The Download: the Kids issue arrives, and Bill Gates reveals his AI fears
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the Kids issue If the desire to limit kids’ use of …
AI models flub these intelligence tests. Can you fare any better?
Puzzles and games have been central to AI development since the very beginning. Just as we humans like to test our smarts with crosswords or logic puzzles, developers can test how far models have advanced with a gaming g…
Raised on AI
When my oldest child was born, I immediately set up Gmail and Twitter accounts in her name. I broadly announced her birth online and proceeded to plaster her photo across all sorts of platforms. In short, I began creatin…
Bill Gates says we’ve passed AI’s danger thresholds. Now what?
It’s a glorious day in Kirkland, Washington, an affluent Seattle suburb on the eastern shore of Lake Washington. The temperature is in the mid-80s, and the sky is incapable of being any more blue. The view from the Gat…
MIT tech powered the Artemis II livestreams
During the original US missions to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s, astronauts relied on radio-frequency systems to communicate, sending grainy, low-quality images and videos to Earth. But on the Artemis II Orion miss…
Seeing through murky waters
When remotely operated vehicles settle on the seafloor or dig through a sand bed, they can kick up clouds of sediment that onboard cameras struggle to see through. Often, the only thing to do is wait until the dust settl…
Your brain on AI
Many people find AI-based chatbots helpful in keeping up with news, but a study by Pattie Maes and her colleagues at the MIT Media Lab points to a big problem with this strategy. Participants who evaluated paired n…
Amping up T cells to target cancer
Vaccines that turn the body’s immune system against tumors have shown promise in clinical trials, and a handful have been FDA approved for certain cancers. In many patients, however, these vaccines don’t stimulate en…
Taking your temperature from the inside
Oral and forehead thermometers may not accurately capture a person’s core body temperature, and the few ingestible temperature sensors on the market are so big they are hard to swallow and risk obstructing the GI tract…
AgeLab research inspires an A I startup
When Don Yansen ’63 arrived at the MIT AgeLab for a study on technology in caregiving for older adults, he didn’t plan to launch another company. But when he heard participants talk about how hard modern devices c…