Latest news with #DanielaRus
Boston Globe
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
MIT professor targeted in vandalism, video
Officials aim to 'to identify the individual or individuals responsible for the graffiti on campus this weekend so that they can be held accountable for these outrageous acts of vandalism, targeting and threats of violence,' the spokesperson said. On social media, activists also circulated a video soundtracked to chants of 'Death to the IDF,' showing the graffitied doors, and displaying a photograph of MIT professor Daniela Rus's face under her name and the text 'your hands are red!' Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. Compared to Harvard, MIT has largely avoided the same level of scrutiny from the Trump administration over alleged antisemitism on campus, but the university has navigated its own deep rifts since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023. In May, Megha Vemuri, then MIT's student president, was Last month, the Brandeis Center Talia Khan, a PhD student in mechanical engineering and founder of the MIT Israel Alliance, is among those now calling out university administrators for not doing enough to address antisemitism on campus. 'This violent threat was enabled by MIT's support of terrorist-sympathizing rhetoric. Now, researchers fear being *murdered* if they go into work to do science,' Khan The video features an excerpt of an op-ed titled 'Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research for Genocide,' which was The phrase 'Death to the IDF' gained attention following a concert last month at Glastonbury Festival in England where punk rapper Bobby Vylan led crowds in Advertisement Serving in the Israel Defense Forces is mandatory for Israeli citizens over the age of 18, with some exceptions. The graffiti, therefore, is 'calling for the death of all Israelis,' said Khan. After the events Sunday, said Khan, she expected MIT leadership would send out an email condemning the act of vandalism and video, and ensuring the safety of MIT students and larger community. 'But nothing like that happened,' said Khan, 27, who founded the MIT Israel Alliance after Oct. 7, 2023. 'The fact that after so many months, they are completely impotent, they have no idea what to do . . . it just seems like they haven't learned their lesson at all,' she said. 'I mean, really, this is mind boggling. I don't understand why they wouldn't just send out an email and say we are committed to making sure everybody stays safe, and it is unacceptable to threaten the lives of people on campus for the research that they're doing.' 'We are focused on action, specifically identifying those responsible so that they can be held accountable,' said the MIT spokesperson. 'The MIT administration right now is shooting itself in the foot . . . It's not doing anything to combat antisemitism or to protect people on campus,' said Khan, adding that the problem is 'not just about antisemitism' and 'not just about Jews.' 'This is just about people being physically safe on campus and not being targeted, and the MIT administration is completely failing,' she said. The MIT spokesperson said that while the university does not publicly discuss the specifics of internal safety plans, 'we are taking steps beyond the investigation to further increase security on campus.' Advertisement Brooke Hauser can be reached at
Forbes
07-07-2025
- Science
- Forbes
MIT Teaches Soft Robots Body Awareness Through AI And Vision
MIT CSAIL researchers have developed a new system that teaches robots to understand their own ... More bodies, using only vision. Instead of relying on sensors, the system allows robots to learn how their bodies move and respond to commands just by watching themselves. Researchers from the Massachussets Institute of Technology's (MIT) CSAIL lab have developed a new system that teaches robots to understand their bodies, using only vision. Using consumer-grade cameras, the robot watched itself move and then built an internal model of its geometry and controllability. According the researchers this could dramatically expand what's possible in soft and bio-inspired robotics, enabling affordable, sensor-free machines that adapt to their environments in real time. The team at MIT said that this system and research is a major step toward more adaptable, accessible robots that can operate in the wild with no GPS, simulations or sensors. The research was published in June in Nature. Daniela Rus, MIT CSAIL Director said with Neural Jacobian Fields, CSAIL's soft robotic hands were able to learn to grasp objects entirely through visual observation with no sensors, no prior model and no manual programming. 'By watching its own movements through a camera and performing random actions, the robot built an internal model of how its body responds to motor commands. Neural Jacobian Fields mapped these visual inputs to a dense visuomotor Jacobian field, enabling the robot to control its motion in real time based solely on what it sees,' added Rus. Rus adds that the reframing of control has major implications. "Traditional methods require detailed models or embedded sensors but Neural Jacobian Fields lifts those constraints, enabling control of unconventional, deformable, or sensor-less robots in real time, using only a single monocular camera.'Vincent Sitzmann, Assistant Professor at MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and CSAIL Principal Investigator said the researchers relied on techniques from computer vision and machine learning. The neural network observes a single image and learns to reconstruct a 3D model of the robot which relies on a technique called differentiable rendering which allows machine learning algorithms to learn to reconstruct 3D scenes from only 2D images. 'We use motion tracking algorithms - point tracking and optical flow - to track the motion of the robot during training,' said Sitzmann. "By relating the motion of the robot to the commands that we instructed it with, we reconstruct our proposed Neural Jacobian Field, which endows the 3D model of the robot with an understanding of how each 3D point would move under a particular robot action.' Sitzmann says this represents a shift towards robots possessing a form of bodily self-awareness and away from pre-programmed 3D models and precision-engineered hardware. 'This moves us towards more generalist sensors, such as vision, combined with artificial intelligence that allows the robot to learn a model of itself instead of a human expert,' said Sitzmann. "This also signals a new class of adaptable, machine-learning driven robots that can perceive and understand themselves.' The researchers said that three different types of robots acquired awareness of their bodies and the actions they could take as a result of that understandi A 3D-printed DIY toy robot arm with loose joints and no sensors learned to draw letters in the air with centimeter-level precision. It discovered which visual region corresponds to each actuation channel, mapping 'which joint moves when I command actuator X' just from seeing motion. A soft pneumatic hand learned which air channel controls each finger, not by being told, but just by watching itself wiggle. They inferred depth and geometry from color video alone, reconstructing 3D shape before and after actions. A soft, wrist-like robot platform, physically disturbed with added weight, learned to balance and follow complex trajectories. They quantified motion sensitivity, for example, measuring how a command that slightly changes an actuator produces millimeter‑level translations in the gripper. Changing soft robotics The CSAIL researchers aid that soft robots are hard to model because they deform in complex ways. One reasercher said in an email interview that the method they used in the research doesn't require any manual modeling. The robot watches itself move and figures out how its body behaves similar to a human learning to move their arm by watching themselves in a mirror. Sitzmann says conventional robots are rigid, discrete joints connected by rigid linksbuilt to have low manufacturing tolerance. "Compare that to your own body, which is soft: first, of course, your skin and muscles are not perfectly solid but give in when you grasp something.' 'However, your joints also aren't perfectly rigid like those of a robot, they can similarly bend and give in, and while you can sense the approximate position of your joints, your highest-precision sensors are vision and touch, which is how you solve most manipulation tasks,' said Sitzmann. "Soft robots are inspired by these properties of living creatures to be similarly compliant, and must therefore necessarily also rely on different sensors than their rigid cousins.' Sitzmann says that this kind of understanding could revolutionize industries like soft robotics, low‑cost manufacturing, home automation and agricultural robotics. 'Any sector that can profit from automation but does not require sub-millimeter accuracy can benefit from vision‑based calibration and control, dramatically lowering cost and complexity,' said Sitzmann. "In the future, with inclusion of tactile sensing (=touch), this paradigm may even extend to applications that require high accuracy.' A new approach to soft robotics Researchers say their approach removes the need for experts to build an accurate model of the robot, a process that can take months. It also eliminates reliance on expensive sensor systems or manual calibration. The simplified process entails recording the robot moving randomly and the model learns everything it needs to know from that video. 'Instead of painstakingly measuring every joint parameter or embedding sensors in every motor, our system heavily relies on a camera to control the robot," said Sitzmann. 'In the future, for applications where sub-millimeter accuracy is not critical, we will see that conventional robots with all their embedded sensors will increasingly be replaced by mass-producible, affordable robots that rely on sensors more similar to our own: vision and touch."
New York Post
19-06-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Entry level jobs are disappearing — Gen Z should learn these skills if they want to get hired
AI in, Gen Z out. Experts are warning that entry-level jobs may be disappearing — leaving Gen Z unemployed. 3 Entry-level jobs may be shifting or all together disappearing leaving Gen Z on the job hunt. LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS – Advertisement This generation of young workers, expected to make up about 30% of the global workforce by 2030, is entering the job market as the roles they were set to apply for might not exist. As AI continues to evolve, it's clear that many of the traditional entry-level roles, often seen as stepping stones into the workforce, are rapidly being automated. A YouGov survey found that 54% of Americans say they feel cautious about advances in AI and 47% feel concerned. Advertisement The shift towards AI is impacting the types of jobs available, especially those for new employees. 'Entry-level jobs tend to involve routine, well-defined tasks — exactly the kind of work current AI systems are best suited to automate,' Professor Daniela Rus, the Director of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, told Newsweek. Experts argue that while some of these roles might not disappear entirely, they are evolving into something unrecognizable. 3 A YouGov survey found that 54% of Americans say they feel cautious about advances in AI and 47% feel concerned. – Advertisement For Gen Z, this transition could wipe out or change the roles they expected to apply for. 'AI is rapidly reshaping entry-level jobs, automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and, in some cases, eliminating roles entirely,' Keri Mesropov, founder of Spring Talent Development, said. However, Gen Z's chances of being employed aren't completely deleted. Those looking to enter the workforce may just need to adapt to utilize this new technology. But this is nothing entirely new. The workforce as gone through changes due to technological leaps throughout history — the industrial revolution and the dot-com era. Advertisement 3 The shift towards AI is impacting the types of jobs available, especially those for new employees. Seventyfour – Industry analyst Josh Bersin argues that entry-level hiring has currently slowed due to economic factors, but that the introduction of AI could also create entirely new job categories. These roles would involve building, managing, and optimizing AI systems, presenting an opportunity for digital natives to step into new roles. This shift isn't just about surviving in the job market — it's about adapting to a new professional environment where AI becomes a powerful tool in everyday work. 'AI is changing everything, faster than most institutions, companies or curriculums can keep pace with. But no, that doesn't mean your education or potential is obsolete. It means we have to think differently about what growth and opportunity look like,' wrote LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in a recent post on the platform. 'You were born into this shift. You're native to these tools in a way that older generations aren't. Lean into it. Teach others.' Despite fears that AI will replace human workers, experts agree that AI cannot fully replace human judgment. Mesropov argues that while AI can automate tasks, it still requires human input for context-heavy decisions, judgment calls, and troubleshooting. Advertisement And Gen Z's familiarity with technology, particularly AI, could make them valuable assets in this new era. According to the YouGov survey, adults under 30 are more likely than older Americans to ever use AI tools (76% vs. 51%) and are also more likely to use AI at least weekly (50% vs. 23%). 'The advantage Gen Z has is that they are digital natives. They are well-positioned to work alongside AI, not in opposition to it,' Rus told Newsweek. 'Young people today are using AI to solve problems and even have fun by creating stories and images.' As AI reshapes the job market, the skills companies will need most in their entry-level hires won't just be technical— they will need strong problem-solving abilities, creativity, and emotional intelligence. Advertisement Experts suggest that while the structure of entry-level jobs is changing, the challenge will be to rethink what these roles look like. AI-assisted apprenticeships, project-based learning environments, and hybrid human-AI teams are among the potential models for the future. However, experts also caution that while young workers have an advantage in terms of digital fluency, they must still build the soft skills necessary to succeed in the workforce, such as communication, adaptability, and critical thinking. Though it's easy to get lost in the rhetoric surrounding AI's potential to disrupt jobs, the reality is that the technology is not just a threat — it's an opportunity. For Gen Z, the key to thriving in this new era will be their ability to adapt, learn, and leverage AI tools to solve real-world problems.
Newsweek
19-06-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Entry-Level Jobs For Gen Z Are Disappearing: Experts
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The AI revolution isn't just on its way; it's happening, and the impacts of this new technology are quickly being felt, particularly by Gen Z. Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z is expected to make up approximately 30 percent of the global workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the workforce they're entering is rapidly changing. According to a YouGov survey from March 2025, the majority of Americans (56 percent) use AI tools, and 28 percent use AI tools weekly, while a recent study from KPMG found that 66 percent of people regularly use AI. One impact of AI is that it is quickly coming for entry-level jobs, meaning that they don't just look different; soon, they may not exist at all. Newsweek spoke to the experts to find out more. Are Entry-Level Jobs Being Replaced By AI? Millions of students will be graduating this spring. But the mood as they do so may be a trepidatious one, as experts are continuing to sound the alarm on a decline in entry-level jobs. Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn's chief economic opportunity officer, likened the shift to the decline in manufacturing in the early 1980s in an op-ed for The New York Times, while a report from Signalfire said that entry-level jobs are "collapsing," and a "generational hiring shift is leaving new graduates behind." So, why are entry-level jobs being hit hard by AI? "Entry-level jobs tend to involve routine, well-defined tasks—exactly the kind of work current AI systems are best suited to automate," Professor Daniela Rus, the Director of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, told Newsweek over email. Keri Mesropov, founder of Spring Talent Development, shared a similar sentiment. Speaking to Newsweek over email, she said, "AI is rapidly reshaping entry-level jobs, automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and, in some cases, eliminating roles entirely." Mesropov said that this technological leap could open the door to work that is more strategic and engaging. But "it also removes many of the formative, tacit-knowledge building experiences that previously shaped early career development." A Changing Workplace Culture Newsweek also spoke to Josh Bersin, a global industry analyst and CEO at The Josh Bersin Company. Bersin told Newsweek that entry work is not going away. However, it is changing. "Entry-level hiring has slowed," he told Newsweek, but said that this is "largely because of the economy." And economic concerns are high. President Donald Trump's economic agenda, particularly the imposition of tariffs on dozens of American trading partners, has sparked fears that the economy will tip into a recession, marked by weak growth, job losses and further inflation. It's not the easiest environment for young people to be graduating into. However, Bersin told Newsweek that the large companies he speaks to tell him they are, in fact, hiring college graduates for two key reasons. Part of the reason companies have entry-level roles is to "build a talent pipeline," pointing to younger people as "candidates for future growth." "Great employers succeed by retaining workers and developing them into leaders," Bersin said. And, this isn't the first time that the workplace has been transformed by new technologies. Bersin likened the shift to the digital revolution of the 2000s and said, "As with all technology evolutions, the AI revolution creates many new careers," including "building AI systems, managing AI data, training and administering AI platforms, and then the higher level jobs of "leveraging" and using AI in legal, HR, design, sales, creative work." To Rus, it's about evolution. "Rather than eliminating the need for early-career professionals, AI shifts the nature of their contributions," she said, adding, "We still need people to understand how these systems work, to adapt them to specific contexts, to troubleshoot unexpected behavior, and to build the next generation of tools." "We need a strong pipeline of talent that starts with entry-level roles, internships, and hands-on learning opportunities," Rus said. "These early experiences remain essential stepping stones, helping people build technical confidence, domain fluency, and problem-solving skills. And soon, the skills companies will be looking for in entry-level workers is how well they can make the most of AI tools." Though it's easy to forget through the noise of alarms sounding about the AI revolution, AI requires human interference. Mesropov highlighted this, noting that the technology needs "sophisticated human input context-heavy prompts and judgment calls only developed through lived experience." A New Gen, In A New Gen Workplace According to YouGov's March data, adults under 30 are more likely than older Americans to use AI tools (76 percent vs. 51 percent) and are more likely to use AI at least weekly. Newsweek also spoke with Professor Melissa Valentine, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. In a phone call with Newsweek, she highlighted how tech-literate Gen Z is. "Their skills are changing," she said. Valentine said that when you've had technology integrated into your life, "It's a different mechanism." And according to Valentine, the onus isn't on Gen Z to figure out how to optimize this best. "It's up to companies to be ready to figure out how to make use of kids who are so good at technology." Valentine shared a real-world example of this, explaining that she had a young man join her team who was "so digitally savvy." "He just came in and picked up all the internal tools to make the AI agent for himself," she said. "People on his team who were in their forties, they were using Gen AI," she said. But not like the younger colleague could. "He was one of the most AI power users that I've seen. Rus echoed this. "The advantage Gen Z has is that they are digital natives. They are well-positioned to work alongside AI, not in opposition to it," she told Newsweek. "Young people today are using AI to solve problems and even have fun by creating stories and images." This isn't just an era of digital natives then, but AI natives, according to Rus. Gen Z's "Comfort with rapid technological change makes them ideal candidates to help shape how we use these tools ethically, inclusively, and creatively." For Bersin, the prevalence of AI literacy in young people is a key part of what makes them attractive to employers. "They see tremendous skills in using AI and bringing new ideas in younger workers," he said. Looking Ahead The future then is unclear but not necessarily bleak. "There's an optimistic path: if we rethink what early-career roles look like, we can design new kinds of "onramps" that blend learning with production—such as AI-assisted engineering apprenticeships, project-based learning environments, and hybrid human-AI teams," Rus told Newsweek. Mesropov told Newsweek that the remaining jobs in five years will demand "more than technical talent." "They'll require emotional intelligence, communication, adaptability and critical reasoning," she said. Mesropov highlighted the importance of building these skills alongside AI, noting that without this, "Gen Z will fall behind not just in how to use AI, but in how to lead with it." Valentine told Newsweek that there is an "opportunity for business models to evolve and shift" where "information is more readily at our fingertips." "What if we solved problems better?" Valentine said. "That's my hope. And I do think it's possible."
Forbes
12-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
CETI Looks Into The Complexities Of Whale Sounds With AI
What can we learn from the whales? It's something that researchers at the CETI project (not to be confused with the SETI Institute) are working on in order to help drive awareness around language models that exist right here in our own world. In a recent TED talk, CETI's Pratyusha Sharma talks about the communication of sperm whales, and how humans can use that to learn more about other species and ourselves. Sharma is a graduate student at CSAIL and works with advisors like our own Daniela Rus to advance this kind of discovery. As a starter, she gave the example of aliens speaking to humans verbally, or through a script – and again, distinguish CETI from what they're doing in space research! 'Communication is a key characteristic of intelligence,' Sharma explained. 'Being able to create an infinite set of messages by sequencing together finite sets of sounds is what has distinguished human beings from other species.' However, she said, CETI research indicates that we may not be alone on the earth in developing these kinds of systems. In figuring this out, she suggested, we can get insights on other species, and understand our own language better as well. Millions of life forms on earth, she said, share some form of language. 'They have their own physical and mental constraints, and are involved in their own unique ecosystems and societies,' she said. 'However, we know very little about – their communications.' So how do you decipher them? In further explaining what goes on at CETI, she listed different stakeholders with credentials in areas like linguistics, biology, cryptography and AI. (Here's some more background on the project). Most of the research, she said, is taking place in the Dominican Republic, or in the Caribbean. Explaining how the large brains of sperm whales have evolved over 16 million years, she described activity that shows advanced thinking: 'The members of the family coordinate their dives, engage in extended periods of socialization, and even take turns babysitting each other's young ones,' she said. 'While coordinating in complete darkness, they exchange long sequences of sounds with one another.' The question, she noted, is this: what are they saying? Researchers at CETI have identified 21 types of 'codas' or call systems with a certain complexity. 'One of the key differentiators between human language and all animal communications is that beautiful property called duality of patterning,' Sharma said. 'It's how a base set of individually meaningless elements sequence together to give rise to words, that in turn are sequenced together to give rise to an infinite space with complex meaning.' She outlined some of the principles through which CETI is building this species knowledge. 'Getting to the point of understanding the communications of sperm whales will require us to understand what features of their (vocalizations) they control,' she said. Presenting a set of 'coda visualizations,' Sharma noted that these simple communications correspond to complex behavior. '(This) presented a fundamental mystery to researchers in the field,' she said. She showed how the CETI work magnifies the structure of a coda: 'Even though the clicks might not have sounded like music initially, when we plot them like this, they start to look like music,' she said, presenting a combinatorial coda system. 'They have different tempos and even different rhythm.' This, she added, reveals a lot about the minds of these creatures. 'The resulting set of individual sounds (in the coda) can represent 10 times more meanings than what was previously believed, showing that sperm whales can be much more expressive than what was previously thought,' she said. 'These systems are rare in nature, but not uniquely human. … these results open up the possibility that sperm whales' communication might provide our first example of this phenomenon in another species. … this will allow us to use more powerful machine learning techniques to analyze the data, and perhaps get us closer to an understanding the meanings of their sounds – and maybe (we can) even communicate back.' The research, she added, continues: 'Hopefully the algorithms and approaches we developed in the course of this project empower us to better understand the other species that we share this planet with,' she said. This type of research has a lot of potential!! Let's see what it turns up as we continue through the age of AI.
