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…
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…
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…
In the early days of large language models (LLMs), we grew accustomed to massive 10x jumps in reasoning and coding capability with every new model iteration. Today, those jumps have flattened into incremental gains. The exception is domain-specialized intelligence, where true step-function improvements are still the norm. When a model is fused with an organization’s…
In biology, defects are generally bad. But in materials science, defects can be intentionally tuned to give materials useful new properties. Today, atomic-scale defects are carefully introduced during the manufacturing process of products like steel, semiconductors, and solar cells to help improve strength, control electrical conductivity, optimize performance, and more. But even as defects have…
Earlier this month, Microsoft launched Copilot Health, a new space within its Copilot app where users will be able to connect their medical records and ask specific questions about their health. A couple of days earlier, Amazon had announced that Health AI, an LLM-based tool previously restricted to members of its One Medical service, would…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last Thursday, a California judge temporarily blocked the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk and ordering government agencies to stop using its AI. It’s the latest development in the month-long…
Growing up in Mexico and Texas, Mariano Salcedo ’25 couldn’t readily indulge his passion for creating music. “There are no bands in Mexican public schools,” he says. While some families could pay for instruments and lessons, others, like Salcedo’s, were less fortunate. “I’ve always loved music,” he continues. “I was a listener.” Salcedo, the Alex…
Proteins are far more than nutrients we track on a food label. Present in every cell of our bodies, they work like nature’s molecular machines. They walk, stretch, bend, and flex to do their jobs, pumping blood, fighting disease, building tissue, and many other jobs too small for the eye to see. Their power doesn’t…
Inside a giant autonomous warehouse, hundreds of robots dart down aisles as they collect and distribute items to fulfill a steady stream of customer orders. In this busy environment, even small traffic jams or minor collisions can snowball into massive slowdowns. To avoid such an avalanche of inefficiencies, researchers from MIT and the tech firm…