It’s late August in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and people are filling a large hall at one of Africa’s biggest gatherings of minds in AI and machine learning. The room is draped in white curtains, and a giant screen blinks with videos created with generative AI. A classic East African folk song by the Tanzanian singer…
When it comes to artificial intelligence, MIT and IBM were there at the beginning: laying foundational work and creating some of the first programs — AI predecessors — and theorizing how machine “intelligence” might come to be. Today, collaborations like the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, which launched eight years ago, are continuing to deliver expertise…
This is the second of a three-part series by Markus Eisele. Part 1 can be found here. Stay tuned for part 3. Many AI projects fail. The reason is often simple. Teams try to rebuild last decade’s applications but add AI on top: A CRM system with AI. A chatbot with AI. A search engine…
Chatbots today are everything machines. If it can be put into words—relationship advice, work documents, code—AI will produce it, however imperfectly. But the one thing that almost no chatbot will ever do is stop talking to you. That might seem reasonable. Why should a tech company build a feature that reduces the time people spend…
In the modern enterprise, information is the new capital. While companies pour resources into artificial intelligence, many discover that technology, standing alone, delivers only expense, not transformation. The true engine of change lies not in the algorithm but in the hands and minds of the people who use it. The greatest asset an organization possesses…
It’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing trends of the fashion world. What’s “in” one minute is often out of style the next season, potentially causing you to re-evaluate your wardrobe. Staying current with the latest fashion styles can be wasteful and expensive, though. Roughly 92 million tons of textile waste are produced annually, including…
In this era of AI slop, the idea that generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway could be used to make art can seem absurd: What possible artistic value is there to be found in the likes of Shrimp Jesus and Ballerina Cappuccina? But amid all the muck, there are people using AI tools with…
Say a person takes their French Bulldog, Bowser, to the dog park. Identifying Bowser as he plays among the other canines is easy for the dog-owner to do while onsite. But if someone wants to use a generative AI model like GPT-5 to monitor their pet while they are at work, the model could fail…
Computational neuroscientist and singer/songwriter Kimaya (Kimy) Lecamwasam, who also plays electric bass and guitar, says music has been a core part of her life for as long as she can remember. She grew up in a musical family and played in bands all through high school. “For most of my life, writing and playing music…
MIT Music and Theater Arts fondly remembers the legacy of Professor Emerita Jeanne Shapiro Bamberger, who passed away peacefully at home in Berkeley, California, of natural causes on Dec. 12, 2024 at the age of 100. For three decades at the Institute, Bamberger found ways to use computers to engage students and help them learn music….