Newburyport
PRISM: Perspective Reasoning for Integrated Synthesis and Mediation as a Multi-Perspective Framework for AI Alignment
In this work, we propose Perspective Reasoning for Integrated Synthesis and Mediation (PRISM), a multiple-perspective framework for addressing persistent challenges in AI alignment such as conflicting human values and specification gaming. Grounded in cognitive science and moral psychology, PRISM organizes moral concerns into seven "basis worldviews", each hypothesized to capture a distinct dimension of human moral cognition, ranging from survival-focused reflexes through higher-order integrative perspectives. It then applies a Pareto-inspired optimization scheme to reconcile competing priorities without reducing them to a single metric. Under the assumption of reliable context validation for robust use, the framework follows a structured workflow that elicits viewpoint-specific responses, synthesizes them into a balanced outcome, and mediates remaining conflicts in a transparent and iterative manner. By referencing layered approaches to moral cognition from cognitive science, moral psychology, and neuroscience, PRISM clarifies how different moral drives interact and systematically documents and mediates ethical tradeoffs. We illustrate its efficacy through real outputs produced by a working prototype, applying PRISM to classic alignment problems in domains such as public health policy, workplace automation, and education. By anchoring AI deliberation in these human vantage points, PRISM aims to bound interpretive leaps that might otherwise drift into non-human or machine-centric territory. We briefly outline future directions, including real-world deployments and formal verifications, while maintaining the core focus on multi-perspective synthesis and conflict mediation.
WavePulse: Real-time Content Analytics of Radio Livestreams
Mittal, Govind, Gupta, Sarthak, Wagle, Shruti, Chopra, Chirag, DeMattee, Anthony J, Memon, Nasir, Ahamad, Mustaque, Hegde, Chinmay
Radio remains a pervasive medium for mass information dissemination, with AM/FM stations reaching more Americans than either smartphone-based social networking or live television. Increasingly, radio broadcasts are also streamed online and accessed over the Internet. We present WavePulse, a framework that records, documents, and analyzes radio content in real-time. While our framework is generally applicable, we showcase the efficacy of WavePulse in a collaborative project with a team of political scientists focusing on the 2024 Presidential Elections. We use WavePulse to monitor livestreams of 396 news radio stations over a period of three months, processing close to 500,000 hours of audio streams. These streams were converted into time-stamped, diarized transcripts and analyzed to track answer key political science questions at both the national and state levels. Our analysis revealed how local issues interacted with national trends, providing insights into information flow. Our results demonstrate WavePulse's efficacy in capturing and analyzing content from radio livestreams sourced from the Web. Code and dataset can be accessed at \url{https://wave-pulse.io}.
Expanding AI Awareness Through Everyday Interactions with AI: A Reflective Journal Study
As the application of AI continues to expand, students in technology programs are poised to be both producers and users of the technologies. They are also positioned to engage with AI applications within and outside the classroom. While focusing on the curriculum when examining students' AI knowledge is common, extending this connection to students' everyday interactions with AI provides a more complete picture of their learning. In this paper, we explore student's awareness and engagement with AI in the context of school and their daily lives. Over six weeks, 22 undergraduate students participated in a reflective journal study and submitted a weekly journal entry about their interactions with AI. The participants were recruited from a technology and society course that focuses on the implications of technology on people, communities, and processes. In their weekly journal entries, participants reflected on interactions with AI on campus (coursework, advertises campus events, or seminars) and beyond (social media, news, or conversations with friends and family). The journal prompts were designed to help them think through what they had read, watched, or been told and reflect on the development of their own perspectives, knowledge, and literacy on the topic. Overall, students described nine categories of interactions: coursework, news and current events, using software and applications, university events, social media related to their work, personal discussions with friends and family, interacting with content, and gaming. Students reported that completing the diaries allowed them time for reflection and made them more aware of the presence of AI in their daily lives and of its potential benefits and drawbacks. This research contributes to the ongoing work on AI awareness and literacy by bringing in perspectives from beyond a formal educational context.
Professor Emeritus Fernando Corbató, MIT computing pioneer, dies at 93
Fernando "Corby" Corbató, an MIT professor emeritus whose work in the 1960s on time-sharing systems broke important ground in democratizing the use of computers, died on Friday, July 12, at his home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Decades before the existence of concepts like cybersecurity and the cloud, Corbató led the development of one of the world's first operating systems. His "Compatible Time-Sharing System" (CTSS) allowed multiple people to use a computer at the same time, greatly increasing the speed at which programmers could work. It's also widely credited as the first computer system to use passwords. After CTSS Corbató led a time-sharing effort called Multics, which directly inspired operating systems like Linux and laid the foundation for many aspects of modern computing.
Engineers design drones that can stay aloft for five days
In the event of a natural disaster that disrupts phone and Internet systems over a wide area, autonomous aircraft could potentially hover over affected regions, carrying communications payloads that provide temporary telecommunications coverage to those in need. However, such unpiloted aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are often expensive to operate, and can only remain in the air for a day or two, as is the case with most autonomous surveillance aircraft operated by the U.S. Air Force. Providing adequate and persistent coverage would require a relay of multiple aircraft, landing and refueling around the clock, with operational costs of thousands of dollars per hour, per vehicle. Now a team of MIT engineers has come up with a much less expensive UAV design that can hover for longer durations to provide wide-ranging communications support. The researchers designed, built, and tested a UAV resembling a thin glider with a 24-foot wingspan.