In a recent episode of High Signal, we spoke with Dr. Fei-Fei Li about what it really means to build human-centered AI, and where the field might be heading next. Fei-Fei doesn’t describe AI as a feature or even an industry. She calls it a “civilizational technology”—a force as foundational as electricity or computing itself….
Last year, China saw a boom in foundation models, the do-everything large language models that underpin the AI revolution. This year, the focus has shifted to AI agents—systems that are less about responding to users’ queries and more about autonomously accomplishing things for them. There are now a host of Chinese startups building these general-purpose…
This is the third of four parts in this series. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here. 7. Building or Integrating an MCP Server: What It Takes Given these examples, you might wonder: How do I build an MCP server for my own application or integrate one that’s out there?…
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. The way DARPA tells it, math is stuck in the past. In April, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency kicked off a new initiative called expMath—short…
Join Danielle Belgrave and Ben Lorica for a discussion of AI in healthcare. Danielle is VP of AI and machine learning at GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline). She and Ben discuss using AI and machine learning to get better diagnoses that reflect the differences between patients. Listen in to learn about the challenges of working with health…
Ben Lorica and Gabriela de Queiroz, director of AI at Microsoft, talk about startups: specifically, AI startups. How do you get noticed? How do you generate real traction? What are startups doing with agents and with protocols like MCP and A2A? And which security issues should startups watch for, especially if they’re using open weights…
Join Steve Wilson and Ben Lorica for a discussion of AI security. We all know that AI brings new vulnerabilities into the software landscape. Steve and Ben talk about what makes AI different, what the big risks are, and how you can use AI safely. Find out how agents introduce their own vulnerabilities, and learn…
After working on it for months, my colleague Casey Crownhart and I finally saw our story on AI’s energy and emissions burden go live last week. The initial goal sounded simple: Calculate how much energy is used each time we interact with a chatbot, and then tally that up to understand why everyone from leaders…
Artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT provide plausible-sounding answers to any question you might ask. But they don’t always reveal the gaps in their knowledge or areas where they’re uncertain. That problem can have huge consequences as AI systems are increasingly used to do things like develop drugs, synthesize information, and drive autonomous cars. Now, the…
For weeks, the whiteboard in the lab was crowded with scribbles, diagrams, and chemical formulas. A research team across the Olivetti Group and the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) was working intensely on a key problem: How can we reduce the amount of cement in concrete to save on costs and emissions? The question was…