February 5, 2025

XOi raises $230M, acquires Specifx to expand its tech for field service technicians

Field service engineers may not be the first group of customers that come to mind when you think about lucrative opportunities in B2B technology. But that same blind spot speaks of the opportunity in the space for those who are stepping up and targeting “the job site.” One of the players in that space, XOi  […]

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Technology

The humans behind the robots

December 24, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Here’s a question. Imagine that, for $15,000, you could purchase a robot to pitch in with all the mundane tasks in your household. The catch (aside from the price tag) is…

Forging the digital future

December 23, 2024
Dan Huttenlocher, SM ’84, PhD ’88, leads the way up to the eighth floor of Building 45, the recently completed headquarters of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “There’s an amazing view of the Great Dome here,” he says, pointing out a panoramic view of campus and the Boston skyline beyond. The floor features a…

More puzzles, less sleep

December 23, 2024
We need a strategy to deal with a hydra.  It’s Sunday, January 14, 2024, more than 50 hours since the annual MIT Mystery Hunt kicked off at noon on Friday, and Setec Astronomy is one of more than 200 teams racing to solve hundreds of puzzles over three days. The 60-some members of Setec, many…

The cult of tech

December 23, 2024
“THE CULT OF THE FOUNDER.” “THE CULT OF THE TECH GENIUS.”  “Beware: Silicon Valley’s cultists want to turn you into a disruptive deviant.” “Tech’s cult of the founder bounces back.” “Silicon Valley’s Strange, Apocalyptic Cults.” “How the cult of personality and tech-bro culture is killing technology.” “Company or cult?” “Is your corporate culture cultish?” “The…

Tapping the wisdom of human-centered fields

December 23, 2024
When I last wrote to you in this magazine, I told you a bit about the MIT Collaboratives, an effort to spark new ideas and modes of inquiry and help the people of MIT solve global problems. Since then, we’ve launched the first collaborative, grounding it in the human-centered fields represented by our School of…

The Download: trustworthy humanoid robots, and Anduril’s latest project

December 23, 2024
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Will we ever trust robots? The world might seem to be on the brink of a humanoid-robot heyday. New breakthroughs in artificial intelligence promise the type of capable, general-purpose robots previously seen only…

Will we ever trust robots?

December 23, 2024
The world might seem to be on the brink of a humanoid-robot heyday. New breakthroughs in artificial intelligence promise the type of capable, general-purpose robots previously seen only in science fiction—robots that can do things like assemble cars, care for patients, or tidy our homes, all without being given specialized instructions.  It’s an idea that…

Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs

December 20, 2024
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…

Enabling human-centric support with generative AI

December 20, 2024
It’s a stormy holiday weekend, and you’ve just received the last notification you want in the busiest travel week of the year: The first leg of your flight is significantly delayed. You might expect this means you’ll be sitting on hold with airline customer service for half an hour. But this time, the process looks…