August 26, 2020 - 10:30 am
IAIFI will advance physics knowledge — from the smallest building blocks of nature to the largest structures in the universe — and galvanize AI research innovation.
by Laboratory for Nuclear Science
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today an investment of more than $100 million to establish five artificial intelligence (AI) institutes, each receiving roughly $20 million over five years. One of these, the NSF AI Institute...
August 26, 2020 - 9:00 am
Study finds that the fusiform face area is active when blind people touch 3D models of faces.
by Anne Trafton | MIT News Office
More than 20 years ago, neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher and others discovered that a small section of the brain located near the base of the skull responds much more strongly to faces than to other objects we see. This area, known as the fusiform face area, is believed to be specialized for identifying faces.
Now, in a...
August 24, 2020 - 9:00 am
Description:
Up until now, we’ve been smarter than our tools. But that might change drastically sooner than we know. Isn’t it time to think about that?
August 19, 2020 - 11:45 am
New book from the MIT Press explains how to 'Speak and Write to Persuade and Inform'
The MIT Press
Announcement from the MIT Press: Make it Clear by legendary MIT professor Patrick Henry Wilson to publish September 22nd
"He had an uncanny ability to synthesize seemingly disparate ideas into clear, concise, didactic, and impactful statements, combined with an original and distinct way of thinking." - Gabriel Kreiman, Harvard University
"At the...
August 14, 2020 - 8:45 am
New statistical model may help scientists understand how animals infer whether surroundings are novel or haven’t changed enough to be a new context.
by David Orenstein | Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
Among the many things rodents have taught neuroscientists is that, in a region called the hippocampus, the brain creates a new map for every unique spatial context — for instance, a different room or maze. But scientists have so far...
August 7, 2020 - 11:30 am
The Herbert A. Simon Prize recognizes scientists who have made important and sustained contributions to understanding human and machine intelligence through the design, creation, and study of computational artifacts that exhibit high-level cognition.
The Cognitive Systems Foundation and the Herbert Simon Society co-sponsor the Prize, which comes with a cash award of $10,000. Last year, after considering some excellent...
August 4, 2020 - 10:00 am
Part of the visual cortex dedicated to recognizing objects appears predisposed to identifying words and letters, a study finds.
Anne Trafton | MIT News Office
Humans began to develop systems of reading and writing only within the past few thousand years. Our reading abilities set us apart from other animal species, but a few thousand years is much too short a timeframe for our brains to have evolved new areas specifically devoted to reading.
To...
August 2, 2020 - 1:45 pm
MIT researchers’ new theory illuminates machine learning’s black box.
by Cami Rosso
The resurgence of artificial intelligence (AI) is largely due to advances in pattern-recognition due to deep learning, a form of machine learning that does not require explicit hard-coding. The architecture of deep neural networks is somewhat inspired by the biological brain and neuroscience. Like the biological brain, the inner workings of exactly why deep...
July 21, 2020 - 10:45 am
Recent advances give theoretical insight into why deep learning networks are successful
By Sabbi Lall, McGovern Institute
Deep learning systems are revolutionizing technology around us, from voice recognition that pairs you with your phone to autonomous vehicles that are increasingly able to see and recognize obstacles ahead. But much of this success involves trial and error when it comes to the deep learning networks themselves. A group of MIT...
July 14, 2020 - 8:45 am
The following article is about a science outreach programs organized by the CBMM Outreach Coordinator Mandana Sassanfar with the participation of our Nancy Kanwisher.
The science program for local high school students is remote this year, as MIT instructors create at-home lab experiences.
by Raleigh McElvery | Department of Biology
A kickoff event on June 24 commenced a summer of science for local high school students. Established in 2017 as a...
July 1, 2020 - 12:15 pm
Acoustic and biological constraints shape how we hear harmony across cultures.
Watch Video
Sabbi Lall | McGovern Institute for Brain Research
Many forms of Western music make use of harmony, or the sound created by certain pairs of notes. A longstanding question is why some combinations of notes are perceived as pleasant while others sound jarring to the ear. Are the combinations we favor a universal phenomenon? Or are they specific to Western...
June 25, 2020 - 1:15 pm
The following story contains direct information on research efforts by CBMM PIs Antonio Torralba and Joshua Tenenbaum released in a jointly authored paper - https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09476
Music gesture artificial intelligence tool developed at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab uses body movements to isolate the sounds of individual instruments.
Kim Martineau | MIT Quest for Intelligence
We listen to music with our ears, but also our eyes,...
June 23, 2020 - 2:00 pm
Zoom
Marco Baroni, Facebook AI Research (Paris) and Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (Barcelona...
Title:
Is compositionality over-rated? A view from emergent neural network language analysis
Abstract:
Compositionality is the property whereby linguistic expressions that denote new composite meanings are derived by a rule-based combination of expressions denoting their parts. Linguists agree that...
Is compositionality over-rated? A view from emergent neural network language analysis
Abstract:
Compositionality is the property whereby linguistic expressions that denote new composite meanings are derived by a rule-based combination of expressions denoting their parts. Linguists agree that...
June 22, 2020 - 1:15 pm
The following story contains information on infant research conducted by CBMM PI Rebecca Saxe. The Netflix series discussed also features CBMM PI Laura Schulz and her research with toddlers - https://www.netflix.com/babies.
Babies' brains light up when they see someone they love – plus more lessons learned from the show's second season
By Victoria Richards
...Babies’ brains are the same as adult brains.
Rebecca Saxe, Professor of Neuroscience at...
June 9, 2020 - 2:00 pm
Zoom
Hossein Mobahi, Google Research
TITLE:
Improving Generalization Performance by Self-Training and Self-Distillation
ABSTRACT:
In supervised learning we often seek a model which minimizes (to epsilon optimality) a loss function over a training set, possibly subject to some (implicit or explicit) regularization. Suppose you train...
Improving Generalization Performance by Self-Training and Self-Distillation
ABSTRACT:
In supervised learning we often seek a model which minimizes (to epsilon optimality) a loss function over a training set, possibly subject to some (implicit or explicit) regularization. Suppose you train...