Chatbots can wear a lot of proverbial hats: dictionary, therapist, poet, all-knowing friend. The artificial intelligence models that power these systems appear exceptionally skilled and efficient at providing answers, clarifying concepts, and distilling information. But to establish trustworthiness of content generated by such models, how can we really know if a particular statement is factual, a hallucination, or just a plain misunderstanding? In many cases, AI systems gather external information to use as context when answering a particular query. For example, to answer a question about a medical condition, the system might reference recent research papers on the topic. Even […]

For all the talk about artificial intelligence upending the world, its economic effects remain uncertain. There is massive investment in AI but little clarity about what it will produce. Examining AI has become a significant part of Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu’s work. An Institute Professor at MIT, Acemoglu has long studied the impact of technology in society, from modeling the large-scale adoption of innovations to conducting empirical studies about the impact of robots on jobs. In October, Acemoglu also shared the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with two collaborators, Simon Johnson PhD ’89 […]

People struggling with their mental health are more likely to browse negative content online, and in turn, that negative content makes their symptoms worse, according to a series of studies by researchers at MIT. The group behind the research has developed a web plug-in tool to help those looking to protect their mental health make more informed decisions about the content they view. The findings were outlined in an open-access paper by Tali Sharot, an adjunct professor of cognitive neurosciences at MIT and professor at University College London, and Christopher A. Kelly, a former visiting PhD student who was a […]