AI Flash News

Conference speakers discussed the unfolding trajectory of AI and the benefits of shaping technology to meets people’s needs.

Jointly led by the MIT Morningside Academy for Design, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, the hub will foster a dynamic community where computing, creativity, and human-centered innovation meet.

With this new technique, a robot could more accurately detect hidden objects or understand an indoor scene using reflected Wi-Fi signals.

This new metric for measuring uncertainty could flag hallucinations and help users know whether to trust an AI model.

At MIT, former U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns highlights climate change as an area for diplomatic engagement, while exploring areas including China’s emphasis on STEM education.

A new tomato-picking robot is learning to think before it acts. Instead of simply identifying ripe fruit, it predicts how easy each tomato will be to harvest and adjusts its approach accordingly. This smarter strategy boosted success rates to 81%, with the robot even switching angles when needed. The breakthrough could pave the way for farms where robots and humans work side by side.

Artificial intelligence is often portrayed as a tool that replaces human work, but new research from Swansea University suggests a far more exciting role: creative collaborator. In a large study with more than 800 participants designing virtual cars, researchers found that AI-generated design galleries sparked deeper engagement, longer exploration, and better results.

As AI systems began acing traditional tests, researchers realized those benchmarks were no longer tough enough. In response, nearly 1,000 experts created Humanity’s Last Exam, a massive 2,500-question challenge covering highly specialized topics across many fields. The exam was engineered so that any question solvable by current AI models was removed. Early results show even the most advanced systems still struggle — revealing a surprisingly large gap between AI performance and true expert-level knowledge.

As millions turn to ChatGPT and other AI chatbots for therapy-style advice, new research from Brown University raises a serious red flag: even when instructed to act like trained therapists, these systems routinely break core ethical standards of mental health care. In side-by-side evaluations with peer counselors and licensed psychologists, researchers uncovered 15 distinct ethical risks — from mishandling crisis situations and reinforcing harmful beliefs to showing biased responses and offering “deceptive empathy” that mimics care without real understanding.