Latest stories, updates, and announcements that highlight the people, research, and progress of AI throughout Cornell.

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AI Headlines from Around the University

Cornell expands AI Critical Literacy Program for incoming students

After a successful pilot launch in the spring, Cornell’s AI Critical Literacy Program will be offered in the fall to all incoming students as well as other interested students, faculty members and staff.

Strike a pose: Creating more realistic multi-person images

A Cornell research group has devised a way to generate an image of multiple people, incorporating the poses of all individuals to inform the image generation and make the scene more believable and accurate.

Weak AI regulation may backfire, making products less safe

A new modeling study finds no regulation of AI products and services may be safer than weak regulation.

Inside baseball: AI-enabled enforcement tech takes time, testing

Training artificial intelligence to enforce even seemingly straightforward rules – like balls and strikes in Major League Baseball – is a messy, dynamic process that takes time and careful evaluation of the technology.

‘Moonshot’ project aims to restore trust in the digital public sphere

Researchers have received a seed grant for $250,000 and a chance at a $10 million award to support a project aimed at using artificial intelligence to establish a foundation for trustworthy AI-mediated communication across online platforms.

A color photo of a man giving a presentation

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New Cornell Projects Leap Forward with Generative AI Tools

January 30, 2025

Cornell’s AI Initiative supports university faculty, staff, and students as they explore models to optimize the use of generative AI for practical purposes. Eight local teams stunned a hybrid audience with presentations proving generative AI applications could simplify and solve problems that previously required intense manual effort. Each project team was led by one or two faculty or staff members and supported by students from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science (Cornell Bowers CIS).

A color photo of a man giving a presentation. by Luke Stewart - Cornell Bowers

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AI Innovation Lab Demo Day Features University Projects

January 30, 2025

After brief opening remarks by Chief Global Information Officer (CIO) Curt Cole and by CIO for Cornell’s Ithaca campus and Cornell Tech Ben Maddox, eight projects from the Fall 2025 cohort of the university’s AI Innovation Lab were presented to in-person and Zoom audience members. Among the participants gathered in Bill and Melinda Gates Hall were three co-chairs of the Generative AI Plenary Council at Cornell: Vice Provost for Academic Innovation Steve Jackson, Vice President for Research and Innovation Krystyn Van Vliet, and Provost Kavita Bala.

An example problem from the ARC-AGI set. Credit: ARC Prize

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Cornell team wins $50K in AI puzzle-solving challenge contest

January 23, 2025

A team from Cornell led by Kevin Ellis, assistant professor of computer science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, has developed a set of AI models that together, solve about 56% of the problems – scoring within 4 percentage points of the average human. Their paper, “Combining Induction and Transduction for Abstract Reasoning,” received a first-place-paper award at the 2024 ARC Prize competition. Lead authors on the paper were Wen-Ding Li, a doctoral student in the field of computer science, and Keya Hu, a visiting undergraduate student in Ellis’ group.

Peptides

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AI, quantum drive discovery of peptides for microplastic cleanup

January 21, 2025

A research team led by Cornell has demonstrated how quantum computing and artificial intelligence can be used to design new peptides capable of capturing microplastics that pose serious risks to ecosystems and human health.

Dean Kavita Bala

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How Academe Can Compete in the AI Arms Race by Kavita Bala

January 7, 2025

We are living in the most consequential decade in artificial intelligence’s history. We don’t know exactly what the future will look like, and we don’t know exactly what innovations it will bring, but we know one thing for certain: AI will be shaped by the people who have access to the most computing power and data.

House mouse standing on rear feet

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Mice use their tongues to ‘see’ tactile targets

January 7, 2025

Cornell scientists have identified the neural pathway mice use to direct the tongue to tactile targets: the superior colliculus, the same brain region that primates – including humans – use to direct their gaze to visual targets. It’s likely that humans use the same neural pathways for touch-guided tongue control.

human eye, macro, close up blue

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Pupil size in sleep reveals how memories are sorted and preserved

January 2, 2025

By studying mice equipped with brain electrodes and tiny eye-tracking cameras, Cornell researchers determined that new memories are being replayed and consolidated when the pupil is contracted during a substage of non-REM sleep.

Flowering rush blooms by Beebe Lake. Credit: Lindsay France

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New device’s radio waves reveal lead contamination in soil

January 2, 2025

A Cornell Tech-led research group is in the early stages of developing a portable, inexpensive device that uses radio frequency signals and machine learning for another important job: measuring lead contamination levels in soil.

A graphic illustration showing a stack of books with a futuristic background

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In American fiction, it’s a small world after all

December 19, 2024

Despite being unbound by space and time, fictional protagonists in American literature travel fewer miles than their nonfiction counterparts, according to a Cornell-led research team that used artificial intelligence to analyze nearly 13,500 books from the last 230 years.