MIT Media Lab

What if AI didn’t just control robots but it could also give humans new physical skills? At the MIT @medialab @hardmodemit hackathon, we explored using #AI + electrical muscle stimulation (#EMS) for AI to temporarily control your body, enabling people to do things they normally can't do, like playing instruments, fixing their car, and making new cocktails. 🍸 🏆 Won the Learn track 🏆

AHA’s HARD MODE Hackathon brings AI into human experience The Media Lab’s Advancing Humans with AI (@AHA_MediaLab) program and the MIT Design Intelligence Lab recently co-hosted HARD MODE (@hardmodemit) — a 48-hour hardware × AI hackathon focused on building the future of intelligent objects. At the Media Lab AI isn’t just about models. It’s about people. That’s the idea behind Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) — a multi-faculty program exploring AI as a human design problem. HARD MODE brought the program to life in 48 hours: 200+ hackers, 40+ projects, one question — what else can AI be? 🦆 Mechanical rubber ducks that debug with you. 🧸 Plushies with personality. ⁉️ AI that questions instead of answers. Congrats to Dreaming Objects, winners of HARD MODE — reimagining AI in the physical world + taking home the $50K prize. Thanks to our sponsors — including Anthropic, Akamai, Qualcomm, Bambu Lab, E14 Fund, Institute of Foundation Models, GigLabs, HRT, Seeed Studio, Tenstorrent, Snap, Viam, BootLoop, Murata, igus, and NVIDIA — our judges, and our incredible volunteers. Video credit: Cyrus Clarke (@cyrusclarke)

For women, by women! Honored to work with the incomparable @cdecoders group led by Prof. @dagdevirencanan. Measuring, monitoring, screening one life at a time.

At 4pm ET on March 19, join @AHA_MediaLab for the next installment of their ongoing seminar series! The speaker will be Sheer Karny, a multidisciplinary researcher studying human-AI interaction in the Media Lab’s Cyborg Psychology group. media.mit.edu/events/aha-sem…

20 to 30 percent of all breast tumors are diagnosed between regular screenings. For people at high risk for breast cancer, frequent ultrasound scanning — in addition to regular mammograms — can help detect tumors early. A portable ultrasound scanner developed by researchers in the @cdecoders group led by Prof. @dagdevirencanan could make it easier for breast ultrasounds to be performed more often, either at home or at a doctor’s office. news.mit.edu/2026/portable-…

One week since demo day at HARD MODE; the first Hardware × AI Hackathon at MIT Media Lab. 40+ Teams and 200+ participants building physical AI. One team gave an AI a (human) body. Others went SOFT MODE and used clay as an interface. There were plushies powered by AI, an AI that questions rather than answers, new interfaces using Pepper’s ghost, intelligent objects that live their own lives and much more… Huge thanks to our sponsors and judges from Anthropic, Qualcomm, and Akamai Technologies, whose CTO Robert Blumofe not only supported us but showed up, spoke, and sat on the jury. Grateful also to Bambu Lab, E14 Fund, Institute of Foundation Models, and all our amazing volunteers! More projects, photos, and videos coming soon. hardmode.media.mit.edu

Watch: Catch up with the @AHA_medialab Seminar Series on YouTube! youtube.com/playlist?list=…

Media Lab Prof. @rosalindpicard reflects on the origins of her work in wearable sensing and Affective Computing — technology designed to measure and respond to human emotions. In January, Professor Picard was named as a recipient of the 2026 IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology, one of @IEEEorg’s highest honors. She was recognized “for pioneering contributions to wearable affective computing for health and wellbeing.” media.mit.edu/posts/rosalind…

Project Iceberg, a research effort led by Media Lab PhD student @ayushchopra96 (@cameraculture), has been selected as a grantee of @GitLab_Found’s AI for Economic Opportunity Fund. Selected from over 800 applicants, this cohort represents organizations using AI to expand economic opportunity in innovative ways. Project Iceberg develops Large Population Models, AI systems designed to simulate how large populations behave and interact. Beyond labor markets, the platform has been used globally to study systemic risks across pandemics, supply chains, consumer behavior, and infrastructure. media.mit.edu/posts/camera-c…

48h. 200+ participants. 40+ projects. One mission: Re-imagine what AI can be. This weekend we hosted HARD MODE: Hardware x AI Hackathon at MIT Media Lab. Hackers from around the globe came to build intelligent physical systems that take AI out of the screen and into the world

A number of Media Lab community members are participating in this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas. Explore their contributions: media.mit.edu/events/ml-sxsw…

In a recent paper published in @nejm_ai, @patpat_MIT, Shruthi Shekar (@Stanford), and collaborators found that many people — even experts — overtrust AI-generated medical advice, and often can't tell whether advice was written by a doctor or generated by an LLM. The authors concluded that “Ultimately, AI systems should be implemented in collaboration with medical professionals when used for the delivery of medical advice in order to prevent misinformation while reaping the benefits of such cutting-edge technology.” media.mit.edu/projects/peopl…

In The Guardian, Media Lab Prof. @patpat_mit and other experts call for AI overviews of health information to include prominent safety warnings and disclaimers. “Disclaimers serve as a crucial intervention point,” Professor Pataranutaporn says. “They disrupt this automatic trust and prompt users to engage more critically with the information they receive.” theguardian.com/technology/202…

The World at MIT: Meet just a few of the remarkable scholars who've brought their creativity, expertise, and passion to MIT from all over the world. The series includes interviews with @FluidInterfaces head Pattie Maes and Dean Hashim Sarkis of @mitsap — home to the Media Lab. youtube.com/watch?v=6JwPsd…

Media Lab Prof. @rosalindpicard and other experts join Rethink, a @BBC co-production with the @OpenUniversity, to consider the question “What is AI actually for?” bbc.com/audio/play/m00…

Check this article in @voguemagazine about Hotel Room #2: Communal Dreams @MITMuseum , a piece by artist Carsten Höller, our alum @medialab and DUST CEO Adam Haar, Seth Riskin and Hannah Zahr of the @studioMitMuseum and Compton Gallery.

@darthur @Hesamation It is! x.com/cyrusclarke/st…

@Hesamation This looks like a project from the @medialab. tangible.media.mit.edu/project/inform/

bro gave OpenClaw a body and saw it take its first breath. there’s something surreal about putting AI in a physical form.

We analyzed aggregated insights from people's 2025 AI chat histories — here's what we're seeing (exploratory findings, small sample): Emotional support themes showed up across nearly all users, regardless of how they used AI.

Dream Engineering, a field pioneered by Media Lab Professor Pattie Maes (@fluidinterfaces) and alumni Adam Haar Horowitz and Judith Amores, has been named as one of the 25 most powerful ideas of the 21st century (so far) by @sciencefocus. media.mit.edu/articles/the-2…