Browsing: AI News & Trends

The MIT Music Technology and Computation (MTC) Graduate Program — launched in fall 2024 as a collaboration between the Music and Theater Arts Section in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), and the School of Engineering (SoE) — presented its inaugural MIT Music Technology Research Showcase on May 13. The event played to a standing room-only house in the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building’s Thomas Tull Concert Hall and featured diverse and captivating research presentations and music performances.The celebratory occasion featured MTC’s first five enrollees (all of whom were previously MIT undergraduates), alongside several PhD students…

“Beyond Data-Driven Aesthetics,” by MIT Architecture alumnus and researcher Alexandros Haridis, on view at the MIT Keller Gallery through June 30, examines 20th- and 21st-century efforts to transform computing into a medium for creative production and aesthetic judgment in architecture and the applied arts. Drawing on philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and design computation, the exhibition translates algorithms, theories, and machine-learning systems into physical installations and interactive visualizations.Q: What inspired “Beyond Data-Driven Aesthetics,” and what questions does it explore?A: The conceptual origins of “Beyond Data-Driven Aesthetics” emerged from three intersecting lines of research.First, while completing my PhD in design and computation…

David Autor, the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, has been named head of the Department of Economics, effective July 1.“David is a world-class labor economist,” says Agustín Rayo, the Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. “He is also an individual of wisdom and insight. I look forward to welcoming him to the school’s leadership team.”Autor’s scholarship explores the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes. He serves as faculty co-director of the James M. and Cathleen…

Imagine working at a warehouse or office sometime in the near future, and you’re asked to help a new trainee learn the basics of their job. The catch: It’s a robot. To teach them, you might want to play a game of “show and tell” — that is, physically showing how to do something a few different ways, while also explaining what you’re doing.Let’s say you asked the robot to place some coffee on your desk without disturbing you during a Zoom call. You’ll prefer that the robot doesn’t get too close to you and the laptop so that it…

Over the past 80 years, America’s bold, sustained investment in scientific research, and the discoveries, ideas and innovations that flowed from it made America a world leader. The nation’s scientific leadership has been essential to our shared prosperity and national security, and delivered real benefits for all Americans.On June 16, Scientific American released a special section, “The Young American Scientists,” which celebrates early-career professionals actively engaged in scientific research, and features commentary from MIT faculty on why they continue to be so devoted to curiosity-driven science, demonstrating how their hard work and dedication make Americans safer, healthier, and more prosperous. Among…

Agentic workflows are artificial intelligence-powered software systems that chain together multiple models and external tools to tackle complicated tasks, like analyzing a video and answering questions about it.But the way these highly fragmented systems are designed and deployed often causes inefficiencies that can lead to wasted computation, energy, and cost. To improve efficiency, researchers from MIT and Microsoft developed an intelligent system that streamlines the process of designing agentic workflows and automatically optimizes how those workflows are implemented. With this new method, a developer can describe what they want the agentic workflow to do in plain language, without needing to specify all…

At the recent AI and Society Forum at MIT, experts from across the Institute discussed the potential benefits and dangers of technological innovation on labor, the nature of work, civil discourse, election administration, and other topics.The event featured individual research presentations and panel discussions, as well as a musical performance exploring the use of generative artificial intelligence in the arts.The forum was co-organized by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) and the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC). It was presented in collaboration with two of MIT’s strategic initiatives: the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium (MGAIC) and the MIT Human Insight Collaborative…

A new chip developed by MIT researchers could help tiny, low-power UAVs avoid obstacles as they zip around tight corners inside an industrial HVAC system to check for gas leaks.The chip allows small autonomous robots and other battery-limited devices to construct detailed 3D maps of their environments in real-time using only about as much power as a single LED. A robot could use such a map to plan a collision-free path to reach its goal.Typically, generating such thorough maps requires power-hungry systems and a great deal of memory to build and store 3D representations of the obstacles in a robot’s…

Companies working at the frontier of aerospace, energy, and computing are constantly looking for new materials to improve performance. But in order to understand how those materials will actually behave once they’re inside rockets or on computer chips, companies first have to make the material and then test it. That’s because even the most powerful simulation techniques struggle to model the complex chemical arrangements in most of today’s solid materials. The problem adds costs and time to materials innovation.Now a team of MIT researchers has created a way to accurately model the behavior of metals, regardless of the complexity of…

On June 9, The Boston Globe released its 2026 “Tech Power Players” list, recognizing 50 influential local leaders in technology and business across Massachusetts. The list includes eight MIT affiliates including President Sally Kornbluth, Prof. Daniela Rus (director of CSAIL), Prof. Regina Barzilay, Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang, Prof. Max Tegmark, Ana Bakshi (executive director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship), Katie Rae CEO and Managing Partner of Engine Ventures), and Senior Lecturer Brian Halligan, along with a number of MIT alumni.In addition to recognizing individual leaders, the Power Players coverage highlights MIT’s research labs, its culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,…