MIT: Forcing ML Models to Avoid Shortcuts (and Use More Data) for Better Predictions

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — If your Uber driver takes a shortcut, you might get to your destination faster. But if a machine learning model takes a shortcut, it might fail in unexpected ways. In machine learning, a shortcut solution occurs when the model relies on a simple characteristic of a dataset to make a decision, rather […]

MIT: Blockchain Could Secure Robot Team Communications

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 5, 2021 — Imagine a team of autonomous drones equipped with advanced sensing equipment, searching for smoke as they fly high above the Sierra Nevada mountains. Once they spot a wildfire, these leader robots relay directions to a swarm of firefighting drones that speed to the site of the blaze. But what […]

May 6-7: AI Policy Forum to Present Proposals for Managing Impacts, Building More Equitable Systems

On Thursday, May 6 and Friday, May 7, the AI Policy Forum – a global effort convened by researchers from MIT – will present their initial policy recommendations aimed at managing the effects of AI and building AI systems that better reflect society’s values. Recognizing that there is unlikely to be any singular national AI […]

MIT: Researchers’ Algorithm Designs Soft Robots that Sense

CAMBRIDGE, MA — March 22, 2021 — There are some tasks that traditional robots — the rigid and metallic kind — simply aren’t cut out for. Soft-bodied robots, on the other hand, may be able to interact with people more safely or slip into tight spaces with ease. But for robots to reliably complete their […]

MIT Researchers: Promise for Nonsilicon Computer Transistors

For decades, one material has so dominated the production of computer chips and transistors that the tech capital of the world — Silicon Valley — bears its name. But silicon’s reign may not last forever. MIT researchers have found that an alloy called InGaAs (indium gallium arsenide) could hold the potential for smaller and more […]

SC20 Announces Record Number of Teams for Annual Student Cluster Competition

This year’s Student Cluster Competition at SC20 will include two firsts: it will involve the most number of teams (19) in the competition’s 14-year history, and it will for the first time be held completely virtually. “This year’s Student Cluster Competition will be very different, as it will be 100 percent cloud-based,” explained SC20 SCC […]

DOE, White House Announce Members of U.S. Quantum Advisory Committee

Technologists from the national labs, universities, federal agencies and industry have been named by the U.S. Department of Energy and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee (NQIAC). Announced today, the NQAIC’s mission is to “counsel the Administration on ways to ensure continued American leadership […]

ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Goes to Tel Aviv University Graduate

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today announced that Dor Minzer receives the 2019 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “On Monotonicity Testing and the 2-to-2-Games Conjecture.” The key contributions of Minzer’s dissertation are settling the complexity of testing monotonicity of Boolean functions and making a significant advance toward resolving the Unique Games Conjecture, […]

Intel, NSF Name Winners of Wireless Machine Learning Research Funding

Intel and the National Science Foundation (NSF), joint funders of the Machine Learning for Wireless Networking Systems (MLWiNS) program, today announced recipients of awards for research projects into ultra-dense wireless systems that deliver the throughput, latency and reliability requirements of future applications – including distributed machine learning computations over wireless edge networks. Here are the […]

CMU’s Jerry Wang Wins 2020 Frederick Howes Award

Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor Gerald “Jerry” Wang has been named the 2020 Frederick A. Howes Scholar in Computational Science for his work in nanoscale fluid flows. Wang, a fellow from 2014-2018, earned his mechanical engineering doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019. His thesis focused on the structure of fluids moving through confined spaces, especially in nanotubes thousands of times thinner than a hair.