When Zeus, a medical student living in a hilltop city in central Nigeria, returns to his studio apartment from a long day at the hospital, he turns on his ring light, straps his iPhone to his forehead, and starts recording himself. He raises his hands in front of him like a sleepwalker and puts a sheet on his bed. He moves slowly and carefully to make sure his hands stay within the camera frame.  Zeus is a data recorder for Micro1, a US company based in Palo Alto, California that collects real-world data to sell to robotics companies. As companies […]

Designers, makers, and others often use 3D printing to rapidly prototype a range of functional objects, from movie props to medical devices. Accurate print previews are essential so users know a fabricated object will perform as expected. But previews generated by most 3D-printing software focus on function rather than aesthetics. A printed object may end up with a different color, texture, or shading than the user expected, resulting in multiple reprints that waste time, effort, and material. To help users envision how a fabricated object will look, researchers from MIT and elsewhere developed an easy-to-use preview tool that puts appearance […]

For decades, artificial intelligence has been evaluated through the question of whether machines outperform humans. From chess to advanced math, from coding to essay writing, the performance of AI models and applications is tested against that of individual humans completing tasks.  This framing is seductive: An AI vs. human comparison on isolated problems with clear right or wrong answers is easy to standardize, compare, and optimize. It generates rankings and headlines.  But there’s a problem: AI is almost never used in the way it is benchmarked. Although   researchers and industry have started to improve benchmarking by moving beyond static […]