AI News
Meta adds another 650 MW of solar power to its AI push
The company already has more than 12 gigawatts of capacity in its renewable power portfolio.
Could AI understand emotions better than we do?
Is artificial intelligence (AI) capable of suggesting appropriate behavior in emotionally charged situations? A team put six generative AIs -- including ChatGPT -- to the test using emotional intelligence (EI) assessments typically designed for humans. The outcome: these AIs outperformed average human performance and were even able to generate new tests in record time. These findings open up new possibilities for AI in education, coaching, and conflict management.
AI learns how vision and sound are connected, without human intervention
This new machine-learning model can match corresponding audio and visual data, which could someday help robots interact in the real world.
Learning how to predict rare kinds of failures
Researchers are developing algorithms to predict failures when automation meets the real world in areas like air traffic scheduling or autonomous vehicles.
The sweet taste of a new idea
Sendhil Mullainathan brings a lifetime of unique perspectives to research in behavioral economics and machine learning.
AI chip developed for decentralized use without the cloud
A new AI chip works without the cloud server or internet connections needed by existing chips. The AI Pro, designed by Prof Hussam Amrouch, is modelled on the human brain. Its innovative neuromorphic architecture enables it to perform calculations on the spot, ensuring full cyber security. It is also up to ten times more energy efficient.
With evolutionary AI, scientists find hidden keys for better land use
A new AI decision making tool effectively balances various complex trade-offs to recommend ways of maximizing carbon storage, minimizing economic disruptions and helping improve the environment and people's everyday lives. It uses evolutionary AI, a kind of digital version of biological natural selection, to optimize policies in the face of competing priorities.
AI overconfidence mirrors human brain condition
Agents, chatbots and other tools based on artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly used in everyday life by many. So-called large language model (LLM)-based agents, such as ChatGPT and Llama, have become impressively fluent in the responses they form, but quite often provide convincing yet incorrect information. Researchers draw parallels between this issue and a human language disorder known as aphasia, where sufferers may speak fluently but make meaningless or hard-to-understand statements. This similarity could point toward better forms of diagnosis for aphasia, and even provide insight to AI engineers seeking to improve LLM-based agents.
With AI, researchers predict the location of virtually any protein within a human cell
Trained with a joint understanding of protein and cell behavior, the model could help with diagnosing disease and developing new drugs.
Study shows vision-language models can’t handle queries with negation words
Words like “no” and “not” can cause this popular class of AI models to fail unexpectedly in high-stakes settings, such as medical diagnosis.
MIT Department of Economics to launch James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
With support from the Stone Foundation, the center will advance cutting-edge research and inform policy.
AI meets the conditions for having free will -- we need to give it a moral compass
AI is advancing at such speed that speculative moral questions, once the province of science fiction, are suddenly real and pressing, says a philosopher and psychology researcher Frank Martela. Martela's latest study finds that generative AI meets all three of the philosophical conditions of free will -- the ability to have goal-directed agency, make genuine choices and to have control over its actions. This development brings us to a critical point in human history, as we give AI more power and freedom, potentially in life or death situations.
Amuse, a songwriting AI-collaborator to help create music
Researchers have developed AI technology similar to a fellow songwriter who helps create music.
AI tool uses face photos to estimate biological age and predict cancer outcomes
Researchers developed FaceAge, an AI tool that calculate's a patient biological age from a photo of their face. In a new study, the researchers tied FaceAge results to health outcomes in people with cancer: When FaceAge estimated a younger age than a cancer patient's chronological age, the patient did significantly better after cancer treatment, whereas patients with older FaceAge estimates had worse survival outcomes.
Is AI truly creative? Turns out creativity is in the eye of the beholder
What makes people think an AI system is creative? New research shows that it depends on how much they see of the creative act. The findings have implications for how we research and design creative AI systems, and they also raise fundamental questions about how we perceive creativity in other people.
AI-designed DNA controls genes in healthy mammalian cells for first time
A recent study marks the first reported instance of generative AI designing synthetic molecules that can successfully control gene expression in healthy mammalian cells. As a proof-of-concept, the authors of the study asked the AI to design synthetic fragments which activate a gene coding for a fluorescent protein in some cells while leaving gene expression patterns unaltered. They created the fragments from scratch and dropped them into mouse blood cells, where the sequence fused with the genome at random locations. The experiments worked exactly as predicted and pave the way for new strategies to give instructions to a cell and guide how they develop and behave with unprecedented accuracy.
Breakthrough discovery uses gut bacteria and AI to diagnose a chronic pain syndrome
Researchers have developed AI technology that can detect patterns in gut bacteria to identify complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) with remarkable accuracy, potentially transforming how CRPS is diagnosed and treated.
How AI tools can improve manufacturing worker safety, product quality
Recent artificial intelligence advances have largely focused on text, but AI increasingly shows promise in other contexts, including manufacturing and the service industry. In these sectors, targeted AI improvements can improve product quality and worker safety, according to a new study.
Hybrid AI model crafts smooth, high-quality videos in seconds
The CausVid generative AI tool uses a diffusion model to teach an autoregressive (frame-by-frame) system to rapidly produce stable, high-resolution videos.
Text-to-video AI blossoms with new metamorphic video capabilities
Computer scientists have developed a new AI text-to-video model that learns real-world physics knowledge from time-lapse videos.