Posted by Jeff Dean, Senior Fellow and SVP of Google Research, on behalf of the entire Google Research community Over the last several decades, I’ve witnessed a lot of change in the fields of machine learning (ML) and computer science. Early approaches, which often fell short, eventually gave rise to modern approaches that have been…
Every year starts with a round of predictions for the new year, most of which end up being wrong. But why fight against tradition? Here are my predictions for 2022. The safest predictions are all around AI. We’ll see more “AI as a service” (AIaaS) products. This trend started with the gigantic language model GPT-3….
Machine-learning algorithms are often referred to as a “black box.” Once data are put into an algorithm, it’s not always known exactly how the algorithm arrives at its prediction. This can be particularly frustrating when things go wrong. A new mechanical engineering (MechE) course at MIT teaches students how to tackle the “black box” problem,…
Launched in October of 2020, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology underscores the ways in which industry and technology come together to spur innovation. The five-year initiative aims to achieve its mission through research, education, and fellowships. To that end, Accenture has once again awarded five annual fellowships to MIT graduate…
When Hongzhi Gao was young, he lived with his family in Gansu, a province located in the center of northern China by the Tengger Desert. Thinking back to his childhood, he recalls the constant, steady wind of dirt outside their house, and that during most months of the year it didn’t take more than a…
It’s been a year of supersized AI models. When OpenAI released GPT-3, in June 2020, the neural network’s apparent grasp of language was uncanny. It could generate convincing sentences, converse with humans, and even autocomplete code. GPT-3 was also monstrous in scale—larger than any other neural network ever built. It kicked off a whole new trend in…
New research from MIT neuroscientists suggests that natural soundscapes have shaped our sense of hearing, optimizing it for the kinds of sounds we most often encounter. In a study reported Dec. 14 in the journal Nature Communications, researchers led by McGovern Institute for Brain Research associate investigator Josh McDermott used computational modeling to explore factors…
Cathy Wu is the Gilbert W. Winslow Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a member of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. As an undergraduate, Wu won MIT’s toughest robotics competition, and as a graduate student took the University of California at Berkeley’s first-ever course on deep reinforcement learning. Now back…
As it becomes easier to create hyper-realistic digital characters using artificial intelligence, much of the conversation around these tools has centered on misleading and potentially dangerous deepfake content. But the technology can also be used for positive purposes — to revive Albert Einstein to teach a physics class, talk through a career change with your…
Summary In this developer code pattern, we demonstrate how we can use biometrics to enable a seamless check-in experience for travelers. Interested parties include airlines, airport authorities, and local and federal agencies. At the same time, we enable a means to track travelers by using biometrics, all while sharing data across different agencies at different…