MIT CSAIL
Robot, know thyself: New vision-based system teaches machines to understand their bodies
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 contains none. Instead, the entire system relies on a single camera that watches the robot’s…
A new way to edit or generate images
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 you wanted to make a fanciful picture of, say, a friend planting a flag on…
Can AI really code? Study maps the roadblocks to autonomous software engineering
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 beyond a machine’s reach. Recent advances appear to have nudged that future tantalizingly close, but…
AI shapes autonomous underwater “gliders”
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 can drift through the ocean in a similar way, collecting data about vast underwater environments….
Envisioning a future where health care tech leaves some behind
Will the perfect storm of potentially life-changing, artificial intelligence-driven health care and the desire to increase profits through subscription models alienate vulnerable patients? For the third year in a row, MIT’s Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize asked students to describe, in 3,000 words or fewer, how advancements in computing could shape human society for the better…
Teaching AI models the broad strokes to sketch more like humans do
When you’re trying to communicate or understand ideas, words don’t always do the trick. Sometimes the more efficient approach is to do a simple sketch of that concept — for example, diagramming a circuit might help make sense of how the system works. But what if artificial intelligence could help us explore these visualizations? While…
Hybrid AI model crafts smooth, high-quality videos in seconds
What would a behind-the-scenes look at a video generated by an artificial intelligence model be like? You might think the process is similar to stop-motion animation, where many images are created and stitched together, but that’s not quite the case for “diffusion models” like OpenAl’s SORA and Google’s VEO 2. Instead of producing a video…
At the core of problem-solving
As director of the MIT BioMicro Center (BMC), Stuart Levine ’97 wholeheartedly embraces the variety of challenges he tackles each day. One of over 50 core facilities providing shared resources across the Institute, the BMC supplies integrated high-throughput genomics, single-cell and spatial transcriptomic analysis, bioinformatics support, and data management to researchers across MIT. The BioMicro…
Introducing the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium
From crafting complex code to revolutionizing the hiring process, generative artificial intelligence is reshaping industries faster than ever before — pushing the boundaries of creativity, productivity, and collaboration across countless domains. Enter the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium, a collaboration between industry leaders and MIT’s top minds. As MIT President Sally Kornbluth highlighted last year, the…
AI model deciphers the code in proteins that tells them where to go
Proteins are the workhorses that keep our cells running, and there are many thousands of types of proteins in our cells, each performing a specialized function. Researchers have long known that the structure of a protein determines what it can do. More recently, researchers are coming to appreciate that a protein’s localization is also critical…
- 1
- 2