We’ve all seen videos over the past few years demonstrating how agile humanoid robots have become, running and jumping with ease. We’re no longer surprised by this kind of agility—in fact, we’ve grown to expect it. The problem is, these shiny demos lack real-world applications. When it comes to creating robots that are useful and…
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of drivers deliver packages and parcels to customers and companies each day, with many click-to-door times averaging only a few days. Coordinating a supply chain feat of this magnitude in a predictable and timely way is a longstanding problem of operations research, where researchers have been working to optimize…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The holy grail of robotics since the field’s beginning has been to build a robot that can do our housework. But for a long time, that has just been a dream….
On Vassar Street, in the heart of MIT’s campus, the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing recently opened the doors to its new headquarters in Building 45. The building’s central location and welcoming design will help form a new cluster of connectivity at MIT and enable the space to have a multifaceted role. “The…
In biomedicine, segmentation involves annotating pixels from an important structure in a medical image, like an organ or cell. Artificial intelligence models can help clinicians by highlighting pixels that may show signs of a certain disease or anomaly. However, these models typically only provide one answer, while the problem of medical image segmentation is often…
Silent. Rigid. Clumsy. Henry and Jane Evans are used to awkward houseguests. For more than a decade, the couple, who live in Los Altos Hills, California, have hosted a slew of robots in their home. In 2002, at age 40, Henry had a massive stroke, which left him with quadriplegia and an inability to speak….
Maria grew up in Barcelona, Spain, in the 1940s. Her first memories of her father are vivid. As a six-year-old, Maria would visit a neighbor’s apartment in her building when she wanted to see him. From there, she could peer through the railings of a balcony into the prison below and try to catch a…
A user could ask ChatGPT to write a computer program or summarize an article, and the AI chatbot would likely be able to generate useful code or write a cogent synopsis. However, someone could also ask for instructions to build a bomb, and the chatbot might be able to provide those, too. To prevent this…
The views expressed in this video are those of the speakers, and do not represent any endorsement or sponsorship. Is the open-source approach, which has democratized access to software, ensured transparency, and improved security for decades, now poised to have a similar impact on AI? We dissect the balance between collaboration and control, legal ramifications,…
Few technological advances have generated as much excitement as AI. In particular, generative AI seems to have taken business discourse to a fever pitch. Many manufacturing leaders express optimism: Research conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights found ambitions for AI development to be stronger in manufacturing than in most other sectors. Manufacturers rightly view AI…