Adam Conner-Simons
World Economic Forum
United States
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Past articles by Adam:
Using AI to predict breast cancer and personalize care
MIT scientists have created a new deep-learning model that can predict from a mammogram if a patient is likely to develop breast cancer as much as five years in the future. → Read More
These robots can sort recycling
Trash companies sift through an estimated 68 million tons of recycling every year. But the process might one day become automated. → Read More
Robot precisely moves objects it’s never seen before
Imagine that you’re in your kitchen, and you’re trying to explain to a friend where to return a coffee cup. If you tell them to “hang the mug on the hook by its handle,” they have to make that happen by doing a fairly extensive series of actions in a very precise order: noticing the mug on the table; visually locating the handle and recognizing that that’s how it should be picked up; grabbing it… → Read More
Opening up open-source to design better chips
For all the progress that’s been made in open-source technology, there’s one area that hasn’t seen the same growth: hardware. For decades software has been updated and refined, with millions of programmers making breakthroughs that then get adopted halfway across the world. Meanwhile, the open-hardware community has existed for years but made minimal in-roads. According to MIT professor Arvind,… → Read More
Put any person in any pose
One of the most unique human qualities is imagination. If you can picture somebody in your head, you can probably picture them doing a range of different (hopefully PG-rated) activities. Machines, meanwhile, are inherently unimaginative. But researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have recently taken a step towards changing that: they’ve created a… → Read More
Fooling Google's image-recognition AI 1000x faster
By attacking even black-box systems w/hidden information, MIT CSAIL students show that hackers can break the most advanced AIs that may someday appear in TSA security lines and self-driving cars. Apps like Facebook often use neural networks for image recognition so that they can filter out inappropriate, violent, or lewd content. Groups like the TSA are even considering using them to detect… → Read More
Fooling neural networks w/3D-printed objects
Artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of “neural networks” are increasingly used in technologies like self-driving cars to be able to see and recognize objects. Such systems could even help with tasks like identifying explosives in airport security lines. But in many respects they're a black box, in the sense that researchers who develop them don’t know exactly how they work or how they could… → Read More
Creating interactive websites, apps with HTML
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL Ever wish your website could be edited right from the browser? A CSAIL team has developed “Mavo,” a language that lets you create and edit interactive websites and apps with nothing more than HTML. Mavo allows you to make websites editable and saveable to the cloud via Github, DropBox or other services. You can create a rough cut of an app or website in HTML, and… → Read More
3-D-printed robots with shock-absorbing skins
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL Anyone who’s watched drone videos or an episode of “BattleBots” knows that robots can break — and often it’s because they don’t have the proper padding to protect themselves. But this week researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will present a new method for 3-D printing soft materials that make robots safer and more… → Read More
Teaching machines to predict the future
Deep-learning vision system from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab anticipates human interactions using videos of TV shows. → Read More
MIT professor proves P=NP
CSAIL professor Erik Demaine solves the most notorious problem in theoretical computer science. → Read More
NASA gives CSAIL 6-ft-tall humanoid robot to develop software for future space missions
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL This week NASA announced that MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is one of just two institutions who will receive “R5,” a six-foot, 290-pound humanoid robot also known as “Valkyrie” that will serve on future space missions to Mars and beyond. A group led by CSAIL principal investigator Russ Tedrake will develop algorithms for… → Read More
CSAIL PhD takes 1 million photos of Boston skyline over 5 years
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL If a picture’s worth a thousand words, than Adrian Dalca is one seriously verbose researcher. Over the last five years, the CSAIL PhD student has been snapping away at the Boston skyline from his MIT apartment, taking approximately one million shots with an assortment of GoPros, phone cameras and point-and-shoots. The result: “Boston Timescape Project,” a… → Read More
CSAIL's World Wide Web consortium wins an Emmy!
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the global web-standards organization housed at CSAIL, received a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award on Friday for its work to make video content more accessible with text captioning and subtitles. The Emmy recognizes W3C’s Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) standard aimed at people with disabilities, and particularly people… → Read More
CSAIL-led team joins $10 million NSF grant
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL The next time a software maker tells you to update your favorite computer application immediately to fix serious defects or patch gaping security holes, don’t lose faith. Help is on the way. A team including associate professor Adam Chlipala of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) aims to exterminate software “bugs,” the maddening… → Read More
Deep-learning algorithm predicts photos’ memorability at “near-human” levels
Future versions of an algorithm from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab could help with teaching, marketing, and memory improvement. → Read More
CSAIL founder & computing pioneer Bob Fano turns 98
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL Today lab members celebrated the 98th birthday of Professor Emeritus Robert “Bob” Fano, who 52 years ago founded MIT’s Project MAC, the predecessor to CSAIL. In 1963 The Italian-born Fano co-founded Project MAC, a project focused on developing time-sharing computers. The project laid the foundation for many of today's software systems and helped the computer… → Read More
NASA gives CSAIL 6-ft-tall humanoid robot to develop software for future space missions
By Adam Conner-Simons, MIT CSAIL This week NASA announced that MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is one of just two institutions who will receive “R5,” a six-foot, 290-pound humanoid robot also known as “Valkyrie” that will serve on future space missions to Mars and beyond. A group led by CSAIL principal investigator Russ Tedrake will develop algorithms for… → Read More
VIDEO: Autonomous soft robot uses its "tongues" to jump, bounce and roll
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab have developed a soft robotic cube that uses a series of spring-loaded metal tongues to jump, bounce and roll along rocky terrain. The three-inch-wide, seven-ounce cube is able to jump more than a two-and-half times its height (upwards of eight inches vertically). Take that, Blake Griffin! The team believes that future… → Read More