It’s become a truism that facts alone don’t change people’s minds. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to conspiracy theories: Many people believe that you can’t talk conspiracists out of their beliefs.  But that’s not necessarily true. It turns out that many conspiracy believers do respond to [...]

Are you feeling it? I hear it’s close: two years, five years—maybe next year! And I hear it’s going to change everything: it will cure disease, save the planet, and usher in an age of abundance. It will solve our biggest problems in ways we cannot yet imagine. It will redefine [...]

Four years is a lifetime when it comes to artificial intelligence. Since the first edition of this study was published in 2021, AI’s capabilities have been advancing at speed, and the advances have not slowed since generative AI’s breakthrough. For example, multimodality— the ability to process information not only as [...]

Researchers at Tsinghua University developed the Optical Feature Extraction Engine (OFE2), an optical engine that processes data at 12.5 GHz using light rather than electricity. Its integrated diffraction and data preparation modules enable unprecedented speed and efficiency for AI tasks. Demonstrations in imaging and trading showed improved accuracy, lower latency, [...]

How can you use science to build a better gingerbread house?That was something Miranda Schwacke spent a lot of time thinking about. The MIT graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) is part of Kitchen Matters, a group of grad students who use food and kitchen tools [...]

On Oct. 20 during its annual meeting, the National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 100 new members, including MIT faculty members Dina Katabi and Facundo Batista, along with three additional MIT alumni.Election to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is considered one of the highest honors in the [...]

A wireless eye implant developed at Stanford Medicine has restored reading ability to people with advanced macular degeneration. The PRIMA chip works with smart glasses to replace lost photoreceptors using infrared light. Most trial participants regained functional vision, reading books and recognizing signs. Researchers are now developing higher-resolution versions that [...]

Researchers at the University of Surrey developed an AI that predicts what a person’s knee X-ray will look like in a year, helping track osteoarthritis progression. The tool provides both a visual forecast and a risk score, offering doctors and patients a clearer understanding of the disease. Faster and more [...]

When it comes to artificial intelligence, MIT and IBM were there at the beginning: laying foundational work and creating some of the first programs — AI predecessors — and theorizing how machine “intelligence” might come to be.Today, collaborations like the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, which launched eight years ago, are [...]

It’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing trends of the fashion world. What’s “in” one minute is often out of style the next season, potentially causing you to re-evaluate your wardrobe.Staying current with the latest fashion styles can be wasteful and expensive, though. Roughly 92 million tons of textile waste [...]

UMass Amherst engineers have built an artificial neuron powered by bacterial protein nanowires that functions like a real one, but at extremely low voltage. This allows for seamless communication with biological cells and drastically improved energy efficiency. The discovery could lead to bio-inspired computers and wearable electronics that no longer [...]