One popular term encountered in generative AI practice is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Reasons for using RAG are clear: large language models (LLMs), which are effectively syntax engines, tend to “hallucinate” by inventing answers from pieces of their training data. The haphazard results may be entertaining, although not quite based in fact. RAG provides a way…
This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here. It can be tricky for reporters to get past certain doors, and the door to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference is one that’s almost perpetually shut to the media. Thus, I was…
Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been selected as 2025 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at Oxford University in the U.K. next fall. In addition to MIT’s two U.S. Rhodes winners, Ouigbo and Nair, two affiliates were awarded international Rhodes Scholarships: Chen for Rhodes’ China constituency and…
To fend off the worst impacts of climate change, “we have to decarbonize, and do it even faster,” said William H. Green, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, at MITEI’s Annual Research Conference. “But how the heck do we actually achieve this goal when…
We are on the cusp of a voice AI boom, with tech companies such as Apple and OpenAI rolling out the next generation of artificial-intelligence-powered assistants. But the default voices for these assistants are often white American—British, if you’re lucky—and most definitely speak English. They represent only a tiny proportion of the many dialects and…
AI has led to breakthroughs in drug discovery and robotics and is in the process of entirely revolutionizing how we interact with machines and the web. The only problem is we don’t know exactly how it works, or why it works so well. We have a fair idea, but the details are too complex to…
The complexity of biology has long been a double-edged sword for scientific and medical progress. On one hand, the intricacy of systems (like the human immune response) offers countless opportunities for breakthroughs in medicine and healthcare. On the other hand, that very complexity has often stymied researchers, leaving some of the most significant medical challenges—like…
Ben Zhao remembers well the moment he officially jumped into the fight between artists and generative AI: when one artist asked for AI bananas. A computer security researcher at the University of Chicago, Zhao had made a name for himself by building tools to protect images from facial recognition technology. It was this work that…
Imagine using artificial intelligence to compare two seemingly unrelated creations — biological tissue and Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9.” At first glance, a living system and a musical masterpiece might appear to have no connection. However, a novel AI method developed by Markus J. Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering and professor of civil and environmental…
The process of computational design in mechanical engineering often begins with a problem or a goal, followed by an assessment of literature, resources, and systems available to address the issue. The Design Computation and Digital Engineering (DeCoDE) Lab at MIT instead explores the bounds of what is possible. Working with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab,…