We've tested the best cheap phones on the market, including models from Samsung, Google, Motorola, and more, and these are most worthy of your money. [...]

The Segway Max G2 is a great, eco-friendly way to run errands, joyride through the park, or commute to work or class this fall. What's more, Best Buy is offering it for $600 off. [...]

A crowd gathered at the MIT Media Lab in September for a concert by musician Jordan Rudess and two collaborators. One of them, violinist and vocalist Camilla Bäckman, has performed with Rudess before. The other — an artificial intelligence model informally dubbed the jam_bot, which Rudess developed with an MIT [...]

For roboticists, one challenge towers above all others: generalization — the ability to create machines that can adapt to any environment or condition. Since the 1970s, the field has evolved from writing sophisticated programs to using deep learning, teaching robots to learn directly from human behavior. But a critical bottleneck [...]

Artificial intelligence is becoming a pivotal force in human lives, prompting questions about its evolutionary effects. A new study explores how AI may influence human evolution through everyday interactions, likening human-AI dynamics to ecological relationships such as predation or competition. Potential evolutionary shifts include changes in brain size, attention spans, [...]

Novel ultrathin protein nanofilm enhances metal-polymer adhesion, enabling durable and flexible electronic devices and sensors. [...]

Researchers develop new method for building complex 3D microfluidic networks in glass by growing plant roots and fungal hyphae in silica nanoparticles. [...]

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here. It can be tricky for reporters to get past certain doors, and the door to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference is one that’s almost perpetually shut to the [...]

Black Friday is a week away, but there are plenty of deals live now on streaming devices from Roku and Amazon, platforms like Disney+, and more. [...]

Black Friday is around the corner, but you don't have to wait to shop early savings on top tech like tablets, phones, TVs, laptops, and more. [...]

Researchers have introduced a technique for compressing a large language model's reams of data, which could increase privacy, save energy and lower costs. The new algorithm works by trimming redundancies and reducing the precision of an LLM's layers of information. This type of leaner LLM could be stored and accessed [...]

Using zero liquid discharge to increase water recovery from desalination is an emerging method to combat water scarcity, but is expensive, energy-intensive and comes with environmental risks. Researchers have optimized zero liquid discharge technologies for cost, energy consumption and land use. [...]

The studies discovered that favorable nanoparticle-protein interactions can be predicted from machine learning models that are trained from atom-scale molecular dynamics simulations. [...]

Humans and animals move with remarkable economy without consciously thinking about it by utilizing the natural oscillation patterns of their bodies. A new tool can now utilize this knowledge for the first time to make robots move more efficiently. [...]

A new study found that policies to curtail the use of single-use plastic bags in grocery stores and other retail outlets in Austin and Dallas, Texas, resulted in people buying more plastic bags, a behavior that continued after the rules were no longer in place. [...]

Through the intricate study of lava tubes -- caves formed following volcanic eruptions when lava cools down -- an international team of researchers has uncovered clues about Earth's ancient environments that could be significant in the search for life on Mars. [...]

A laser-fabricated sensor system integrates durable, antioxidative copper interconnects and carbon sensors for real-time monitoring in advanced equipment and environments. [...]

Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been selected as 2025 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at Oxford University in the U.K. next fall. In addition to MIT’s two U.S. Rhodes winners, Oluigbo and Nair, two affiliates were awarded international Rhodes Scholarships: Chen [...]

Quantum-science advances using AI can measure very small surfaces and distances -- opening a world of medical, manufacturing and other applications. [...]

To fend off the worst impacts of climate change, “we have to decarbonize, and do it even faster,” said William H. Green, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, at MITEI’s Annual Research Conference.“But how the heck do we actually [...]

A deep learning AI model developed by researchers significantly accelerates the detection of pathology in animal and human tissue images, surpassing human accuracy in some cases. This AI, trained on high-resolution images from past studies, quickly identifies signs of diseases like cancer that typically take hours for pathologists to detect. [...]

We are on the cusp of a voice AI boom, with tech companies such as Apple and OpenAI rolling out the next generation of artificial-intelligence-powered assistants. But the default voices for these assistants are often white American—British, if you’re lucky—and most definitely speak English. They represent only a tiny proportion [...]

Researchers are utilizing artificial intelligence to analyze the behavior of laboratory mice more efficiently and reduce the number of animals in experiments. [...]

AI has led to breakthroughs in drug discovery and robotics and is in the process of entirely revolutionizing how we interact with machines and the web. The only problem is we don’t know exactly how it works, or why it works so well. We have a fair idea, but the [...]

Researchers have developed a robot that identifies different plant species at various stages of growth by 'touching' their leaves with an electrode. The robot can measure properties such as surface texture and water content that cannot be determined using existing visual approaches. The robot identified ten different plant species with [...]

A novel machine learning model called Temporal Autoencoders for Causal Inference (TACI) accurately detects changing cause-and-effect relationships in complex, time-varying systems like weather patterns and brain activity. By analyzing both synthetic and real data, TACI captures dynamic interactions and quantifies shifts in strength or direction over time. Tested on long-term [...]

The complexity of biology has long been a double-edged sword for scientific and medical progress. On one hand, the intricacy of systems (like the human immune response) offers countless opportunities for breakthroughs in medicine and healthcare. On the other hand, that very complexity has often stymied researchers, leaving some of [...]

For the first time, a robot has been trained to perform surgical procedures by watching videos of expert surgeons, marking a leap forward in robotic surgery. This breakthrough in "imitation learning" means that robots can learn complex tasks without needing to be programmed for every individual movement. By training on [...]