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 leads project putting robots to work in US orchards

A Cornell-led research project is developing robots that can perform labor-intensive orchard operations; it’s supported by a four-year, $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Research Initiative. 

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.

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.

Doctor looking at AR screen

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Developing artificial intelligence tools for health care

December 19, 2024

Reinforcement Learning (RL), an artificial intelligence approach, has the potential to guide physicians in designing sequential treatment strategies for better patient outcomes but requires significant improvements before it can be applied in clinical settings, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and Rockefeller University have found.

Ryan Young/Cornell University Kavya Mittha ’26, left, and Aisha Brundan ’25, working for Prof. Maha Haji, test their bobbing buoy wave energy converter at the DeFrees Hydraulics Lab in Hollister Hall.

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2030 Project Fast Grant awards support energy systems of the future

December 18, 2024

Rachee Singh, assistant professor of computer science, and Emaad Manzoor, assistant professor of marketing, will design light-based, optical network fabrics that enable faster communication between GPUs and bypass bottlenecks caused by slower electrical connections.