MIT
Probabilistic AI that knows how well it’s working | MIT News
Despite their enormous size and power, today’s artificial intelligence systems routinely fail to distinguish between hallucination and reality. Autonomous driving systems can fail to perceive pedestrians and emergency vehicles right in front of them, with fatal consequences. Conversational AI systems confidently make up facts and, after training via reinforcement learning, often fail to give accurate …
Should we tax robots? | MIT News
What if the U.S. placed a tax on robots? The concept has been publicly discussed by policy analysts, scholars, and Bill Gates (who favors the notion). Because robots can replace jobs, the idea goes, a stiff tax on them would give firms incentive to help retain workers, while also compensating for a dropoff in payroll …
Protecting maternal health in Rwanda | MIT News
The world is facing a maternal health crisis. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 810 women die each day due to preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Two-thirds of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. In Rwanda, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality is infected Cesarean section wounds. An interdisciplinary team …
Tiny Flying Lightning Bug Robot Technology Built By MIT
What do robotic lightning bugs have to do with cars and mobility? With flying cars and personal jetpacks positioned to be the next big thing in mobility, technology will need to discover more compact, lighter, and cheaper ways to move forward. These tiny flying robot fireflies, created at MIT, could be the root of a …
Emma Gibson: Optimizing health care logistics in Africa | MIT News
Growing up in South Africa at the turn of the century, Emma Gibson saw the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its devastating impact on her home country, where many people lacked life-saving health care. At the time, Gibson was too young to understand what a sexually transmitted infection was, but she knew that HIV …
Virtual worlds apart | MIT News
What is virtual reality? On a technical level, it is a headset-enabled system using images and sounds to make the user feel as if they are in another place altogether. But in terms of the content and essence of virtual reality — well, that may depend on where you are. In the U.S., for instance, …
A community approach to improving the health of the planet | MIT News
Earlier this month, MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) hosted a Health of the Planet Showcase. The event was the culmination of a four-year long community initiative to focus on what the mechanical engineering community at MIT can do to solve some of the biggest challenges the planet faces on a local and global scale. …
Breakthrough gene-editing technology belongs to Harvard, MIT -U.S. tribunal
The Harvard College arms sits atop a gate into Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts January 20, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Feb 28 (Reuters) – A U.S. tribunal overseeing patent disputes ruled on Monday that patents on the breakthrough gene-editing technology known as CRISPR belong …
Charting a new course | MIT News
When it comes to journeys to MIT, Manuel Morales, a doctoral candidate in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, has taken a different tack. As a high school student in Orlando, Florida, Morales admired the Navy, inspired by ideas of commitment and sacrifice for nation and family, as portrayed in old war movies …
On a quest through uncharted territory | MIT News
In his research and in other parts of life, Ankur Moitra likes to journey off the beaten path. His explorer mentality has brought him to at least one edge of the unknown — where he seeks to determine how machine learning, used in increasingly diverse and numerous applications, actually works. “Machine learning is eating up …
