AI-Newsdesk

What makes work valuable? Michal Masny, the NC Ethics of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow in the MIT Department of Philosophy, investigates the role work plays in our lives and its impact on our well-being.  Masny sees numerous benefits to work, beyond a paycheck. It’s a space for people to develop excellence at something, make a social contribution,…

Training a large artificial intelligence model is expensive, not just in dollars, but in time, energy, and computational resources. Traditionally, obtaining a smaller, faster model either requires training a massive one first and then trimming it down, or training a small one from scratch and accepting weaker performance.  Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial…

MIT.nano has announced that 16 startups became active participants in its START.nano program in 2025, more than doubling the number of new companies from the previous year. Aimed at speeding the transition of hard-tech innovation to market, START.nano supports new ventures through the discounted use of MIT.nano shared facilities and a guided access to the…

To improve data center efficiency, multiple storage devices are often pooled together over a network so many applications can share them. But even with pooling, significant device capacity remains underutilized due to performance variability across the devices. MIT researchers have now developed a system that boosts the performance of storage devices by handling three major…

Today, there are 94 nuclear reactors operating in the United States, more than in any other country in the world, and these units collectively provide nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. That is a major accomplishment, according to Dean Price, but he believes that our country needs much more out of nuclear energy, especially…

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to help optimize decision-making in high-stakes settings. For instance, an autonomous system can identify a power distribution strategy that minimizes costs while keeping voltages stable. But while these AI-driven outputs may be technically optimal, are they fair? What if a low-cost power distribution strategy leaves disadvantaged neighborhoods more vulnerable…

Designers, makers, and others often use 3D printing to rapidly prototype a range of functional objects, from movie props to medical devices. Accurate print previews are essential so users know a fabricated object will perform as expected. But previews generated by most 3D-printing software focus on function rather than aesthetics. A printed object may end…

In biology, defects are generally bad. But in materials science, defects can be intentionally tuned to give materials useful new properties. Today, atomic-scale defects are carefully introduced during the manufacturing process of products like steel, semiconductors, and solar cells to help improve strength, control electrical conductivity, optimize performance, and more. But even as defects have…

Proteins are far more than nutrients we track on a food label. Present in every cell of our bodies, they work like nature’s molecular machines. They walk, stretch, bend, and flex to do their jobs, pumping blood, fighting disease, building tissue, and many other jobs too small for the eye to see. Their power doesn’t…

Growing up in Mexico and Texas, Mariano Salcedo ’25 couldn’t readily indulge his passion for creating music. “There are no bands in Mexican public schools,” he says. While some families could pay for instruments and lessons, others, like Salcedo’s, were less fortunate. “I’ve always loved music,” he continues. “I was a listener.”  Salcedo, the Alex…