Author: Alex Ouyang
On algorithms, life, and learning
From enhancing international business logistics to freeing up more hospital beds to helping farmers, MIT Professor Dimitris Bertsimas SM ’87, PhD ’88 summarized how his work in operations research has helped drive real-world improvements, while delivering the 54th annual James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award Lecture at MIT on Thursday, March 19.Bertsimas also described how artificial intelligence is now being used in some of his scholarly projects and as a tool in MIT Open Learning efforts, which he currently directs — another facet of a highly productive and lauded career over four decades at the Institute. The Killian Award is the highest prize MIT gives its faculty.
“I have tried to improve the human condition,” Bertsimas said, summarizing the breadth of his work and the many applications to everyday living that he has found for it. Learn more
A better method for identifying overconfident large language models
Large language models (LLMs) can generate credible but inaccurate responses, so researchers have developed uncertainty quantification methods to check the reliability of predictions. One popular method involves submitting the same prompt multiple times to see if the model generates the same answer.But this method measures self-confidence, and even the most impressive LLM might be confidently wrong. Overconfidence can mislead users about the accuracy of a prediction, which might result in devastating consequences in high-stakes settings like health care or finance.
To address this shortcoming, MIT researchers introduced a new method for measuring a different type of uncertainty that more reliably identifies confident but incorrect LLM responses. Learn more
One Survivor’s AI Breakthrough Predicts Cancer Years Ahead
AI Decoded focusses on one of the most urgent, tangible uses of artificial intelligence: health care — we speak to Dr Regina Barzilay, an MIT professor who is building machine-learning AI models to predict disease. She herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, and has used that experience and knowledge to target her research towards prevention — the AI model she and her team built, named MIRAI, is now able to detect a patient’s risk of developing breast cancer within five years. Are we on the brink of a revolution in treating cancer for everyone? Find out on AI Decoded... Joining presenter Christian Fraser is AI Decoded co-host Stephanie Hare and the BBC's AI correspondent Marc Cieslak Learn more
Meet the newest Forbes 30 under 30
Gabriele Corso was a computer science PhD student at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where his research focused on the intersection of machine learning and molecular biology. His cofounder Saro Passaro was also a research scientist at MIT and previously worked at Meta. The two have trained AI models for predicting biomolecular structures and how molecules interact within the body, which could eventually help with drug discovery. Used by thousands of global organizations and downloaded more than 1M times, these open source models are the basis for Boltz, a company Corso and Passaro cofounded with Jeremy Wohlwend to improve therapeutic design using AI. Learn more
3 lessons from the biotech revolution that can shape U.S. innovation today
Nobel-Prize-winning scientist Phil Sharp could have easily never come to discover RNA splicing, which launched the biotechnology revolution, in 1977. In many ways, the odds were stacked against him: He grew up on a farm in rural Kentucky, he struggled with dyslexia, and neither of his parents had attended college.Still, his parents encouraged him to go to college, and he saved money for tuition from raising cattle and selling tobacco. Sharp’s grit, combined with an innovation ecosystem in the U.S. that invested in science, created the environment that led to a triumph not just for Sharp, but also America’s ability to innovate, according to Youseph Yazdi, assistant professor and executive director of the Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design at Johns Hopkins University.
At a recent screening of the documentary Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution, Yazdi and the film’s director, Bill Haney, discussed the key lessons from this breakthrough that can inform the way the U.S. approaches innovation in a new era of great power competition. Learn more
