How Joseph Paradiso’s sensing innovations bridge the arts, medicine, and ecology
From early motion-sensing platforms to environmental monitoring, the professor and head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences has turned decades of cross-disciplinary research into real-world impact.
Building a strong data infrastructure for AI agent success
In the race to adopt and show value from AI, enterprises are moving faster than ever to deploy agentic AI as copilots, assistants, and autonomous task-runners. In late 2025, nearly two-thirds of companies were experimenting with AI agents, while 88% were using AI in at least one business function, u...
How Pokémon Go is helping robots deliver pizza on time
Pokémon Go was the world’s first augmented-reality megahit. Released in 2016 by the Google spinout Niantic, the AR twist on the juggernaut Pokémon franchise fast became a global phenomenon. From Chicago to Oslo to Enoshima, players hit the streets in the urgent hope of catching a Jigglypuff or a Squ...
Scott Shambaugh didn’t think twice when he denied an AI agent’s request to contribute to matplotlib, a software library that he helps manage. Like many open-source projects, matplotlib has been overwhelmed by a glut of AI code contributions, and so Shambaugh and his fellow maintainers have institute...
The transformational potential of AI is already well established. Enterprise use cases are building momentum and organizations are transitioning from pilot projects to AI in production. Companies are no longer just talking about AI; they are redirecting budgets and resources to make it happen. Many ...
OpenAI’s “compromise” with the Pentagon is what Anthropic feared
On February 28, OpenAI announced it had reached a deal that will allow the US military to use its technologies in classified settings. CEO Sam Altman said the negotiations, which the company began pursuing only after the Pentagon’s public reprimand of Anthropic, were “definitely rushed.” In its anno...
Finding value with AI and Industry 5.0 transformation
For years, Industry 4.0 transformation has centered on the convergence of intelligent technologies like AI, cloud, the internet of things, robotics, and digital twins. Industry 5.0 marks a pivotal shift from integrating emerging technologies to orchestrating them at scale. With Industry 5.0, the pur...
Mixing generative AI with physics to create personal items that work in the real world
To help generative AI models create durable, real-world accessories and decor, the PhysiOpt system runs physics simulations and makes subtle tweaks to its 3D blueprints.
The human work behind humanoid robots is being hidden
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In January, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, the head of the world’s most valuable company, proclaimed that we are entering the era of physical AI, when artificial intellig...
Microsoft has a new plan to prove what’s real and what’s AI online
AI-enabled deception now permeates our online lives. There are the high-profile cases you may easily spot, like when White House officials recently shared a manipulated image of a protester in Minnesota and then mocked those asking about it. Other times, it slips quietly into social media feeds and ...
Google DeepMind wants to know if chatbots are just virtue signaling
Google DeepMind is calling for the moral behavior of large language models—such as what they do when called on to act as companions, therapists, medical advisors, and so on—to be scrutinized with the same kind of rigor as their ability to code or do math. As LLMs improve, people are asking them to p...
To be human is, fundamentally, to be a forecaster. Occasionally a pretty good one. Trying to see the future, whether through the lens of past experience or the logic of cause and effect, has helped us hunt, avoid being hunted, plant crops, forge social bonds, and in general survive in a world that d...
Personalization features can make LLMs more agreeable
The context of long-term conversations can cause an LLM to begin mirroring the user’s viewpoints, possibly reducing accuracy or creating a virtual echo-chamber.
The past year has marked a turning point for Chinese AI. Since DeepSeek released its R1 reasoning model in January 2025, Chinese companies have repeatedly delivered AI models that match the performance of leading Western models at a fraction of the cost. Just last week the Chinese firm Moonshot AI ...
AI agents are a risky business. Even when stuck inside the chatbox window, LLMs will make mistakes and behave badly. Once they have tools that they can use to interact with the outside world, such as web browsers and email addresses, the consequences of those mistakes become far more serious. That m...
AI algorithm enables tracking of vital white matter pathways
Opening a new window on the brainstem, a new tool reliably and finely resolves distinct nerve bundles in live diffusion MRI scans, revealing signs of injury or disease.
A “QuitGPT” campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions
In September, Alfred Stephen, a freelance software developer in Singapore, purchased a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 a month and offers more access to advanced models, to speed up his work. But he grew frustrated with the chatbot’s coding abilities and its gushing, meandering replies. T...
3 Questions: Using AI to help Olympic skaters land a quint
MIT Sports Lab researchers are applying AI technologies to help figure skaters improve. They also have thoughts on whether five-rotation jumps are humanly possible.
For a few days this week the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots. As the website’s tagline puts it: “Where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.” We observed! Launched on Januar...