For more than a decade, MIT Associate Professor Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli has used artificial intelligence to create new materials. As the technology has expanded, so have his ambitions. Now, the newly tenured professor in materials science and engineering believes AI is poised to transform science in ways never before possible. His work at MIT and beyond…
AI agents are a risky business. Even when stuck inside the chatbox window, LLMs will make mistakes and behave badly. Once they have tools that they can use to interact with the outside world, such as web browsers and email addresses, the consequences of those mistakes become far more serious. That might explain why the…
James J. Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and faculty co-lead of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, is embarking on a multidisciplinary research project that applies synthetic biology and generative artificial intelligence to the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The research project is…
The signals that drive many of the brain and body’s most essential functions — consciousness, sleep, breathing, heart rate, and motion — course through bundles of “white matter” fibers in the brainstem, but imaging systems so far have been unable to finely resolve these crucial neural cables. That has left researchers and doctors with little…
In September, Alfred Stephen, a freelance software developer in Singapore, purchased a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 a month and offers more access to advanced models, to speed up his work. But he grew frustrated with the chatbot’s coding abilities and its gushing, meandering replies. Then he came across a post on Reddit about…
Olympic figure skating looks effortless. Athletes sail across the ice, then soar into the air, spinning like a top, before landing on a single blade just 4-5 millimeters wide. To help figure skaters land quadruple axels, Salchows, Lutzes, and maybe even the elusive quintuple without looking the least bit stressed, Jerry Lu MFin ’24 developed…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Lots of influential people in tech last week were describing Moltbook, an online hangout populated by AI agents interacting with one another, as a glimpse into the future. It appeared to show…
For years, our newsroom has explored AI’s limitations and potential dangers, as well as its growing energy needs. And our reporters have looked closely at how generative tools are being used for tasks such as coding and running scientific experiments. But how is AI actually being used in fields like health care, climate tech, education,…
A firm that wants to use a large language model (LLM) to summarize sales reports or triage customer inquiries can choose between hundreds of unique LLMs with dozens of model variations, each with slightly different performance. To narrow down the choice, companies often rely on LLM ranking platforms, which gather user feedback on model interactions…
In a wide-ranging live conversation, MIT President Sally Kornbluth joined Jim Braude and Margery Eagan live in studio for GBH’s Boston Public Radio on Thursday, February 5. They talked about MIT, the pressures facing America’s research enterprise, the importance of science, that Congressional hearing on antisemitism in 2023, and more – including Sally’s experience as a…