Rhodes Scholars + AI curiosity + our energy future

Researchers make headway in a longstanding problem of balancing curious “exploration” versus “exploitation” of known pathways in reinforcement learning.

MIT Energy Initiative Annual Research Conference highlights both opportunities and obstacles in the race to a net-zero future.

J-WAFS Fellows discuss their inspiration for pursuing challenges in water and food systems.

Dharik Mallapragada, principal research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative, discusses the pressing need to find new ways to store renewable energy. “No single technology is going to make this happen,” says Mallapragada. “We have to think about it as a jigsaw puzzle, where every piece plays its role in the system.”

MIT Professor Katherine Kellogg and Stanford University Professor Melissa Valentine explore the challenges of introducing artificial intelligence technologies in the workplace, focusing on the fashion industry. “AI tools use algorithms to make decisions that have long been the sole province of humans. But they are running up against a formidable obstacle: those humans who were making those decisions,” they write. “Getting workers to actually use the technologies will turn out to be just as important as making sure the systems work in the first place.”