The MIT Quest for Intelligence Report to the President, 2023–2024
The endeavor to understand intelligence in engineering terms drives The MIT Quest for Intelligence (The Quest). Our faculty, staff, and students are focused on research and applications at the interface of Natural Intelligence (NI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Over the past year, we have seen significant progress in the work; this progress is due, in part, to a stable team, advances in the research tools built by the Engineering Team, and increased support from inside and outside the Institute. We have issued another round of funding to our Missions — interdisciplinary teams of researchers, each spanning science and engineering, and each focused on a specific domain of intelligence.
Recent significant changes and milestones include launching the Perceptual Intelligence Mission, taking steps towards establishing the Intelligence Observatory, and seeing community adoption of the Brain-Score Platform as a research tool. Several ongoing hiring searches have been completed and workloads are better balanced. With the opening of the Schwarzman College of Computing (SCC), Building 45, our offices have reached their planned destination, allowing us easy and frequent access to colleagues and labs in Building 46 and the Stata Center.
The full report can be read in pdf.
The MIT Quest for Intelligence Report to the President, 2022–2023
Understanding human intelligence is one of the greatest human endeavors of all time – right alongside existential questions such as our world’s position in the universe and the origin of life. The MIT Quest for Intelligence (The Quest) is the only organizational unit at MIT aimed directly at this question. The past year has been a good one for the Quest as it continues to have significant influence on research and applications at the interface of Natural Intelligence (NI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Adjustments and improvements to the organization’s focus, administration, and staffing have resulted in positive outcomes. Our efforts to fund Missions — interdisciplinary teams of researchers, each spanning science and engineering, and each focused on a specific domain of intelligence — have been successful, and we have launched a Language Mission and an effort in Scaling Inference. After several successful hiring searches, our expanded staff are working to support these Missions, our interface with the MIT community, and ongoing research efforts.
The full report can be read in pdf.
MIT Quest for Intelligence Report to the President, 2021–22
Over the past year, the MIT Quest for Intelligence (the Quest) has executed a significant metamorphosis of the entire organization, in its focus, its administration, and its staffing. At this point, the Quest community is stronger than it has been since its launch in 2018 and is well poised to make an impact on research breakthroughs and applications at the interface of Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for years to come. In summer 2021, we began funding Quest Missions that bring together interdisciplinary teams of researchers focused on specific areas of inquiry; in fall 2021, the Quest leadership team was reorganized; and in winter 2021, the Quest incorporated MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines (CBMM), a closely aligned NSF-funded science and technology center focused on the interdisciplinary study of intelligence and how it can be replicated in machines.
The full report can be read in pdf.