Tag: Technology and society

Bridging philosophy and AI to explore computing ethics

During a meeting of class 6.C40/24.C40 (Ethics of Computing), Professor Armando Solar-Lezama poses the same impossible question to his students that he often asks himself in the research he leads with the Computer Assisted Programming Group at MIT: “How do we make sure that a machine does what we want, and only what we want?” At […]

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Introducing the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium

From crafting complex code to revolutionizing the hiring process, generative artificial intelligence is reshaping industries faster than ever before — pushing the boundaries of creativity, productivity, and collaboration across countless domains. Enter the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium, a collaboration between industry leaders and MIT’s top minds. As MIT President Sally Kornbluth highlighted last year, the […]

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Smart carbon dioxide removal yields economic and environmental benefits

Last year the Earth exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial times, a threshold beyond which wildfires, droughts, floods, and other climate impacts are expected to escalate in frequency, intensity, and lethality. To cap global warming at 1.5 C and avert that scenario, the nearly 200 signatory nations of the Paris Agreement on climate change […]

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New START.nano cohort is developing solutions in health, data storage, power, and sustainable energy

MIT.nano has announced seven new companies to join START.nano, a program aimed at speeding the transition of hard-tech innovation to market. The program supports new ventures through discounted use of MIT.nano’s facilities and access to the MIT innovation ecosystem. The advancements pursued by the newly engages startups include wearables for health care, green alternatives to […]

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The multifaceted challenge of powering AI

Artificial intelligence has become vital in business and financial dealings, medical care, technology development, research, and much more. Without realizing it, consumers rely on AI when they stream a video, do online banking, or perform an online search. Behind these capabilities are more than 10,000 data centers globally, each one a huge warehouse containing thousands […]

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Q&A: The climate impact of generative AI

Vijay Gadepally, a senior staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, leads a number of projects at the Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center (LLSC) to make computing platforms, and the artificial intelligence systems that run on them, more efficient. Here, Gadepally discusses the increasing use of generative AI in everyday tools, its hidden environmental impact, and some […]

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New filter captures and recycles aluminum from manufacturing waste

Used in everything from soda cans and foil wrap to circuit boards and rocket boosters, aluminum is the second-most-produced metal in the world after steel. By the end of this decade, demand is projected to drive up aluminum production by 40 percent worldwide. This steep rise will magnify aluminum’s environmental impacts, including any pollutants that […]

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Loren Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science, dies at 91

Loren R. Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science who served on the MIT faculty for nearly three decades, died on Dec. 15, 2024, at the age of 91. Graham received a BS in chemical engineering from Purdue University in 1955, the same year his classmate, acquaintance, and future NASA astronaut and moon walker […]

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MIT welcomes Frida Polli as its next visiting innovation scholar

Frida Polli, a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, investor, and inventor known for her leading-edge contributions at the crossroads of behavioral science and artificial intelligence, is MIT’s new visiting innovation scholar for the 2024-25 academic year. She is the first visiting innovation scholar to be housed within the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Polli began her career in […]

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Need a research hypothesis? Ask AI.

Crafting a unique and promising research hypothesis is a fundamental skill for any scientist. It can also be time consuming: New PhD candidates might spend the first year of their program trying to decide exactly what to explore in their experiments. What if artificial intelligence could help? MIT researchers have created a way to autonomously […]

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Surface-based sonar system could rapidly map the ocean floor at high resolution

On June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible was about an hour-and-a-half into its two-hour descent to the Titanic wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean when it lost contact with its support ship. This cease in communication set off a frantic search for the tourist submersible and five passengers onboard, located about two miles […]

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Study reveals AI chatbots can detect race, but racial bias reduces response empathy

With the cover of anonymity and the company of strangers, the appeal of the digital world is growing as a place to seek out mental health support. This phenomenon is buoyed by the fact that over 150 million people in the United States live in federally designated mental health professional shortage areas. “I really need your […]

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Lara Ozkan named 2025 Marshall Scholar

Lara Ozkan, an MIT senior from Oradell, New Jersey, has been selected as a 2025 Marshall Scholar and will begin graduate studies in the United Kingdom next fall. Funded by the British government, the Marshall Scholarship awards American students of high academic achievement with the opportunity to pursue graduate studies in any field at any […]

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What do we know about the economics of AI?

For all the talk about artificial intelligence upending the world, its economic effects remain uncertain. There is massive investment in AI but little clarity about what it will produce. Examining AI has become a significant part of Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu’s work. An Institute Professor at MIT, Acemoglu has long studied the impact of technology […]

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A new focus on understanding the human element

A new MIT initiative aims to elevate human-centered research and teaching, and bring together scholars in the humanities, arts, and social sciences with their colleagues across the Institute. The MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) launched earlier this fall. A formal kickoff event for MITHIC was held on campus Monday, Oct. 28, before a full audience in […]

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3 Questions: Can we secure a sustainable supply of nickel?

As the world strives to cut back on carbon emissions, demand for minerals and metals needed for clean energy technologies is growing rapidly, sometimes straining existing supply chains and harming local environments. In a new study published today in Joule, Elsa Olivetti, a professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Decarbonizing Energy and […]

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“Wearable” devices for cells

Wearable devices like smartwatches and fitness trackers interact with parts of our bodies to measure and learn from internal processes, such as our heart rate or sleep stages. Now, MIT researchers have developed wearable devices that may be able to perform similar functions for individual cells inside the body. These battery-free, subcellular-sized devices, made of […]

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