Category Physics

Agentic workflows are artificial intelligence-powered software systems that chain together multiple models and external tools to tackle complicated tasks, like analyzing a video and answering questions about it. But the way these highly fragmented systems are designed and deployed often causes inefficiencies that can lead to wasted computation, energy and cost.

To improve efficiency, researchers from MIT and Microsoft developed an intelligent system that streamlines the process of designing agentic workflows and automatically optimizes how those workflows are implemented. With this new method, a developer can describe what they want the agentic workflow to do in plain language, without needing to specify all the details of their application in advance.

The system automatically f...

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are artificial intelligence (AI) models inspired by how biological neurons communicate with each other. While biological neurons exchange information in the form of electrical impulses, SNNs rely on brief signals known as spikes.

SNNs have proved promising for reducing power consumption, as developers can ensure they do not process information continuously, but rather ...

An auto factory worker can remember the storage bin where she left a partly assembled component the night before and quickly return to that spot to pick it up. But robots that may work side by side with her would struggle to develop and access this same type of “spatiotemporal” memory.

Now, MIT researchers have developed a long-term memory framework that allows robots to rapidly form and recall a detailed mental model of complicated, large-scale environments...

Astronomers have revealed new details about how young stars shape their galactic surroundings in a new study. Researchers analyzed about 18,000 star-forming regions in nearby spiral galaxies using data from powerful instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, whose observations were made as part of the PHANGS survey—a collaboration aimed at better understanding galactic evolution.

They found that in normal galaxies, pressure from ionized gas drives the expansion of young star-forming regions...