Author: Ms. R.

Your brand new household robot is delivered to your house, and you ask it to make you a cup of coffee. Although it knows some basic skills from previous practice in simulated kitchens, there are way too many actions it could possibly take — turning on the faucet, flushing the toilet, emptying out the flour container, and so on. But there’s a tiny number of actions that could possibly be useful. How is the robot to figure out what……

Read More

Amid a huge amount of hype around generative AI, a new study from researchers at MIT sheds light on the technology’s impact on work, finding that it increased productivity for workers assigned tasks like writing cover letters, delicate emails, and cost-benefit analyses. The tasks in the study weren’t quite replicas of real work: They didn’t require precise factual accuracy or context about things like a company’s goals or a customer’s preferences. Still, a number of the study’s participants said……

Read More

Angela Koehler, associate professor of biological engineering, intramural faculty member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an institute member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, has been named faculty director of the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, effective July 1. “Professor Koehler is a truly gifted entrepreneur. Her extensive experience both launching and advising biotechnology companies will be instrumental as she helps many faculty and students bring their groundbreaking technologies from……

Read More

The following press release was issued by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. For researchers studying how proteins can cause human disease, knowing precisely where proteins are made within cells and tissues could help them learn about their role in disease and come up with new treatments. Now, researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed RIBOmap, a technique that lets them pinpoint and visualize the precise locations of thousands of proteins being……

Read More

Data, and more specifically using data, is not a new concept, but it remains an elusive one. It comes with terms like “the internet of things” (IoT) and “the cloud,” and no matter how often those are explained, smart people can still be confused. And then there’s the amount of information available and the speed with which it comes in. Software is omnipresent. It’s in coffeemakers and watches, gathering data every second. The question becomes how to take all……

Read More

Teachlab, a podcast about the art and craft of teaching from the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, is out with a new season called “Teacher Speech and the New Divide.” The new season explores issues like divisive concept laws, book bans, the history and legal framework of teacher speech, and the new challenges for teachers and teaching.  The podcast is hosted by Justin Reich, associate professor of digital media in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, director of the Teaching Systems Lab, and……

Read More

To support the worldwide struggle to reduce carbon emissions, many cities have made public pledges to cut their carbon emissions in half by 2030, and some have promised to be carbon neutral by 2050. Buildings can be responsible for more than half a municipality’s carbon emissions. Today, new buildings are typically designed in ways that minimize energy use and carbon emissions. So attention focuses on cleaning up existing buildings. A decade ago, leaders in some cities took the first……

Read More

A three-year research program led by faculty at MIT aims to design the world’s first fully integrated, continuous mRNA manufacturing platform, in an $82 million effort funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. The resulting pilot-scale system is intended to improve society’s ability to respond to future pandemics as well as accelerate the development and production of mRNA technologies, which companies are investing in at unprecedented scales in hopes of developing……

Read More

Many scholars, analysts, and other observers have suggested that resistance to innovation is an Achilles’ heel of authoritarian regimes. Such governments can fail to keep up with technological changes that help their opponents; they may also, by stifling rights, inhibit innovative economic activity and weaken the long-term condition of the country. But a new study co-led by an MIT professor suggests something quite different. In China, the research finds, the government has increasingly deployed AI-driven facial-recognition technology to surpress……

Read More