MIT News about AI

• news
• artificial intelligence
• A.I.
• MIT

• MIT affiliates named 2026 Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Fellows

  Five MIT faculty members and two additional alumni are honored with fellowships to advance research on beneficial AI.

• Q&A: Hey AI, who should I vote for this year?

  MIT professors Adam Berinsky and Chara Podimata discuss a new project to track how AI chatbots are responding to questions about the 2026 U.S. midterm elections.

• 3 Questions: Why infrastructure is entering a defining era

  Professor Ali Jadbabaie describes how AI, digital transformation, climate change, and complex geopolitics are forcing engineers and policymakers to rethink how infrastructure is designed, built, and managed.

• Making machines that can listen

  Professor Paris Smaragdis develops computers with superhuman hearing for applications like speech recognition, music understanding, and environmental monitoring.

• Learner collaborates with MIT peers to develop book of AI insights

  Prabha Jha used her experience with MIT Open Learning’s program for senior executives to develop AI solutions for her employer, Verizon, and to write a book.

• At New York Climate Week 2026, MIT connects with a global network

  A cross-section of the MIT community convened discussions on topics ranging from data centers and super pollutants to agriculture and education.

• At MIT, Martha Minow speaks on sustaining democracy, both by using and overcoming AI

  In Compton Lecture, the distinguished legal scholar warns of potential “loss of the Enlightenment” while suggesting ways innovations can meet our civic and cultural needs.

• Reinforcing the value of human understanding at MIT

  During the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences’ 75th Anniversary Symposium, President Sally Kornbluth said “MIT has never needed your particular insight and guidance more than we do now.”

• Q&A: How AI came to model the “messy” human mind

  Assistant Professor Benjamin Lindquist studies how engineers deliberately injected randomness into early AI, giving rise to deep-learning models that sometimes hallucinate.

• This design software reimagines everyday objects as self-aware devices

  “X-Hinges” helps design and 3D print items like lamps and gloves with an interactive twist: automatically embedded sensors that perceive and adaptively respond to human contact.

• Why teaching AI about symmetry could make prenatal diagnosis more reliable

  A model developed by researchers at MIT and Boston Children's Hospital adjusts scans on the fly to track fetal movement, potentially sparing families repeat hospital visits.

• Giving AI a “crystal clear” view of the materials world

  New research can help AI models understand crystalline materials in 3D and reason about their properties.

• Fostering community amid Kendall Square’s innovation

  The 18th annual Kendall Square Association Annual Meeting explored how new technologies could be a force for shared prosperity in society.

• State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report finds corporate commitment at record high, but governance lags behind

  MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics finds sustainability commitments are strong, but governance gaps and external disruptions prevent execution.

• AI model decodes the language cells use to communicate

  A new computational approach reveals how cells communicate to assemble into tissues. This could accelerate stem cell engineering, improve disease models, and inform therapies.

• Q&A: The “collision” between AI, your brain, and society

  In a new book, Professor Eric So explores how the technology affects our thinking skills.

• Researchers improve weather forecasts looking two to six weeks out

  A new machine-learning approach broke records for weather forecasting for an important time frame in emergency planning.

• How artificial neural networks build their own learning machinery

  Machine-learning networks can learn without detailed instructions from a designer. Those that do may offer insight into how the brain reorganizes itself during learning.

• MIT Lincoln Laboratory hosts National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology

  Roadshow event highlights Massachusetts' defense-biotechnology ecosystem.

• Q&A: Building accountability behind our words — and AI’s — in civic conversations

  Professor Deb Roy contends there should be someone who is “answerable” for every piece of text in public life, no matter its origins.

• 3 Questions: What is the best path forward for AI in academia?

  MIT Statistics and Data Science Center Director Alexander (Sasha) Rakhlin shares important considerations for departments and institutions.

• Using AI to mitigate the growing environmental threat of data centers

  By rethinking how large cloud computing systems operate, Associate Professor Christina Delimitrou seeks to make data centers more energy efficient.

• Discovering the value of humanistic inquiry

  Students in MIT’s Concourse program delve deeply into the human condition, debate challenging questions, and learn to develop judgment about issues that can’t be quantified.

• Supercomputing researchers document evolution of AI hardware

  An ongoing survey tracks the latest AI accelerator systems to keep hardware relevant for Lincoln Laboratory staff and sponsors.

• Chris Bourg named vice provost and Barbara K. Ostrom (1978) Director of the MIT Libraries

  As director, Bourg has focused on digital access, open and equitable scholarly publishing, and expanded support for data-intensive research.

• MIT announces the MIT for America initiative, to strengthen STEM education across the country

  The effort aims to help U.S. learners from kindergarten to community college, with an emphasis on math, making, and the constructive use of AI.

• Computational tools for society’s most complex challenges

  Associate Professor Cathy Wu uses reinforcement learning to help map out improvements to transportation and other multifaceted systems.

• Documenting the tech worker movement

  Writing as a participant and researcher, PhD student JS Tan SM ’22 has co-authored a new book about the rise of tech worker protests and the employer backlash that followed.

• 3 Questions: A new resource to empower young entrepreneurs

  Martin Trust Center Managing Director Bill Aulet introduces Dear Dreamer, a free platform for middle and high school students who want to learn about entrepreneurship.

• New tool lets users repair AI-generated 3D models, then fabricate them just the way they want

  “InstructMesh” can generate designs for everyday objects that are easy to edit and fabricate for both experts and newcomers to 3D modeling.