Category Artificial Intelligence

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 (Interaction Intelligence), an MIT course focused on designing a new category of AI-driven…

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…

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…

To what extent can an artificial system be rational? A new MIT course, 6.S044 (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.…

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.…

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.…

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…

Artificial 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…

Every 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…

The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work officially launched on Nov. 3, 2025, bringing together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore critical questions about economic opportunity, technology, and democracy. Co-directed by MIT…

What 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…

Some of designer C Jacob Payne’s projects present new, futuristic products — such as zero-gravity footwear for astronauts, and electronic-embedded ceramics — using technological tools and processes of digital fabrication, material innovation, and interactive interfaces. Other projects travel back in…

“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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Today, out of an estimated 1 trillion species on Earth, 99.999 percent are considered microbial — bacteria, archaea, viruses, and single-celled eukaryotes. For much of our planet’s history, microbes ruled the Earth, able to live and thrive in the most…

What if there were a way to solve one of the most significant obstacles to the use of nuclear energy — the disposal of high-level nuclear waste (HLW)? Dauren Sarsenbayev, a third-year doctoral student at the MIT Department of Nuclear Science…

During early development, tissues and organs begin to bloom through the shifting, splitting, and growing of many thousands of cells. A team of MIT engineers has now developed a way to predict, minute by minute, how individual cells will fold,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Two current MIT affiliates and seven additional alumni are among those named to the 2025 cohort of AI2050 Fellows.   Zongyi Li, a postdoc in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and Tess Smidt ’12, an associate professor of…

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…

There are some jobs human bodies just weren’t meant to do. Unloading trucks and shipping containers is a repetitive, grueling task — and a big reason warehouse injury rates are more than twice the national average. The Pickle Robot Company…

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…

In the future, tiny flying robots could be deployed to aid in the search for survivors trapped beneath the rubble after a devastating earthquake. Like real insects, these robots could flit through tight spaces larger robots can’t reach, while simultaneously…

A new computer modeling tool developed by an MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) research team will help infrastructure planners working in the electricity and other energy-intensive sectors better predict and prepare for future needs and conditions as they develop plans for…

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…

Norway is the world’s largest producer of farmed Atlantic salmon and a top exporter of seafood, while the United States remains the largest importer of these products, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Two MIT students recently traveled to…

Advancements in battery innovation are transforming both mobility and energy systems alike, according to Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery, propulsion, and sustainability at General Motors (GM). At the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Fall Colloquium, Kelty explored how GM is…

“MIT hasn’t just prepared me for the future of work — it’s pushed me to study it. As AI systems become more capable, more of our online activity will be carried out by artificial agents. That raises big questions: How…

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…

More than 300 people across academia and industry spilled into an auditorium to attend a BoltzGen seminar on Thursday, Oct. 30, hosted by the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (MIT Jameel Clinic). Headlining the event was MIT PhD…

There is growing attention on the links between artificial intelligence and increased energy demands. But while the power-hungry data centers being built to support AI could potentially stress electricity grids, increase customer prices and service interruptions, and generally slow the…

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can write an essay or plan a menu almost instantly. But until recently, it was also easy to stump them. The models, which rely on language patterns to respond to users’ queries, often failed…

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is the go-to method for designing most of today’s physical products. Engineers use CAD to turn 2D sketches into 3D models that they can then test and refine before sending a final version to a production line.…

“We’re here to talk about really substantive changes, and we want you to be a participant in that,” said Desirée Plata, the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Climate and Energy in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at…

What can we learn about human intelligence by studying how machines “think?” Can we better understand ourselves if we better understand the artificial intelligence systems that are becoming a more significant part of our everyday lives? These questions may be…

With global power demand from data centers expected to more than double by 2030, the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) in September launched an effort that brings together MIT researchers and industry experts to explore innovative solutions for powering the data-driven future.…

Adoption of new tools and technologies occurs when users largely perceive them as reliable, accessible, and an improvement over the available methods and workflows for the cost. Five PhD students from the inaugural class of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab…

Coding with large language models (LLMs) holds huge promise, but it also exposes some long-standing flaws in software: code that’s messy, hard to change safely, and often opaque about what’s really happening under the hood. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science…

A robot searching for workers trapped in a partially collapsed mine shaft must rapidly generate a map of the scene and identify its location within that scene as it navigates the treacherous terrain. Researchers have recently started building powerful machine-learning…

With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence, teachers and school leaders are looking for answers to complicated questions about successfully integrating technology into lessons, while also ensuring students actually learn what they’re trying to teach.  Justin Reich, an associate…

A recent study from Oregon State University estimated that more than 3,500 animal species are at risk of extinction because of factors including habitat alterations, natural resources being overexploited, and climate change. To better understand these changes and protect vulnerable wildlife,…

Managing a power grid is like trying to solve an enormous puzzle. Grid operators must ensure the proper amount of power is flowing to the right areas at the exact time when it is needed, and they must do this…

How can you use science to build a better gingerbread house? That was something Miranda Schwacke spent a lot of time thinking about. The MIT graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) is part of Kitchen Matters,…

On Oct. 20 during its annual meeting, the National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 100 new members, including MIT faculty members Dina Katabi and Facundo Batista, along with three additional MIT alumni. Election to the National Academy of…

When it comes to artificial intelligence, MIT and IBM were there at the beginning: laying foundational work and creating some of the first programs — AI predecessors — and theorizing how machine “intelligence” might come to be. Today, collaborations like…

It’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing trends of the fashion world. What’s “in” one minute is often out of style the next season, potentially causing you to re-evaluate your wardrobe. Staying current with the latest fashion styles can…

Say a person takes their French Bulldog, Bowser, to the dog park. Identifying Bowser as he plays among the other canines is easy for the dog-owner to do while onsite. But if someone wants to use a generative AI model…

MIT Music and Theater Arts fondly remembers the legacy of Professor Emerita Jeanne Shapiro Bamberger, who passed away peacefully at home in Berkeley, California, of natural causes on Dec. 12, 2024 at the age of 100.  For three decades at the…

Computational neuroscientist and singer/songwriter Kimaya (Kimy) Lecamwasam, who also plays electric bass and guitar, says music has been a core part of her life for as long as she can remember. She grew up in a musical family and played…

Oct. 16 is World Food Day, a global campaign to celebrate the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization 80 years ago, and to work toward a healthy, sustainable, food-secure future. More than 670 million people in the world are…

Manufacturing better batteries, faster electronics, and more effective pharmaceuticals depends on the discovery of new materials and the verification of their quality. Artificial intelligence is helping with the former, with tools that comb through catalogs of materials to quickly tag…

As costs for diagnostic and sequencing technologies have plummeted in recent years, researchers have collected an unprecedented amount of data around disease and biology. Unfortunately, scientists hoping to go from data to new cures often require help from someone with…

Innovator, futurist, and author Ray Kurzweil ’70 emphasized his optimism about artificial intelligence, and technological progress generally, in a lecture on Wednesday while accepting MIT’s Robert A. Muh Alumni Award from the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). Kurzweil…

The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) recently celebrated the launch of the MIT–MBZUAI Collaborative Research Program, a new effort to strengthen the building blocks of artificial intelligence and accelerate its…

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude have experienced a meteoric rise in usage over the past three years because they can help you with a wide range of tasks. Whether you’re writing Shakespearean sonnets, debugging code, or need an answer to…

For Priya Donti, childhood trips to India were more than an opportunity to visit extended family. The biennial journeys activated in her a motivation that continues to shape her research and her teaching. Contrasting her family home in Massachusetts, Donti…

Tokamaks are machines that are meant to hold and harness the power of the sun. These fusion machines use powerful magnets to contain a plasma hotter than the sun’s core and push the plasma’s atoms to fuse and release energy.…

MIT engineers have developed a printable aluminum alloy that can withstand high temperatures and is five times stronger than traditionally manufactured aluminum. The new printable metal is made from a mix of aluminum and other elements that the team identified…

For patients with inflammatory bowel disease, antibiotics can be a double-edged sword. The broad-spectrum drugs often prescribed for gut flare-ups can kill helpful microbes alongside harmful ones, sometimes worsening symptoms over time. When fighting gut inflammation, you don’t always want…

The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship announced that Ana Bakshi has been named its new executive director. Bakshi stepped into the role at the start of the fall semester and will collaborate closely with the managing director, Ethernet Inventors Professor…

The new TX-Generative AI Next (TX-GAIN) computing system at the Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center  (LLSC) is the most powerful AI supercomputer at any U.S. university. With its recent ranking from  TOP500, which biannually publishes a list of the top supercomputers in…

In part 2 of our two-part series on generative artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts, MIT News explores some of the ways experts are working to reduce the technology’s carbon footprint. The energy demands of generative AI are expected to continue increasing dramatically over…

Machine-learning models can speed up the discovery of new materials by making predictions and suggesting experiments. But most models today only consider a few specific types of data or variables. Compare that with human scientists, who work in a collaborative…

Annotating regions of interest in medical images, a process known as segmentation, is often one of the first steps clinical researchers take when running a new study involving biomedical images. For instance, to determine how the size of the brain’s…

Whitney Zhang ’21 believes in the importance of valuing workers regardless of where they fit into an organizational chart. Zhang is a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Economics studying labor economics. She explores how the technological and managerial decisions companies…

MIT Department of Mathematics researchers David Roe ’06 and Andrew Sutherland ’90, PhD ’07 are among the inaugural recipients of the Renaissance Philanthropy and XTX Markets’ AI for Math grants.  Four additional MIT alumni — Anshula Gandhi ’19, Viktor Kunčak…

The artificial intelligence models that turn text into images are also useful for generating new materials. Over the last few years, generative materials models from companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta have drawn on their training data to help researchers…

The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship strives to teach students the craft of entrepreneurship. Over the last few years, no technology has changed that craft more than artificial intelligence. While many are predicting a rapid and complete transformation in…

When OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world in 2022, it brought generative artificial intelligence into the mainstream and started a snowball effect that led to its rapid integration into industry, scientific research, health care, and the everyday lives of people…