Category Artificial Intelligence

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…

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…

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.…

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…

When researchers are building large language models (LLMs), they aim to maximize performance under a particular computational and financial budget. Since training a model can amount to millions of dollars, developers need to be judicious with cost-impacting decisions about, for…

For pregnant women, ultrasounds are an informative (and sometimes necessary) procedure. They typically produce two-dimensional black-and-white scans of fetuses that can reveal key insights, including biological sex, approximate size, and abnormalities like heart issues or cleft lip. If your doctor…

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) recently announced that it has selected MIT to establish a new research center dedicated to advancing the predictive simulation of extreme environments, such as those encountered in hypersonic flight and atmospheric…

Artificial intelligence optimization offers a host of benefits for mechanical engineers, including faster and more accurate designs and simulations, improved efficiency, reduced development costs through process automation, and enhanced predictive maintenance and quality control. “When people think about mechanical engineering, they’re…

3D printing has come a long way since its invention in 1983 by Chuck Hull, who pioneered stereolithography, a technique that solidifies liquid resin into solid objects using ultraviolet lasers. Over the decades, 3D printers have evolved from experimental curiosities…

Many attempts have been made to harness the power of new artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) to try to predict the outcomes of new chemical reactions. These have had limited success, in part because until now they have…

Synthetic data are artificially generated by algorithms to mimic the statistical properties of actual data, without containing any information from real-world sources. While concrete numbers are hard to pin down, some estimates suggest that more than 60 percent of data…

Caroline Uhler is an Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Engineering at MIT; a professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the Institute for Data, Science, and Society (IDSS); and director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the…

Every year, global health experts are faced with a high-stakes decision: Which influenza strains should go into the next seasonal vaccine? The choice must be made months in advance, long before flu season even begins, and it can often feel…

Environmental scientists are increasingly using enormous artificial intelligence models to make predictions about changes in weather and climate, but a new study by MIT researchers shows that bigger models are not always better. The team demonstrates that, in certain climate…

Cognitive readiness denotes a person’s ability to respond and adapt to the changes around them. This includes functions like keeping balance after tripping, or making the right decision in a challenging situation based on knowledge and past experiences. For military…

Back in the 17th century, German astronomer Johannes Kepler figured out the laws of motion that made it possible to accurately predict where our solar system’s planets would appear in the sky as they orbit the sun. But it wasn’t…

Using machine learning, MIT chemical engineers have created a computational model that can predict how well any given molecule will dissolve in an organic solvent — a key step in the synthesis of nearly any pharmaceutical. This type of prediction…

Within the past few years, models that can predict the structure or function of proteins have been widely used for a variety of biological applications, such as identifying drug targets and designing new therapeutic antibodies. These models, which are based…

Using artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have come up with a new way to design nanoparticles that can more efficiently deliver RNA vaccines and other types of RNA therapies. After training a machine-learning model to analyze thousands of existing delivery particles,…

With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat infections: drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using generative AI algorithms, the research team designed more than 36 million possible compounds and computationally…

“Manufacturing is the engine of society, and it is the backbone of robust, resilient economies,” says John Hart, head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) and faculty co-director of the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM). “With manufacturing a…

Is this movie review a rave or a pan? Is this news story about business or technology? Is this online chatbot conversation veering off into giving financial advice? Is this online medical information site giving out misinformation? These kinds of…

Any motorist who has ever waited through multiple cycles for a traffic light to turn green knows how annoying signalized intersections can be. But sitting at intersections isn’t just a drag on drivers’ patience — unproductive vehicle idling could contribute…

Four new faculty members join the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) this fall, offering the MIT community creativity, knowledge, and scholarship in multidisciplinary roles. “These individuals add considerable strength and depth to our faculty,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of…

Artificial intelligence is changing the way businesses store and access their data. That’s because traditional data storage systems were designed to handle simple commands from a handful of users at once, whereas today, AI systems with millions of agents need…

M.C. Escher’s artwork is a gateway into a world of depth-defying optical illusions, featuring “impossible objects” that break the laws of physics with convoluted geometries. What you perceive his illustrations to be depends on your point of view — for…

If you rotate an image of a molecular structure, a human can tell the rotated image is still the same molecule, but a machine-learning model might think it is a new data point. In computer science parlance, the molecule is…

Music technology took center stage at MIT during “FUTURE PHASES,” an evening of works for string orchestra and electronics, presented by the MIT Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program as part of the 2025 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC).  The well-attended…

In an office at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a soft robotic hand carefully curls its fingers to grasp a small object. The intriguing part isn’t the mechanical design or embedded sensors — in fact, the hand…

City life is often described as “fast-paced.” A new study suggests that’s more true that ever. The research, co-authored by MIT scholars, shows that the average walking speed of pedestrians in three northeastern U.S. cities increased 15 percent from 1980…

One of the shared, fundamental goals of most chemistry researchers is the need to predict a molecule’s properties, such as its boiling or melting point. Once researchers can pinpoint that prediction, they’re able to move forward with their work yielding…

Seven faculty in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) have been honored for their contributions through promotions, effective July 1. Three faculty promotions are in the Department of Architecture; three are in the Department of Urban Studies and…

In 2001, MIT became the first higher education institution to provide educational resources for free to anyone in the world. Fast forward 24 years: The Institute has now launched a dynamic AI-enabled website for its non-degree learning opportunities, making it…

AI image generation — which relies on neural networks to create new images from a variety of inputs, including text prompts — is projected to become a billion-dollar industry by the end of this decade. Even with today’s technology, if…

Let’s say you’re reading a story, or playing a game of chess. You may not have noticed, but each step of the way, your mind kept track of how the situation (or “state of the world”) was changing. You can…

As countries across the world experience a resurgence in nuclear energy projects, the questions of where and how to dispose of nuclear waste remain as politically fraught as ever. The United States, for instance, has indefinitely stalled its only long-term…

Large language models (LLMs) excel at using textual reasoning to understand the context of a document and provide a logical answer about its contents. But these same LLMs often struggle to correctly answer even the simplest math problems. Textual reasoning…

Imagine a future where artificial intelligence quietly shoulders the drudgery of software development: refactoring tangled code, migrating legacy systems, and hunting down race conditions, so that human engineers can devote themselves to architecture, design, and the genuinely novel problems still…

MIT researchers have developed a new theoretical framework for studying the mechanisms of treatment interactions. Their approach allows scientists to efficiently estimate how combinations of treatments will affect a group of units, such as cells, enabling a researcher to perform…

In order to produce effective targeted therapies for cancer, scientists need to isolate the genetic and phenotypic characteristics of cancer cells, both within and across different tumors, because those differences impact how tumors respond to treatment. Part of this work…

Generative artificial intelligence is transforming the ways humans write, read, speak, think, empathize, and act within and across languages and cultures. In health care, gaps in communication between patients and practitioners can worsen patient outcomes and prevent improvements in practice…

Marine scientists have long marveled at how animals like fish and seals swim so efficiently despite having different shapes. Their bodies are optimized for efficient, hydrodynamic aquatic navigation so they can exert minimal energy when traveling long distances. Autonomous vehicles…

For all their impressive capabilities, large language models (LLMs) often fall short when given challenging new tasks that require complex reasoning skills. While an accounting firm’s LLM might excel at summarizing financial reports, that same model could fail unexpectedly if…

Data and politics are becoming increasingly intertwined. Today’s political campaigns and voter mobilization efforts are now entirely data-driven. Voters, pollsters, and elected officials are relying on data to make choices that have local, regional, and national impacts. A Department of…

The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) is launching the Biswas Postdoctoral Fellowship Program to advance the work of outstanding early-career researchers in health and life sciences. Supported by a gift from the Biswas Family Foundation, the program…

Scientists are striving to discover new semiconductor materials that could boost the efficiency of solar cells and other electronics. But the pace of innovation is bottlenecked by the speed at which researchers can manually measure important material properties. A fully…

The explosive growth of AI-powered computing centers is creating an unprecedented surge in electricity demand that threatens to overwhelm power grids and derail climate goals. At the same time, artificial intelligence technologies could revolutionize energy systems, accelerating the transition to…