Toward artificial intelligence that learns to write code
Learning to code involves recognizing how to structure a program, and how to fill in every last detail correctly. No wonder it can be so frustrating.A new program-writing AI, SketchAdapt, offers a way...
View ArticleHearing through the clatter
In a busy coffee shop, our eardrums are inundated with sound waves — people chatting, the clatter of cups, music playing — yet our brains somehow manage to untangle relevant sounds, like a barista...
View ArticlePerception of musical pitch varies across cultures
People who are accustomed to listening to Western music, which is based on a system of notes organized in octaves, can usually perceive the similarity between notes that are same but played in...
View ArticleJosh Tenenbaum receives 2019 MacArthur Fellowship
Josh Tenenbaum, a professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences who studies human cognition, has been named a recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship.The fellowships, often referred to...
View ArticleMaterials Day talks examine the promises and challenges of AI and machine...
The promises and challenges of artificial intelligence and machine learning highlighted the Oct. 9 MIT Materials Day Symposium, with presentations on new ways of forming zeolite compounds, faster drug...
View ArticleHelping machines perceive some laws of physics
Humans have an early understanding of the laws of physical reality. Infants, for instance, hold expectations for how objects should move and interact with each other, and will show surprise when they...
View ArticleThis object-recognition dataset stumped the world’s best computer vision models
Computer vision models have learned to identify objects in photos so accurately that some can outperform humans on some datasets. But when those same object detectors are turned loose in the real...
View ArticleDifferences between deep neural networks and human perception
When your mother calls your name, you know it’s her voice — no matter the volume, even over a poor cell phone connection. And when you see her face, you know it’s hers — if she is far away, if the...
View ArticleBridging the gap between human and machine vision
Suppose you look briefly from a few feet away at a person you have never met before. Step back a few paces and look again. Will you be able to recognize her face? “Yes, of course,” you probably are...
View ArticleDemystifying the world of deep networks
Introductory statistics courses teach us that, when fitting a model to some data, we should have more data than free parameters to avoid the danger of overfitting — fitting noisy data too closely, and...
View ArticleA new model of vision
When we open our eyes, we immediately see our surroundings in great detail. How the brain is able to form these richly detailed representations of the world so quickly is one of the biggest unsolved...
View ArticleTen from MIT awarded 2020 Fulbright Fellowships
Ten MIT students and recent alumni are recipients of awards from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. They will use their grants to conduct research, earn a graduate degree, or teach English abroad....
View ArticleUniversal musical harmony
Many forms of Western music make use of harmony, or the sound created by certain pairs of notes. A longstanding question is why some combinations of notes are perceived as pleasant while others sound...
View ArticleNine MIT School of Science professors receive tenure for 2020
Beginning July 1, nine faculty members in the MIT School of Science have been granted tenure by MIT. They are appointed in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, and...
View ArticleLooking into the black box
Deep learning systems are revolutionizing technology around us, from voice recognition that pairs you with your phone to autonomous vehicles that are increasingly able to see and recognize obstacles...
View ArticleKey brain region was “recycled” as humans developed the ability to read
Humans began to develop systems of reading and writing only within the past few thousand years. Our reading abilities set us apart from other animal species, but a few thousand years is much too short...
View ArticleStudy suggests animals think probabilistically to distinguish contexts
Among the many things rodents have taught neuroscientists is that, in a region called the hippocampus, the brain creates a new map for every unique spatial context — for instance, a different room or...
View ArticleNational Science Foundation announces MIT-led Institute for Artificial...
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today an investment of more than $100 million to establish five artificial intelligence (AI) institutes, each receiving roughly $20 million over...
View ArticleHow we make moral decisions
Imagine that one day you’re riding the train and decide to hop the turnstile to avoid paying the fare. It probably won’t have a big impact on the financial well-being of your local transportation...
View ArticleNeural pathway crucial to successful rapid object recognition in primates
MIT researchers have identified a brain pathway critical in enabling primates to effortlessly identify objects in their field of vision. The findings enrich existing models of the neural circuitry...
View ArticleHow humans use objects in novel ways to solve problems
Human beings are naturally creative tool users. When we need to drive in a nail but don’t have a hammer, we easily realize that we can use a heavy, flat object like a rock in its place. When our table...
View ArticleNeuroscientists find a way to make object-recognition models perform better
Computer vision models known as convolutional neural networks can be trained to recognize objects nearly as accurately as humans do. However, these models have one significant flaw: Very small changes...
View ArticleProfessor Antonio Torralba elected 2021 AAAI Fellow
Antonio Torralba, faculty head of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making within the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of...
View ArticleJames DiCarlo named director of the MIT Quest for Intelligence
James DiCarlo, the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience, has been appointed to the role of director of the MIT Quest for Intelligence. MIT Quest was launched in 2018 to discover the basis of...
View ArticleHow the brain navigates cities
Everyone knows the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. However, when you’re walking along city streets, a straight line may not be possible. How do you decide which way to go?A new...
View ArticleArtificial networks learn to smell like the brain
Using machine learning, a computer model can teach itself to smell in just a few minutes. When it does, researchers have found, it builds a neural network that closely mimics the olfactory circuits...
View ArticleArtificial intelligence sheds light on how the brain processes language
In the past few years, artificial intelligence models of language have become very good at certain tasks. Most notably, they excel at predicting the next word in a string of text; this technology helps...
View ArticleGiving robots social skills
Robots can deliver food on a college campus and hit a hole-in-one on the golf course, but even the most sophisticated robot can’t perform basic social interactions that are critical to everyday human...
View ArticleA key brain region responds to faces similarly in infants and adults
Within the visual cortex of the adult brain, a small region is specialized to respond to faces, while nearby regions show strong preferences for bodies or for scenes such as landscapes.Neuroscientists...
View ArticlePerfecting pitch perception
New research from MIT neuroscientists suggests that natural soundscapes have shaped our sense of hearing, optimizing it for the kinds of sounds we most often encounter.In a study reported Dec. 14 in...
View ArticleWhere did that sound come from?
The human brain is finely tuned not only to recognize particular sounds, but also to determine which direction they came from. By comparing differences in sounds that reach the right and left ear, the...
View ArticleNancy Kanwisher wins National Academy of Sciences Award in the Neurosciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced that Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, has received...
View ArticleSinging in the brain
For the first time, MIT neuroscientists have identified a population of neurons in the human brain that lights up when we hear singing, but not other types of music.These neurons, found in the auditory...
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The benefits of peripheral vision for machines
Perhaps computer vision and human vision have more in common than meets the eye?Research from MIT suggests that a certain type of robust computer-vision model perceives visual representations similarly...
View ArticleLawrence Udeigwe uses elegant math to understand complex systems of the brain
It’s a tale familiar to many first-generation students: Neither of Lawrence Udeigwe’s parents had more than a sixth-grade education, and yet they were willing to sacrifice everything to educate their...
View ArticleA voice for change — in Spanish
Jessica Chomik-Morales had a bicultural childhood. She was born in Boca Raton, Florida, where her parents had come seeking a better education for their daughter than she would have access to in...
View ArticleArtificial neural networks model face processing in autism
Many of us easily recognize emotions expressed in others’ faces. A smile may mean happiness, while a frown may indicate anger. Autistic people often have a more difficult time with this task. It’s...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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...
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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 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 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 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 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...
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