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...
View ArticleGuided learning lets “untrainable” neural networks realize their potential
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...
View ArticleA “scientific sandbox” lets researchers explore the evolution of vision systems
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...
View ArticleHow the brain distinguishes oozing fluids from solid objects
Imagine a ball bouncing down a flight of stairs. Now think about a cascade of water flowing down those same stairs. The ball and the water behave very differently, and it turns out that your brain has...
View ArticleTeaching AI to communicate sounds like humans do
Whether you’re describing the sound of your faulty car engine or meowing like your neighbor’s cat, imitating sounds with your voice can be a helpful way to relay a concept when words don’t do the...
View ArticleStudy assesses seizure risk from stimulating the thalamus
The idea of electrically stimulating a brain region called the central thalamus has gained traction among researchers and clinicians because it can help arouse subjects from unconscious states induced...
View ArticleNatural language boosts LLM performance in coding, planning, and robotics
Large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly useful for programming and robotics tasks, but for more complicated reasoning problems, the gap between these systems and humans looms large....
View ArticleExposure to different kinds of music influences how the brain interprets rhythm
When listening to music, the human brain appears to be biased toward hearing and producing rhythms composed of simple integer ratios — for example, a series of four beats separated by equal time...
View ArticleCreating new skills and new connections with MIT’s Quantitative Methods Workshop
Starting on New Year’s Day, when many people were still clinging to holiday revelry, scores of students and faculty members from about a dozen partner universities instead flipped open their laptops...
View ArticleImage recognition accuracy: An unseen challenge confounding today’s AI
Imagine you are scrolling through the photos on your phone and you come across an image that at first you can’t recognize. It looks like maybe something fuzzy on the couch; could it be a pillow or a...
View ArticleThree MIT affiliates receive Schmidt awards
Two MIT faculty were recently honored by Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt. MathWorks Professor Jörn Dunkel received the 2023 Schmidt Science Polymath award, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New technique helps robots pack objects into a tight space
Anyone who has ever tried to pack a family-sized amount of luggage into a sedan-sized trunk knows this is a hard problem. Robots struggle with dense packing tasks, too.For the robot, solving the...
View ArticleStudy: Deep neural networks don’t see the world the way we do
Human sensory systems are very good at recognizing objects that we see or words that we hear, even if the object is upside down or the word is spoken by a voice we’ve never heard.Computational models...
View ArticleSummer research offers a springboard to advanced studies
Doctoral studies at MIT aren’t a calling for everyone, but they can be for anyone who has had opportunities to discover that science and technology research is their passion and to build the experience...
View ArticleMIT PhD student enhances STEM education in underrepresented communities in...
Taylor Baum knows that access is everything. So the fourth-year MIT PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science has been working in recent years to enhance STEM...
View ArticleComputational model mimics humans’ ability to predict emotions
When interacting with another person, you likely spend part of your time trying to anticipate how they will feel about what you’re saying or doing. This task requires a cognitive skill called theory of...
View ArticleNew insights into training dynamics of deep classifiers
A new study from researchers at MIT and Brown University characterizes several properties that emerge during the training of deep classifiers, a type of artificial neural network commonly used for...
View ArticleUnderstanding reality through algorithms
Although Fernanda De La Torre still has several years left in her graduate studies, she’s already dreaming big when it comes to what the future has in store for her.“I dream of opening up a school one...
View ArticleAI that can learn the patterns of human language
Human languages are notoriously complex, and linguists have long thought it would be impossible to teach a machine how to analyze speech sounds and word structures in the way human investigators do.But...
View ArticleThese neurons have food on the brain
A gooey slice of pizza. A pile of crispy French fries. Ice cream dripping down a cone on a hot summer day. When you look at any of these foods, a specialized part of your visual cortex lights up,...
View Article
