Artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced dramatically in recent years, opening up numerous new possibilities. However, these developments also carry significant risks, notably in relation to cybersecurity, privacy, and human autonomy. These are not purely theoretical fears, but are becoming increasingly dependant on AI systems' growing sophistication.
Assessing the risks associated with AI involves evaluating performance across…
The task of optimizing the delivery of holiday packages is a complex issue for logistics companies like FedEx, which often leverages specialized software known as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) solver. This software breaks down complex optimization problems into smaller parts and employs generic algorithms to find the best solutions. However, this process can take…
Large language models (LLMs), such as those used in AI chatbots, are complex, and scientists are still trying to understand how they function. Researchers from MIT and other institutions conducted a study to understand how these models retrieve stored knowledge. They found that LLMs usually use a simple linear function to recover and decode information.…
Robots are becoming increasingly adept at handling complex household tasks, from cleaning messes to serving meals. However, their ability to handle unexpected disturbances or difficulties during these tasks has been a challenge. Common scenarios like a nudge or a slight mistake that deviates the robot from its expected path can cause the robot to restart…
At the "Generative AI: Shaping the Future" symposium, kickstarting MIT's Generative AI Week, iRobot co-founder and keynote speaker, Rodney Brooks, warned attendees not to overly idealise the potential of this emerging technology. Both OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard are examples of increasingly powerful tools underpinned by generative AI. Brooks emphasised that the unsubstantiated hype around…
Efficiently routing holiday packages is an intricate computational problem for delivery companies such as FedEx. So complex is the problem that companies often implement specialized software, termed a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) solver. Yet, the solver may take prolonged times to offer a solution, leading companies to conclude midway, settling for suboptimal solutions bounded by…
The capabilities of computer vision studies have been vastly expanded due to deep features, which can unlock image semantics and facilitate diverse tasks, even using minimal data. Techniques to extract features from a range of data types – for example, images, text, and audio – have been developed and underpin a number of applications in…
Research in materials science is increasingly focusing on the rapid discovery and characterization of materials with specific attributes. A key aspect of this research is the comprehension of crystal structures, which are naturally complex due to their periodic and infinite nature. This complexity presents significant challenges when attempting to model and predict material properties, difficulties…
iRobot co-founder and MIT Professor Emeritus, Rodney Brooks, warned about overestimating the capabilities of generative AI during a keynote speech at the "Generative AI: Shaping the Future” symposium. This marked the start of MIT’s Generative AI Week, which aimed to examine the potential of AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Generative AI refers to…
Companies like FedEx utilize intricate software to efficiently deliver holiday parcels, but these complex processes can often take hours or even days to complete. The software, known as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) solver, is often halted partway through by firms, accepting the best solution that can be gleaned in a particular timeframe, even if…
Speaking at MIT's "Generative AI: Shaping the Future" symposium, key speaker and iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks warned against overstating the capabilities of Generative AI, a form of machine-learning that produces new content based on its training data. With examples like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, Brooks cautioned of the consequence of believing that one technology…
Efficiently routing packages during the holiday season is a complex problem for companies like FedEx, a task often tackled with specialized software, known as mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) solvers. Although they break down the problem into smaller parts and use generic algorithms to find solutions, they could still take hours or days to complete.
MIT and…