 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
 | |
 | |
| Established | July 1, 1963; 61 years ago (1963-07-01) (as Project MAC) July 1, 2003 (as CSAIL) |
|---|---|
Field of research | Computer science |
| Director | Daniela L. Rus |
| Address | TheStata Center (Building 32) 32 Vassar Street Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA |
| Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Nickname | CSAIL |
Operating agency | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Website | csail |
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is aresearch institute at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab). Housed within theRay and Maria Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership. It is part of theSchwarzman College of Computing[1] but is also overseen by the MIT Vice President of Research.[2]
CSAIL's research activities are organized around a number of semi-autonomous research groups, each of which is headed by one or more professors or research scientists. These groups are divided up into seven general areas of research:
Computing Research at MIT began withVannevar Bush's research into adifferential analyzer andClaude Shannon's electronicBoolean algebra in the 1930s, the wartimeMIT Radiation Laboratory, the post-warProject Whirlwind and Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), andMIT Lincoln Laboratory'sSAGE in the early 1950s. At MIT, research in the field of artificial intelligence began in the late 1950s.[3]
On July 1, 1963, Project MAC (the Project on Mathematics and Computation, laterbackronymed to Multiple Access Computer, Machine Aided Cognitions, or Man and Computer) was launched with a $2 million grant from theDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Project MAC's original director wasRobert Fano of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). Fano decided to call MAC a "project" rather than a "laboratory" for reasons of internal MIT politics – if MAC had been called a laboratory, then it would have been more difficult to raid other MIT departments for research staff. The program manager responsible for the DARPA grant wasJ. C. R. Licklider, who had previously been at MIT conducting research in RLE, and would later succeed Fano as director of Project MAC.
Project MAC would become famous for groundbreaking research inoperating systems,artificial intelligence, and thetheory of computation. Its contemporaries includedProject Genie atBerkeley, theStanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and (somewhat later)University of Southern California's (USC's)Information Sciences Institute.
An "AI Group" includingMarvin Minsky (the director),John McCarthy (inventor ofLisp), and a talented community of computer programmers were incorporated into Project MAC. They were interested principally in the problems of vision, mechanical motion and manipulation, and language, which they view as the keys to more intelligent machines. In the 1960s and 1970s the AI Group developed atime-sharing operating system calledIncompatible Timesharing System (ITS) which ran onPDP-6 and laterPDP-10 computers.[4]
The early Project MAC community included Fano, Minsky, Licklider,Fernando J. Corbató, and a community of computer programmers andenthusiasts among others who drew their inspiration from former colleague John McCarthy. These founders envisioned the creation of acomputer utility whose computational power would be as reliable as an electric utility. To this end, Corbató brought the first computertime-sharing system,Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), with him from the MIT Computation Center, using the DARPA funding to purchase anIBM 7094 for research use. One of the early focuses of Project MAC would be the development of a successor to CTSS,Multics, which was to be the firsthigh availability computer system, developed as a part of an industry consortium includingGeneral Electric andBell Laboratories.
In 1966,Scientific American featured Project MAC in the September thematic issue devoted to computer science,[5] that was later published in book form. At the time, the system was described as having approximately 100 TTY terminals, mostly on campus but with a few in private homes. Only 30 users could be logged in at the same time. The project enlisted students in various classes to use the terminals simultaneously in problem solving, simulations, and multi-terminal communications as tests for the multi-access computing software being developed.
In the late 1960s, Minsky'sartificial intelligence group was seeking more space, and was unable to get satisfaction from project director Licklider. Minsky found that although Project MAC as a single entity could not get the additional space he wanted, he could split off to form his own laboratory and then be entitled to more office space. As a result, the MIT AI Lab was formed in 1970, and many of Minsky's AI colleagues left Project MAC to join him in the new laboratory, while most of the remaining members went on to form the Laboratory for Computer Science. Talented programmers such asRichard Stallman, who usedTECO to developEMACS, flourished in the AI Lab during this time.
Those researchers who did not join the smaller AI Lab formed the Laboratory for Computer Science and continued their research intooperating systems,programming languages,distributed systems, and thetheory of computation. Two professors,Hal Abelson andGerald Jay Sussman, chose to remain neutral — their group was referred to variously as Switzerland and Project MAC for the next 30 years.[citation needed]
Among much else, the AI Lab led to the invention ofLisp machines and their attemptedcommercialization by two companies in the 1980s:Symbolics andLisp Machines Inc. This divided the AI Lab into "camps" which resulted in a hiring away of many of the talented programmers. The incident inspired Richard Stallman's later work on theGNU Project. "Nobody had envisioned that the AI lab's hacker group would be wiped out, but it was." ... "That is the basis for the free software movement — the experience I had, the life that I've lived at the MIT AI lab — to be working on human knowledge, and not be standing in the way of anybody's further using and further disseminating human knowledge".[6]
On the fortieth anniversary of Project MAC's establishment, July 1, 2003, LCS was merged with the AI Lab to form the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL. This merger created the largest laboratory (over 600 personnel) on the MIT campus[7] and was regarded as a reuniting of the diversified elements of Project MAC.[according to whom?]
In 2018, CSAIL launched a five-year collaboration program withIFlytek, a company sanctioned the following year for allegedly using its technology for surveillance andhuman rights abuses in Xinjiang.[8][9][10][11] In October 2019, MIT announced that it would review its partnerships with sanctioned firms such as iFlyTek andSenseTime.[12] In April 2020, the agreement with iFlyTek was terminated.[13]
CSAIL moved from the School of Engineering to the newly formedSchwarzman College of Computing by February 2020.[1]
From 1963 to 2004, Project MAC, LCS, the AI Lab, and CSAIL had their offices at 545Technology Square, taking over more and more floors of the building over the years. In 2004, CSAIL moved to the newRay and Maria Stata Center, which was built specifically to house it and other departments.
The IMARA (fromSwahili word for "power") group sponsors a variety of outreach programs that bridge theglobal digital divide. Its aim is to find and implement long-term, sustainable solutions which will increase the availability of educational technology and resources to domestic and international communities. These projects are run under the aegis of CSAIL and staffed by MIT volunteers who give training, install and donate computer setups in greaterBoston, Massachusetts,Kenya,Native American Indiantribal reservations in theAmerican Southwest such as theNavajo Nation, theMiddle East, andFiji Islands. The CommuniTech project strives to empower under-served communities through sustainable technology and education and does this through the MIT Used Computer Factory (UCF), providing refurbished computers to under-served families, and through the Families Accessing Computer Technology (FACT) classes, it trains those families to become familiar and comfortable with computer technology.[14][15][16]
(Including members and alumni of CSAIL's predecessor laboratories)
CSAIL Alliances is the industry connection arm of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[21] CSAIL Alliances offers companies programs to connect with the research, faculty, students, and startups of CSAIL by providing organizations with opportunities to learn about the research, engage with students, explore collaborations with researchers, and join research initiatives such as FinTech at CSAIL,[22] MIT Future of Data,[23] and Machine Learning Applications.[24][25]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
