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.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said that AI could surpass “almost all humans at almost everything” shortly after 2027. While AI’s capabilities are certainly improving, such rapid progress might seem at odds with findings that show AI is still failing at 95%+ of remote freelance projects, and continues to struggle with hallucination, long term planning, and forms of abstract reasoning that humans find easy. But recent work from METR has found evidence that LLMs can gain capabilities in rapid surges — jumping from succeeding almost never to almost always in just a few years. If this is true across the economy, it could mean that workers could be blindsided by AI advances.

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.

Each spring, river herring populations migrate from Massachusetts coastal waters to begin their annual journey up rivers and streams to freshwater spawning habitat. River herring have faced severe population declines over the past several decades, and their migration is extensively monitored across the region, primarily through traditional visual counting and volunteer-based programs.

Characterized by weakened or damaged heart musculature, heart failure results in the gradual buildup of fluid in a patient’s lungs, legs, feet, and other parts of the body. The condition is chronic and incurable, often leading to arrhythmias or sudden cardiac arrest. For many centuries, bloodletting and leeches were the treatment of choice, famously practiced by barber surgeons in Europe, during a time when physicians rarely operated on patients. 

Young adults growing up in the attention economy — preparing for adult life, with social media and chatbots competing for their attention — can easily fall into unhealthy relationships with digital platforms. But what if chatbots weren’t mere distractions from real life? Could they be designed humanely, as moral partners whose digital goal is to be a social guide rather than an addictive escape?

Imagine a world where you could change the designs you see on bags, shirts, and walls whenever you want. Typical clothes would become customizable fashion pieces, while your humble abode could turn into a smart home. That’s the vision of scientists like MIT PhD student Yunyi Zhu ’20, MEng ’21: technology that can “reprogram” the appearance of personal accessories, home decor, and office items.

In high-stakes settings like medical diagnostics, users often want to know what led a computer vision model to make a certain prediction, so they can determine whether to trust its output.

Flying on Mars — or any other world — is an extraordinary challenge. An autonomous spacecraft, operating millions of miles from pilots or engineers who could intervene on Earth, must be able to navigate unfamiliar and changing environments, avoid obstacles, land on uncertain terrain, and make decisions entirely on its own. Every maneuver depends on careful perception, planning, and control systems that are fault-tolerant, allowing the craft to recover if something goes wrong. A single miscalculation can leave a multi-million dollar spacecraft face-down on the surface, ending the mission before it even begins.

Ever had an idea for something that looked cool, but wouldn’t work well in practice? When it comes to designing things like decor and personal accessories, generative artificial intelligence (genAI) models can relate. They can produce creative and elaborate 3D designs, but when you try to fabricate such blueprints into real-world objects, they usually don’t sustain everyday use.