Songyee Yoon PhD ’00, an entrepreneur, innovator, investor, and leader in AI and the gaming industry, has been appointed as a School of Engineering visiting innovation scholar for the 2023-24 academic year. Yoon, who is as a member of the MIT Corporation, serves as president and chief strategic officer of NCSOFT, a world leader in…
The enthusiasm for AI and its applications is reaching a nadir, according to an August 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle press release, where generative AI is nearly perched atop the category of technologies at their “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” ready to plunge into the “Trough of Disillusionment.” A quick look at social media agrees, with some…
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Writing about China, a question I always get is: What technology is ubiquitous there but hasn’t caught on in the West? One of my go-to answers is livestream e-commerce. If you…
The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology has selected five new research fellows for 2023-24. Now in its third year, the initiative underscores the ways in which industry and research can collaborate to spur technological innovation. Through its partnership with the School of Engineering, Accenture provides five annual fellowships awarded to graduate…
Ultrasound that doesn’t require touching patients. A web-based tool that reinvents crew scheduling for the Air Force. Cryptographic hardware that protects sensitive data. And the world’s first practical memory for quantum networking. These four technologies developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, either wholly or with collaborators, received 2023 R&D 100 Awards. The ultrasound technology also received…
Hans Zimmer, 1; AI, 0. When Gareth Edwards, the director of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was thinking about the soundtrack for his upcoming movie about artificial intelligence, The Creator, he decided to try composing it with AI—and got “pretty damn good” results. “The cheeky part of me thought it’d be even better if…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. So smart! So talented! This week I’m pleased to introduce you to a new crop of bright minds working on some of the most challenging problems in AI and beyond. You…
Scroll through the livestreaming videos at 4 a.m. on Taobao, China’s most popular e-commerce platform, and you’ll find it weirdly busy. While most people are fast asleep, there are still many diligent streamers presenting products to the cameras and offering discounts in the wee hours. But if you take a closer look, you may notice…
In July, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Cynthia Barnhart issued a call for papers to “articulate effective roadmaps, policy recommendations, and calls for action across the broad domain of generative AI.” Over the next month, they received an influx of responses from every school at MIT proposing to explore generative AI’s potential applications and…
An age-old adage, often introduced to us during our formative years, is designed to nudge us beyond our self-centered, nascent minds: “Two heads are better than one.” This proverb encourages collaborative thinking and highlights the potency of shared intellect. Fast forward to 2023, and we find that this wisdom holds true even in the realm…