From enhancing international business logistics to freeing up more hospital beds to helping farmers, MIT Professor Dimitris Bertsimas SM ’87, PhD ’88 summarized how his work in operations research has helped drive real-world improvements, while delivering the 54th annual James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award Lecture at MIT on Thursday, March 19. Bertsimas also described how artificial intelligence is now being used in some of his scholarly projects and as a tool in MIT Open Learning efforts, which he currently directs — another facet of a highly productive and lauded career over four decades at the Institute. The Killian Award […]

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I was originally going to write this week’s newsletter about AI and Iran, particularly the news we broke last Tuesday that the Pentagon is making plans for AI companies to train on classified data. AI models have already been used to answer questions in classified settings but don’t currently learn from the data they see. That’s expected to change, I reported, and new security risks will result. Read that story for more.  But on Thursday I came […]

In early February, animal welfare advocates and AI researchers gathered in stocking feet at Mox, a scrappy, shoes-free coworking space in San Francisco. Yellow and red canopies billowed overhead, Persian rugs blanketed the floor, and mosaic lamps glowed beside potted plants.  In the common area, a wildlife advocate spoke passionately to a crowd lounging in beanbags about a form of rodent birth control that could manage rat populations without poison. In the “Crustacean Room,” a dozen people sat in a circle, debating whether the sentience of insects could tell us anything about the inner lives of chatbots. In front of […]