CSAIL
Shrinking Deep Learning’s Carbon Footprint
In June, OpenAI unveiled the largest language model in the world, a text-generating tool called GPT-3 that can write creative fiction, translate legalese into plain English, and answer obscure trivia questions. It’s the latest feat of intelligence achieved by deep learning, a machine learning method patterned after the way neurons in the brain process and store information. But it …
AI Systems That Work With Doctors And Know When To Step In
In recent years, entire industries have popped up that rely on the delicate interplay between human workers and automated software. Companies like Facebook work to keep hateful and violent content off their platforms using a combination of automated filtering and human moderators. In the medical field, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have used machine learning to help …
Potential COVID-19 Vaccines Get A Boost From Machine Learning
After what has started to feel like a boundless eternity of wearing masks, bathing in hand sanitizer, and dodging people in the grocery store, many of us have been left thinking: what would a COVID-19 vaccine look like? Different approaches to the challenge have looked at targeting the so-called “spike proteins” that cover the virus …
Rewriting History To Show The Danger Of Deepfakes
Can you recognize a digitally manipulated video when you see one? It’s harder than most people realize. As the technology to produce realistic “deepfakes” becomes more easily available, distinguishing fact from fiction will only get more challenging. A new digital storytelling project from CSAIL researcher D. Fox Harrell aims to educate the public about the world …
Giving Soft Robots Senses
One of the hottest topics in robotics is the field of soft robots, which utilizes squishy and flexible materials rather than traditional rigid materials. But soft robots have been limited due to their lack of good sensing. A good robotic gripper needs to feel what it is touching (tactile sensing), and it needs to sense …
Showing Robots How To Do Your Chores
Making progress on that vision, MIT researchers have designed a system that lets these types of robots learn complicated tasks that would otherwise stymie them with too many confusing rules. One such task is setting a dinner table under certain conditions. At its core, the researchers’ “Planning with Uncertain Specifications” (PUnS) system gives robots the …
Predicting How Well Neural Networks Will Scale
For all the progress researchers have made with machine learning in helping us doing things like crunch numbers, drive cars and detect cancer, we rarely think about how energy-intensive it is to maintain the massive data centers that make such work possible. Indeed, a 2017 study predicted that, by 2025, internet-connected devices would be using 20 …
“Sensorized” Skin Helps Soft Robots Find Their Bearings
For the first time, MIT researchers have enabled a soft robotic arm to understand its configuration in 3D space, by leveraging only motion and position data from its own “sensorized” skin. Soft robots constructed from highly compliant materials, similar to those found in living organisms, are being championed as safer, and more adaptable, resilient, and …