December 20, 2024

Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs

A live agent spends hours each week manually documenting routine interactions. Another combs through multiple knowledge bases to find the right solution, scrambling to piece it together while the customer waits on hold. A third types out the same response they’ve written dozens of times before. These repetitive tasks can be draining, leaving less time…

October 2024

The algorithms around us

October 23, 2024
A metronome ticks. A record spins. And as a feel-good pop track plays, a giant compactor slowly crushes a Jenga tower of material creations. Paint cans burst. Chess pieces topple. Camera lenses shatter. An alarm clock shrills and then goes silent. A guitar neck snaps. Even a toy emoji is not spared, its eyes popping…

A Note from the Editor

October 23, 2024
What are we going to eat? It is the eternal question. We humans have been asking ourselves this for as long as we have been human. The question itself can be tedious, exciting, urgent, or desperate, depending on who is asking and where. There are many parts of the world where there is no answer. …

“I wanted to save lives”

October 22, 2024
When Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell ’06 won the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the country’s top honor for early-career researchers, she sat on a panel with her two fellow awardees, surrounded by the academic luminaries on the National Science Board. The atmosphere was formal, even weighty, but when asked by a board member…

How MIT’s Rad Lab rescued D-Day

October 22, 2024
On June 6, 1944, the Allies deposited nearly 160,000 troops on the beaches of Normandy, France, in what still stands as the largest land invasion by sea in world history. D-Day would, of course, prove to be a critical milestone leading to the Allied victory in World War II. But were it not for the…

The Renaissance man from Port Gamble Bay

October 22, 2024
When Anthony Jones ’08 reminisces about his childhood, he thinks of clams. Growing up on the reservation of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, about an hour from Seattle, he spent a lot of time playing outside with his brothers—fishing, digging clams, and gathering oysters on the beach. Those idyllic childhood memories wouldn’t have been possible,…

Harnessing MIT’s collective power

October 22, 2024
One of the things I’ve come to value deeply about the MIT community is the near-universal willingness to name a problem, measure it, design a solution, and keep iterating until it’s right. It’s an approach that has worked for a long time, and it’s one we’ll continue to rely on. As we step into the…

Arvola Chan ’74, SM ’76, EE ’78, PhD ’80

October 22, 2024
“I spent 10 years at MIT, earning four degrees in electrical engineering and computer science,” says Arvola Chan ’74, SM ’76, EE ’78, PhD ’80. “I was a beneficiary of scholarships through my undergraduate years and research assistantships through my graduate years, so I’m forever grateful.” As planned-giving chair for the Class of 1974 50th…