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Web technology and programming have been evolving rapidly in recent years, driven by the increasing demand for web applications and the need for more sophisticated and complex digital experiences. In this blog post, we will explore some of the latest trends in web technology and programming that are shaping the future of web development.
web technology and programming are evolving at a rapid pace, driven by the demand for faster, more efficient, and more engaging web applications. AI/ML, PWAs, serverless architecture, static site generators, headless CMSs, and low code/no code platforms are just a few of the trends shaping the future of web development. As a web developer, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and tools to remain competitive in today’s fast-paced digital world.
Improving the speed and energy-efficiency of AI agents
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…
Exploring the societal impacts of AI
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…
New chip could help tiny robots traverse complex environments
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…
A better way to model the behavior of metal alloys
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…
MIT in the media: For the future of tech, "Massachusetts can absolutely lead"
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…
In game theory, generalists sometimes win out over specialists
Whether you’re playing poker against a single opponent or find yourself in a bidding war over a home purchase with another prospective buyer, you are operating under conditions of imperfect information. You know what cards you’re holding in the poker game, and you also know how much above the home’s asking price you can afford,…
Could AI tell you where you left your keys?
An auto factory worker can remember the storage bin where she left a partly assembled component the night before, and quickly return to that spot to pick it up. But robots that may work side-by-side with her would struggle to develop and access this same type of “spatiotemporal” memory. Now, MIT researchers have developed a…
MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing builds momentum
In May, the Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM) marked its first anniversary with MIT Manufacturing Week, four days of events that attracted more than 800 registrants including students, faculty, industry leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, and government officials to explore topics ranging from how companies are using AI on factory floors to the role of startups in…
Jinhua Zhao named head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Jinhua Zhao MCP ’04, SM ’04, PhD ’09 has been appointed head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), effective July 1. Zhao is the Class of 1941 Professor of Cities and Transportation at MIT. In making the announcement, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning Hashim Sarkis noted that Zhao is a…
When it comes to predicting people’s preferences, it pays to consider “the power of three”
In his 1927 paper, “A law of comparative judgment,” the American psychologist L. L. Thurstone proposed that when people select one option among multiple alternatives, they are picking the one that has the highest value to them, even though they cannot assign a particular number to that choice. Thurstone was a pioneer of “psychometrics” —…
MIT affiliates win 2026 Hertz Foundation Fellowships
The Hertz Foundation announced that it awarded 2026 fellowships to three current MIT students as well as an incoming graduate student. They are: Annika Marschner, Alvin Q. Meng, Zachary S. Siegel, and Matthew Wanta. The prestigious science and technology award provides each recipient with five years of financial support — a stipend and full tuition equivalent — which gives…
Startup’s nuclear-inspired cooling system could make data centers more sustainable
The rise of artificial intelligence is riding on the back of an enormous data center expansion. Data centers are projected to account for anywhere from 9 to 17 percent of total electricity usage in the U.S. by the end of the decade. Today, around a third of data center electricity is devoted to cooling the…
The consequences of relying on AI for accurate news
It’s no secret that the last few years have seen a massive explosion in the use of artificial intelligence for general information-gathering. An even more recent trend, though, is how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are increasingly being used for verifying and consuming news; reports from the Pew Research Center over the…
The crucial human component in computing and AI
On April 30, the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing’s Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) initiative hosted a full-day research symposium examining how artificial intelligence is shaping the world and its implications for society. The symposium included research talks by SERC’s latest seed grant recipients on topics such as air pollution forecasting and responsible computer vision deployment, panels on AI…
PATH to boost AI training and career opportunities for industry-aligned jobs
MIT, in collaboration with Georgia State University and a growing network of educational institutions, has announced expanded work under PATH (Pathways for AI Training and Hiring) — a multiyear initiative designed to scale effective, affordable, industry-aligned AI training for entry-level and current workers, with a particular focus on transforming community colleges into engines powering an…
NSF renews support for MIT-led AI and physics institute, expanding a new model for discovery
The MIT-led Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) has received renewed support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for an additional five years, increasing annual funding from $4 million to $4.98 million. The renewal marks a new phase for IAIFI, which has spent its first five years building a research model and an…
Teaching AI agents to ask better questions by playing “Battleship”
In 2026, the hype for artificial intelligence agents is louder than ever before. These semi-autonomous programs can “think” and execute well-defined tasks in areas like customer service and software development, typically using language models (LMs). But fields like medical diagnosis and scientific discovery require them to inquire about a vast range of solutions in uncertain…
Tod Machover receives George Peabody Medal for contributions to music and technology
Tod Machover, the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media, faculty director of the MIT Media Lab, and director of the Opera of the Future research group, will receive the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music and Dance in America — the highest honor bestowed by the Peabody Institute of the Johns…
MIT researchers teach AI models to interpret charts
To accelerate and refine decision-making in a fast-paced, global marketplace, enterprises may deploy generative artificial intelligence models to help summarize and interpret the charts that often fill market summaries and financial reports. But even the latest vision-language models sometimes struggle with this task, since it requires a model to integrate visual, numerical, and linguistic understanding.…
Media Advisory: MIT to establish regional quantum hub
MIT and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announced plans to establish the Quantum Systems Laboratory (QSL) at MIT, which will be open to researchers across the region. With the new funding from the state, which will match federal funding for quantum research already underway at MIT, the Institute aims to begin construction on the QSL facility this…
Technology usually creates jobs for young, skilled workers. Will AI do the same?
At any given time, technology does two things to employment: It replaces traditional jobs, and it creates new lines of work. Machines replace farmers, but enable, say, aeronautical engineers to exist. So, if tech creates new jobs, who gets them? How well do they pay? How long do new jobs remain new, before they become…
Building AI models that understand chemical principles
Among all of the possible chemical compounds, it’s estimated that between 1020 and 1060 may hold potential as small-molecule drugs. Evaluating each of those compounds experimentally would be far too time-consuming for chemists. So, in recent years, researchers have begun using artificial intelligence to help identify compounds that could make good drug candidates. One of those researchers…
Justin Solomon appointed associate dean of engineering education
Justin Solomon, associate professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), has been appointed associate dean of engineering education in the MIT School of Engineering, effective July 1. In this new role, Solomon will focus on advancing innovation in engineering education across the school. He will help shape new pedagogical approaches…
Two from MIT named 2026 Knight-Hennessy Scholars
MIT master’s student Sunshine Jiang ’25 and Rupert Li ’24 are recipients of this year’s Knight-Hennessy Scholarship. Now in its ninth year, the highly competitive scholarship provides up to three years of financial support for graduate studies at Stanford University. Sunshine Jiang ’25 Sunshine Jiang, from Hangzhou, China, graduated from MIT in 2025 with a…
Q&A: Expanding MIT’s global reach through Universal Learning
MIT’s Universal Learning is a new initiative from MIT Open Learning designed to prepare learners everywhere to tackle complex global challenges through boundary-crossing thinking. Universal Learning offerings combine subject matter expertise from MIT faculty and experts and Open Learning’s more than 25 years of innovation in online education to deliver a learning experience centered on…
Universal AI is “a pathway to AI fluency that’s accessible and approachable to anyone, anywhere”
“Artificial intelligence is not just for computer scientists anymore; it’s going to permeate every aspect of our lives and influence every business,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. The world is reaching an inflection point with artificial intelligence: over half of U.S. adults use generative AI — with 12 percent using it daily at work — and 88…
Study: Firms often use automation to control certain workers’ wages
When we hear about automation and artificial intelligence replacing jobs, it may seem like a tsunami of technology is going to wipe out workers broadly, in the name of greater efficiency. But a study co-authored by an MIT economist shows markedly different dynamics in the U.S. since 1980. Rather than implement automation in pursuit of…
Games people — and machines — play: Untangling strategic reasoning to advance AI
Gabriele Farina grew up in a small town in a hilly winemaking region of northern Italy. Neither of his parents had college degrees, and although both were convinced they “didn’t understand math,” Farina says, they bought him the technical books he wanted and didn’t discourage him from attending the science-oriented, rather than the classical, high…
Beacon Biosignals is mapping the brain during sleep
The human brain remains one of the most fascinating and perplexing mysteries in medicine. Scientists still struggle to match neurological activity with brain function and detect problems early, slowing efforts to treat neurological disorders and other diseases. Beacon Biosignals is working to make sense of the brain by monitoring its activity while people sleep. The…
Improving understanding with language
When she was a child, MIT senior Olivia Honeycutt would spend summers on her grandparents’ farm in rural Alabama outside Birmingham. The practical and cultural differences between farm and city life became more pronounced by comparison. “Life and the way we lived it slowed down on the farm,” she says. “It was a nice change…
Making the case for curiosity-driven science
“The thing that really struck me when I came to MIT and strikes me every single day is the stuff that’s going on here is amazing. The science, the engineering… every day I hear something that makes my jaw drop,” remarked President Sally Kornbluth during a live discussion with Lizzie O’Leary of Slate’s “What Next:…
Solving the “Whac-a-mole dilemma”: A smarter way to debias AI vision models
In today’s hospitals and clinics, a dermatologist may use an artificial intelligence model for classifying skin lesions to assess if the lesion is at risk of developing into a cancer or if it is benign. But if the model is biased toward certain skin tones, it could fail to identify a high-risk patient. Perhaps one…
The MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab launches to shape the future of AI and quantum computing
The following is a joint announcement by the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and IBM. IBM and MIT today announced the launch of the MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab, advancing their long-standing collaboration to shape the next era of computing. The new lab expands its scope to include quantum computing, alongside foundational artificial intelligence research, with…
Enabling privacy-preserving AI training on everyday devices
A new method developed by MIT researchers can accelerate a privacy-preserving artificial intelligence training method by about 81 percent. This advance could enable a wider array of resource-constrained edge devices, like sensors and smartwatches, to deploy more accurate AI models while keeping user data secure. The MIT researchers boosted the efficiency of a technique known…
A faster way to estimate AI power consumption
Due to the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, it is estimated that data centers will consume up to 12 percent of total U.S. electricity by 2028, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Improving data center energy efficiency is one way scientists are striving to make AI more sustainable. Toward that goal, researchers from MIT and…
MIT scientists build the world’s largest collection of Olympiad-level math problems, and open it to everyone
Every year, the countries competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) arrive with a booklet of their best, most original problems. Those booklets get shared among delegations, then quietly disappear. No one had ever collected them systematically, cleaned them, and made them available, not for AI researchers testing the limits of mathematical reasoning, and not…
Teaching AI models to say “I’m not sure”
Confidence is persuasive. In artificial intelligence systems, it is often misleading. Today’s most capable reasoning models share a trait with the loudest voice in the room: They deliver every answer with the same unshakable certainty, whether they’re right or guessing. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have now traced that overconfidence…
Jacob Andreas and Brett McGuire named Edgerton Award winners
MIT Associate Professor Jacob Andreas of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science [EECS] and MIT Associate Professor Brett McGuire of the Department of Chemistry have been selected as the winners of the 2026 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award. Established in 1982 as a permanent tribute to Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton’s great and enduring…
Bringing AI-driven protein-design tools to biologists everywhere
Artificial intelligence is already proving it can accelerate drug development and improve our understanding of disease. But to turn AI into novel treatments we need to get the latest, most powerful models into the hands of scientists. The problem is that most scientists aren’t machine-learning experts. Now the company OpenProtein.AI is helping scientists stay on…
Q&A: MIT SHASS and the future of education in the age of AI
The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) was founded in 1950 in response to “a new era emerging from social upheaval and the disasters of war,” as outlined in the 1949 Lewis Committee Report. The report’s findings emphasized MIT’s role and responsibility in the new nuclear age, which called for doubling down on…
Human-machine teaming dives underwater
The electricity to an island goes out. To find the break in the underwater power cable, a ship pulls up the entire line or deploys remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to traverse the line. But what if an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) could map the line and pinpoint the location of the fault for a diver…
A philosophy of work
What makes work valuable? Michal Masny, the NC Ethics of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow in the MIT Department of Philosophy, investigates the role work plays in our lives and its impact on our well-being. Masny sees numerous benefits to work, beyond a paycheck. It’s a space for people to develop excellence at something, make a social contribution,…
New technique makes AI models leaner and faster while they’re still learning
Training a large artificial intelligence model is expensive, not just in dollars, but in time, energy, and computational resources. Traditionally, obtaining a smaller, faster model either requires training a massive one first and then trimming it down, or training a small one from scratch and accepting weaker performance. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial…
Sixteen new START.nano companies are developing hard-tech solutions with the support of MIT.nano
MIT.nano has announced that 16 startups became active participants in its START.nano program in 2025, more than doubling the number of new companies from the previous year. Aimed at speeding the transition of hard-tech innovation to market, START.nano supports new ventures through the discounted use of MIT.nano shared facilities and a guided access to the…
Helping data centers deliver higher performance with less hardware
To improve data center efficiency, multiple storage devices are often pooled together over a network so many applications can share them. But even with pooling, significant device capacity remains underutilized due to performance variability across the devices. MIT researchers have now developed a system that boosts the performance of storage devices by handling three major…
Working to advance the nuclear renaissance
Today, there are 94 nuclear reactors operating in the United States, more than in any other country in the world, and these units collectively provide nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. That is a major accomplishment, according to Dean Price, but he believes that our country needs much more out of nuclear energy, especially…
Evaluating the ethics of autonomous systems
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to help optimize decision-making in high-stakes settings. For instance, an autonomous system can identify a power distribution strategy that minimizes costs while keeping voltages stable. But while these AI-driven outputs may be technically optimal, are they fair? What if a low-cost power distribution strategy leaves disadvantaged neighborhoods more vulnerable…
Preview tool helps makers visualize 3D-printed objects
Designers, makers, and others often use 3D printing to rapidly prototype a range of functional objects, from movie props to medical devices. Accurate print previews are essential so users know a fabricated object will perform as expected. But previews generated by most 3D-printing software focus on function rather than aesthetics. A printed object may end…
MIT researchers use AI to uncover atomic defects in materials
In biology, defects are generally bad. But in materials science, defects can be intentionally tuned to give materials useful new properties. Today, atomic-scale defects are carefully introduced during the manufacturing process of products like steel, semiconductors, and solar cells to help improve strength, control electrical conductivity, optimize performance, and more. But even as defects have…
Seeing sounds
Growing up in Mexico and Texas, Mariano Salcedo ’25 couldn’t readily indulge his passion for creating music. “There are no bands in Mexican public schools,” he says. While some families could pay for instruments and lessons, others, like Salcedo’s, were less fortunate. “I’ve always loved music,” he continues. “I was a listener.” Salcedo, the Alex…
MIT engineers design proteins by their motion, not just their shape
Proteins are far more than nutrients we track on a food label. Present in every cell of our bodies, they work like nature’s molecular machines. They walk, stretch, bend, and flex to do their jobs, pumping blood, fighting disease, building tissue, and many other jobs too small for the eye to see. Their power doesn’t…
AI system learns to keep warehouse robot traffic running smoothly
Inside a giant autonomous warehouse, hundreds of robots dart down aisles as they collect and distribute items to fulfill a steady stream of customer orders. In this busy environment, even small traffic jams or minor collisions can snowball into massive slowdowns. To avoid such an avalanche of inefficiencies, researchers from MIT and the tech firm…
Augmenting citizen science with computer vision for fish monitoring
Each spring, river herring populations migrate from Massachusetts coastal waters to begin their annual journey up rivers and streams to freshwater spawning habitat. River herring have faced severe population declines over the past several decades, and their migration is extensively monitored across the region, primarily through traditional visual counting and volunteer-based programs. Monitoring fish movement and…
Wristband enables wearers to control a robotic hand with their own movements
The next time you’re scrolling your phone, take a moment to appreciate the feat: The seemingly mundane act is possible thanks to the coordination of 34 muscles, 27 joints, and over 100 tendons and ligaments in your hand. Indeed, our hands are the most nimble parts of our bodies. Mimicking their many nuanced gestures has…
How to create “humble” AI
Artificial intelligence holds promise for helping doctors diagnose patients and personalize treatment options. However, an international group of scientists led by MIT cautions that AI systems, as currently designed, carry the risk of steering doctors in the wrong direction because they may overconfidently make incorrect decisions. One way to prevent these mistakes is to program…
Advancing international trade research and finding community
The sense of support and community was palpable when Sojun Park, a postdoc at the MIT Center for International Studies (CIS), delivered a recent presentation on The Global Diffusion of AI Technologies and Its Political Drivers. The event, part of the CIS Global Research and Policy Seminar, filled the venue with audience members from across MIT. “My…
On algorithms, life, and learning
From enhancing international business logistics to freeing up more hospital beds to helping farmers, MIT Professor Dimitris Bertsimas SM ’87, PhD ’88 summarized how his work in operations research has helped drive real-world improvements, while delivering the 54th annual James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award Lecture at MIT on Thursday, March 19. Bertsimas also described…
What’s the right path for AI?
Who benefits from artificial intelligence? This basic question, which has been especially salient during the AI surge of the last few years, was front and center at a conference at MIT on Wednesday, as speakers and audience members grappled with the many dimensions of AI’s impact. In one of the conferences’s keynote talks, journalist Karen…
MIT and Hasso Plattner Institute establish collaborative hub for AI and creativity
The following is a joint announcement from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Hasso Plattner Institute, and Hasso Plattner Foundation. The MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), and Hasso Plattner Foundation celebrated the launch of the MIT and HPI AI…
Generative AI improves a wireless vision system that sees through obstructions
MIT researchers have spent more than a decade studying techniques that enable robots to find and manipulate hidden objects by “seeing” through obstacles. Their methods utilize surface-penetrating wireless signals that reflect off concealed items. Now, the researchers are leveraging generative artificial intelligence models to overcome a longstanding bottleneck that limited the precision of prior approaches.…
A better method for identifying overconfident large language models
Large language models (LLMs) can generate credible but inaccurate responses, so researchers have developed uncertainty quantification methods to check the reliability of predictions. One popular method involves submitting the same prompt multiple times to see if the model generates the same answer. But this method measures self-confidence, and even the most impressive LLM might be…
Sustaining diplomacy amid competition in US-China relations
The United States and China “are the two largest emitters of carbon in the world,” said Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, at a recent MIT seminar. “We need to work with each other for the good of both of our countries.” During the MITEI Presents: Advancing the Energy Transition…
MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab seed to signal: Amplifying early-career faculty impact
The early years of faculty members’ careers are a formative and exciting time in which to establish a firm footing that helps determine the trajectory of researchers’ studies. This includes building a research team, which demands innovative ideas and direction, creative collaborators, and reliable resources. For a group of MIT faculty working with and on…
Can AI help predict which heart-failure patients will worsen within a year?
Characterized by weakened or damaged heart musculature, heart failure results in the gradual buildup of fluid in a patient’s lungs, legs, feet, and other parts of the body. The condition is chronic and incurable, often leading to arrhythmias or sudden cardiac arrest. For many centuries, bloodletting and leeches were the treatment of choice, famously practiced…
3 Questions: On the future of AI and the mathematical and physical sciences
Curiosity-driven research has long sparked technological transformations. A century ago, curiosity about atoms led to quantum mechanics, and eventually the transistor at the heart of modern computing. Conversely, the steam engine was a practical breakthrough, but it took fundamental research in thermodynamics to fully harness its power. Today, artificial intelligence and science find themselves at…
New MIT class uses anthropology to improve chatbots
Young adults growing up in the attention economy — preparing for adult life, with social media and chatbots competing for their attention — can easily fall into unhealthy relationships with digital platforms. But what if chatbots weren’t mere distractions from real life? Could they be designed humanely, as moral partners whose digital goal is to…
A better method for planning complex visual tasks
MIT researchers have developed a generative artificial intelligence-driven approach for planning long-term visual tasks, like robot navigation, that is about twice as effective as some existing techniques. Their method uses a specialized vision-language model to perceive the scenario in an image and simulate actions needed to reach a goal. Then a second model translates those…
3 Questions: Building predictive models to characterize tumor progression
Just as Darwin’s finches evolved in response to natural selection in order to endure, the cells that make up a cancerous tumor similarly counter selective pressures in order to survive, evolve, and spread. Tumors are, in fact, complex sets of cells with their own unique structure and ability to change. Today, artificial Intelligence and machine…
How Joseph Paradiso’s sensing innovations bridge the arts, medicine, and ecology
Joseph Paradiso thinks that the most engaging research questions usually span disciplines. Paradiso was trained as a physicist and completed his PhD in experimental high-energy physics at MIT in 1981. His father was a photographer and filmmaker working at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and the MITRE Corporation, so he grew up in a house where artists,…
Improving AI models’ ability to explain their predictions
In high-stakes settings like medical diagnostics, users often want to know what led a computer vision model to make a certain prediction, so they can determine whether to trust its output. Concept bottleneck modeling is one method that enables artificial intelligence systems to explain their decision-making process. These methods force a deep-learning model to use…
A “ChatGPT for spreadsheets” helps solve difficult engineering challenges faster
Many engineering challenges come down to the same headache — too many knobs to turn and too few chances to test them. Whether tuning a power grid or designing a safer vehicle, each evaluation can be costly, and there may be hundreds of variables that could matter. Consider car safety design. Engineers must integrate thousands…
Featured video: Coding for underwater robotics
During a summer internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Ivy Mahncke, an undergraduate student of robotics engineering at Olin College of Engineering, took a hands-on approach to testing algorithms for underwater navigation. She first discovered her love for working with underwater robotics as an intern at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2024. Drawn by the…
New method could increase LLM training efficiency
Reasoning large language models (LLMs) are designed to solve complex problems by breaking them down into a series of smaller steps. These powerful models are particularly good at challenging tasks like advanced programming and multistep planning. But developing reasoning models demands an enormous amount of computation and energy due to inefficiencies in the training process.…
Mixing generative AI with physics to create personal items that work in the real world
Have you ever had an idea for something that looked cool, but wouldn’t work well in practice? When it comes to designing things like decor and personal accessories, generative artificial intelligence (genAI) models can relate. They can produce creative and elaborate 3D designs, but when you try to fabricate such blueprints into real-world objects, they…
AI to help researchers see the bigger picture in cell biology
Studying gene expression in a cancer patient’s cells can help clinical biologists understand the cancer’s origin and predict the success of different treatments. But cells are complex and contain many layers, so how the biologist conducts measurements affects which data they can obtain. For instance, measuring proteins in a cell could yield different information about the…
Enhancing maritime cybersecurity with technology and policy
Originally from the small Balkan country of Montenegro, Strahinja (Strajo) Janjusevic says his life has unfolded in unexpected ways, for which he is deeply grateful. After graduating from high school, he was selected to represent his country in the United States, studying cyber operations and computer science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.…
Study: AI chatbots provide less-accurate information to vulnerable users
Large language models (LLMs) have been championed as tools that could democratize access to information worldwide, offering knowledge in a user-friendly interface regardless of a person’s background or location. However, new research from MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) suggests these artificial intelligence systems may actually perform worse for the very users who could most…
Exposing biases, moods, personalities, and abstract concepts hidden in large language models
By now, ChatGPT, Claude, and other large language models have accumulated so much human knowledge that they’re far from simple answer-generators; they can also express abstract concepts, such as certain tones, personalities, biases, and moods. However, it’s not obvious exactly how these models represent abstract concepts to begin with from the knowledge they contain. Now…
Parking-aware navigation system could prevent frustration and emissions
It happens every day — a motorist heading across town checks a navigation app to see how long the trip will take, but they find no parking spots available when they reach their destination. By the time they finally park and walk to their destination, they’re significantly later than they expected to be. Most popular…
Personalization features can make LLMs more agreeable
Many of the latest large language models (LLMs) are designed to remember details from past conversations or store user profiles, enabling these models to personalize responses. But researchers from MIT and Penn State University found that, over long conversations, such personalization features often increase the likelihood an LLM will become overly agreeable or begin mirroring…
New J-PAL research and policy initiative to test and scale AI innovations to fight poverty
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT has awarded funding to eight new research studies to understand how artificial intelligence innovations can be used in the fight against poverty through its new Project AI Evidence. The age of AI has brought wide-ranging optimism and skepticism about its effects on society. To realize…
Accelerating science with AI and simulations
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…
Using synthetic biology and AI to address global antimicrobial resistance threat
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…
AI algorithm enables tracking of vital white matter pathways
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…
3 Questions: Using AI to help Olympic skaters land a quint
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…
Study: Platforms that rank the latest LLMs can be unreliable
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…
“This is science!” – MIT president talks about the importance of America’s research enterprise on GBH’s Boston Public Radio
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…
Helping AI agents search to get the best results out of large language models
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…
Brian Hedden named co-associate dean of Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing
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…
Antonio Torralba, three MIT alumni named 2025 ACM fellows
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,…
3 Questions: Using AI to accelerate the discovery and design of therapeutic drugs
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…
Katie Spivakovsky wins 2026 Churchill Scholarship
MIT senior Katie Spivakovsky has been selected as a 2026-27 Churchill Scholar and will undertake an MPhil in biological sciences at the Wellcome Sanger Institute at Cambridge University in the U.K. this fall. Spivakovsky, who is double-majoring in biological engineering and artificial intelligence, with minors in mathematics and biology, aims to integrate computation and bioengineering…
Counter intelligence
How can artificial intelligence step out of a screen and become something we can physically touch and interact with? That question formed the foundation of class 4.043/4.044 (Interaction Intelligence), an MIT course focused on designing a new category of AI-driven interactive objects. Known as large language objects (LLOs), these physical interfaces extend large language models…
SMART launches new Wearable Imaging for Transforming Elderly Care research group
What if ultrasound imaging is no longer confined to hospitals? Patients with chronic conditions, such as hypertension and heart failure, could be monitored continuously in real-time at home or on the move, giving health care practitioners ongoing clinical insights instead of the occasional snapshots — a scan here and a check-up there. This shift from…
How generative AI can help scientists synthesize complex materials
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…
The philosophical puzzle of rational artificial intelligence
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…
The philosophical puzzle of rational artificial intelligence
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…
Why it’s critical to move beyond overly aggregated machine-learning metrics
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…
Why it’s critical to move beyond overly aggregated machine-learning metrics
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…
At MIT, a continued commitment to understanding intelligence
The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence (SQI), a research unit in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, brings together researchers from across MIT who combine their diverse expertise to understand intelligence through tightly coupled scientific inquiry and rigorous engineering. These researchers engage in collaborative efforts spanning science, engineering, the humanities, and more. SQI seeks…
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