old children at logic games. With a tablet computer, parrots “have even figured out how to communicate using modern video conferencing technology,” writes Mack DeGeurin for Popular Science. When shown pictures of other parrots they had previously chatted with, “the parrots repeatedly requested to chat with their long-distance friends.”
Ivan Casadevantre MS '15 and Hasier Larrea MS '15 co-founded ORI Living – a furniture company that uses electromechanics to develop furniture systems designed for space efficiency. “You have to make those small spaces feel and act as if they were much larger,” says Larrea. “And that’s when we started thinking about robotics, thinking about engineering, and how we bring all those technologies to make it possible to live large in a smaller footprint.”