As scientists push the boundaries of machine learning, the amount of time, energy, and money required to train increasingly complex neural network models is skyrocketing. A new area of artificial intelligence called analog deep learning promises faster computation with a fraction of the energy usage. Programmable resistors are the key building blocks in analog deep …
Scientists and engineers are constantly developing new materials with unique properties that can be used for 3D printing, but figuring out how to print with these materials can be a complex, costly conundrum. Often, an expert operator must use manual trial-and-error — possibly making thousands of prints — to determine ideal parameters that consistently print …
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Addressing and mitigating the effects of climate change requires a collective effort, bringing our strengths to bear across industry, government, academia, and civil society. As we continue to explore the role of technology to advance the art of the possible, we are launching the Microsoft Climate Research Initiative (MCRI). This community of multi-disciplinary researchers is …
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About a decade ago, deep-learning models started achieving superhuman results on all sorts of tasks, from beating world-champion board game players to outperforming doctors at diagnosing breast cancer. These powerful deep-learning models are usually based on artificial neural networks, which were first proposed in the 1940s and have become a popular type of machine learning. …
Read more “Explained: How to tell if artificial intelligence is working the way we want it to”
For workers who use machine-learning models to help them make decisions, knowing when to trust a model’s predictions is not always an easy task, especially since these models are often so complex that their inner workings remain a mystery. Users sometimes employ a technique, known as selective regression, in which the model estimates its confidence …
Read more “A technique to improve both fairness and accuracy in artificial intelligence”
They make restaurant recommendations, help us pay bills, and remind us of appointments. Many people have come to rely on virtual assistants and chatbots to perform a wide range of routine tasks. But what if a single dialog agent, the technology behind these language-based apps, could perform all these tasks and then take the conversation …
Read more “GODEL: Combining goal-oriented dialog with real-world conversations”
Physicians often query a patient’s electronic health record for information that helps them make treatment decisions, but the cumbersome nature of these records hampers the process. Research has shown that even when a doctor has been trained to use an electronic health record (EHR), finding an answer to just one question can take, on average, …
The entirety of the known universe is teeming with an infinite number of molecules. But what fraction of these molecules have potential drug-like traits that can be used to develop life-saving drug treatments? Millions? Billions? Trillions? The answer: novemdecillion, or 1060. This gargantuan number prolongs the drug development process for fast-spreading diseases like Covid-19 because …
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Using a novel fabrication process, MIT researchers have produced smart textiles that snugly conform to the body so they can sense the wearer’s posture and motions. By incorporating a special type of plastic yarn and using heat to slightly melt it — a process called thermoforming — the researchers were able to greatly improve the …
Swin Transformer, a Transformer-based general-purpose vision architecture, was further evolved to address challenges specific to large vision models. As a result, Swin Transformer is capable of training with images at higher resolutions, which allows for greater task applicability (left), and scaling models up to 3 billion parameters (right). Early last year, our research team from …