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 […]
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Whether you’re a scientist brainstorming research ideas or a CEO hoping to automate a task in human resources or finance, you’ll find that artificial intelligence tools are becoming the assistants you didn’t know you needed. In particular, many professionals are tapping into the talents of semi-autonomous software systems called AI agents, which can call on AI […]
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Brian Hedden PhD ’12 has been appointed co-associate dean of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) at MIT, a cross-cutting initiative in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, effective Jan. 16. Hedden is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, holding an MIT Schwarzman College of Computing shared position with the […]
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Antonio Torralba, Delta Electronics Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and faculty head of artificial intelligence and decision-making at MIT, has been named to the 2025 cohort of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellows. He shares the honor of an ACM Fellowship with three MIT alumni: Eytan Adar ’97, MEng ’98; George Candea ’97, […]
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In the pursuit of solutions to complex global challenges including disease, energy demands, and climate change, scientific researchers, including at MIT, have turned to artificial intelligence, and to quantitative analysis and modeling, to design and construct engineered cells with novel properties. The engineered cells can be programmed to become new therapeutics — battling, and perhaps […]
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Generative artificial intelligence models have been used to create enormous libraries of theoretical materials that could help solve all kinds of problems. Now, scientists just have to figure out how to make them. In many cases, materials synthesis is not as simple as following a recipe in the kitchen. Factors like the temperature and length […]
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To what extent can an artificial system be rational? A new MIT course, 6.S044/24.S00 (AI and Rationality), doesn’t seek to answer this question. Instead, it challenges students to explore this and other philosophical problems through the lens of AI research. For the next generation of scholars, concepts of rationality and agency could prove integral in […]
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MIT researchers have designed silicon structures that can perform calculations in an electronic device using excess heat instead of electricity. These tiny structures could someday enable more energy-efficient computation. In this computing method, input data are encoded as a set of temperatures using the waste heat already present in a device. The flow and distribution […]
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A new computational model of the brain based closely on its biology and physiology not only learned a simple visual category learning task exactly as well as lab animals, but even enabled the discovery of counterintuitive activity by a group of neurons that researchers working with animals to perform the same task had not noticed […]
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MIT researchers have identified significant examples of machine-learning model failure when those models are applied to data other than what they were trained on, raising questions about the need to test whenever a model is deployed in a new setting. “We demonstrate that even when you train models on large amounts of data, and choose […]
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Gemstones like precious opal are beautiful to look at and deceivingly complex. As you look at such gems from different angles, you’ll see a variety of tints glisten, causing you to question what color the rock actually is. It’s iridescent thanks to something called structural color — microscopic structures that reflect light to produce radiant […]
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Running large companies in construction, logistics, energy, and manufacturing requires careful coordination between millions of people, devices, and systems. For more than a decade, Samsara has helped those companies connect their assets to get work done more intelligently. Founded by John Bicket SM ’05 and Sanjit Biswas SM ’05, Samsara’s platform gives companies with physical […]
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Generative artificial intelligence models have left such an indelible impact on digital content creation that it’s getting harder to recall what the internet was like before it. You can call on these AI tools for clever projects such as videos and photos — but their flair for the creative hasn’t quite crossed over into the […]
Read MoreArtificial intelligence has captured headlines recently for its rapidly growing energy demands, and particularly the surging electricity usage of data centers that enable the training and deployment of the latest generative AI models. But it’s not all bad news — some AI tools have the potential to reduce some forms of energy consumption and enable cleaner grids. […]
Read MoreEvery autumn, as the Northern Hemisphere moves toward winter, Judah Cohen starts to piece together a complex atmospheric puzzle. Cohen, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), has spent decades studying how conditions in the Arctic set the course for winter weather throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. His research […]
Read MoreWhat is patient privacy for? The Hippocratic Oath, thought to be one of the earliest and most widely known medical ethics texts in the world, reads: “Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I […]
Read MoreMIT researchers have developed a new method for designing 3D structures that can be transformed from a flat configuration into their curved, fully formed shape with only a single pull of a string. This technique could enable the rapid deployment of a temporary field hospital at the site of a disaster such as a devastating […]
Read More“At MIT, innovation ranges from awe-inspiring technology to down-to-Earth creativity,” noted Chronicle, during a campus visit this year for an episode of the program. In 2025, MIT researchers made headlines across print publications, podcasts, and video platforms for key scientific advances, from breakthroughs in quantum and artificial intelligence to new efforts aimed at improving pediatric health […]
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Students can take many possible routes through MIT’s curriculum, which can zigag through different departments, linking classes and disciplines in unexpected ways. With so many options, charting an academic path can be overwhelming, but a new tool called NerdXing is here to help. The brainchild of senior Julianna Schneider and other students in the MIT […]
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Even networks long considered “untrainable” can learn effectively with a bit of a helping hand. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have shown that a brief period of alignment between neural networks, a method they call guidance, can dramatically improve the performance of architectures previously thought unsuitable for modern tasks. Their […]
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Most languages use word position and sentence structure to extract meaning. For example, “The cat sat on the box,” is not the same as “The box was on the cat.” Over a long text, like a financial document or a novel, the syntax of these words likely evolves. Similarly, a person might be tracking variables […]
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Why did humans evolve the eyes we have today? While scientists can’t go back in time to study the environmental pressures that shaped the evolution of the diverse vision systems that exist in nature, a new computational framework developed by MIT researchers allows them to explore this evolution in artificial intelligence agents. The framework they […]
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Computer-aided design (CAD) systems are tried-and-true tools used to design many of the physical objects we use each day. But CAD software requires extensive expertise to master, and many tools incorporate such a high level of detail they don’t lend themselves to brainstorming or rapid prototyping. In an effort to make design faster and more […]
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As language models (LMs) improve at tasks like image generation, trivia questions, and simple math, you might think that human-like reasoning is around the corner. In reality, they still trail us by a wide margin on complex tasks. Try playing Sudoku with one, for instance, where you fill in numbers one through nine in such […]
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Artificial intelligence can enhance decision-making and enable action with reduced risk and greater precision, making it a critical tool for national security. A new program offered jointly by the MIT departments of Mechanical Engineering (Course 2, MechE) and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course 6, EECS) will provide breadth and depth in technical studies for […]
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Let’s say an environmental scientist is studying whether exposure to air pollution is associated with lower birth weights in a particular county. They might train a machine-learning model to estimate the magnitude of this association, since machine-learning methods are especially good at learning complex relationships. Standard machine-learning methods excel at making predictions and sometimes provide […]
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MIT researchers have developed a new fabrication method that could enable the production of more energy efficient electronics by stacking multiple functional components on top of one existing circuit. In traditional circuits, logic devices that perform computation, like transistors, and memory devices that store data are built as separate components, forcing data to travel back […]
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Generative AI and robotics are moving us ever closer to the day when we can ask for an object and have it created within a few minutes. In fact, MIT researchers have developed a speech-to-reality system, an AI-driven workflow that allows them to provide input to a robotic arm and “speak objects into existence,” creating […]
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To make large language models (LLMs) more accurate when answering harder questions, researchers can let the model spend more time thinking about potential solutions. But common approaches that give LLMs this capability set a fixed computational budget for every problem, regardless of how complex it is. This means the LLM might waste computational resources on simpler […]
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Imagine having a continuum soft robotic arm bend around a bunch of grapes or broccoli, adjusting its grip in real time as it lifts the object. Unlike traditional rigid robots that generally aim to avoid contact with the environment as much as possible and stay far away from humans for safety reasons, this arm senses […]
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Large language models (LLMs) sometimes learn the wrong lessons, according to an MIT study. Rather than answering a query based on domain knowledge, an LLM could respond by leveraging grammatical patterns it learned during training. This can cause a model to fail unexpectedly when deployed on new tasks. The researchers found that models can mistakenly […]
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