Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact

Rapid development and deployment of powerful generative AI models comes with environmental consequences, including increased electricity demand and water consumption.

Teaching AI to communicate sounds like humans do

Inspired by the mechanics of the human vocal tract, a new AI model can produce and understand vocal imitations of everyday sounds. The method could help build new sonic interfaces for entertainment and education.

A new computational model can predict antibody structures more accurately

Using this model, researchers may be able to identify antibody drugs that can target a variety of infectious diseases.

Ecologists find computer vision models’ blind spots in retrieving wildlife images

Biodiversity researchers tested vision systems on how well they could retrieve relevant nature images. More advanced models performed well on simple queries but struggled with more research-specific prompts.

MIT researchers introduce Boltz-1, a fully open-source model for predicting biomolecular structures

With models like AlphaFold3 limited to academic research, the team built an equivalent alternative, to encourage innovation more broadly.

Study reveals AI chatbots can detect race, but racial bias reduces response empathy

Researchers at MIT, NYU, and UCLA develop an approach to help evaluate whether large language models like GPT-4 are equitable enough to be clinically viable for mental health support.

Lara Ozkan named 2025 Marshall Scholar

The MIT senior will pursue graduate studies in the UK at Cambridge University and Imperial College London.

MIT affiliates named 2024 Schmidt Futures AI2050 Fellows

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

Teaching a robot its limits, to complete open-ended tasks safely

The “PRoC3S” method helps an LLM create a viable action plan by testing each step in a simulation. This strategy could eventually aid in-home robots to complete more ambiguous chore requests.

AI in health should be regulated, but don’t forget about the algorithms, researchers say

In a recent commentary, a team from MIT, Equality AI, and Boston University highlights the gaps in regulation for AI models and non-AI algorithms in health care.