MIT Connection Science is a cross-disciplinary effort, drawing on the strengths of faculty, departments and researchers across the Institute, to decode, analyze, predict and interpret trends in this new environment. Our aim is to help executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers open up new possibilities by providing deeper insights into improving lives in our ever-changing, hyper-connected world.
We lead a global community of researchers and practitioners from leading organizations who are working together to invent the future or Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Big Data, for good.
View the Video: Who We Are, and What We Do.
WEB 3.0
New “web 3.0” technologies….a combination of blockchain, and Internet of Things (IoT), digital identity, Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAOs), Smart Contracts, DeFi, Non-Fungible Tokens and distributed Artificial Intelligence (AI)…are creating enormous new opportunities for virtually every digital domain.
At the same time we are seeing emergence of Metaverse tech, which has already proven compelling for applications like training and collaborative design. Web 3.0 and Metaverse have great potential synergy, allowing people to bring their data and algortihms to different virtual and digital twin worlds, so that their digital self is synergistic with their physical self.
GENERATIVE AI
Artificial Intelligence has been actively integrated in our social and financial systems for quite a while now. In 2023 we saw the explosion of Generative AI sweep the world, with chatbots and image / video / music generative applications becoming mainstream. Our efforts to navigate this quickly growing and changing area of technology center on who owns the data and its quality, how communities can work together to learn from each other without sharing private data, and how business and government services can be improved for individuals and communities without endangering privacy or agency.
INFORMATION & DEMOCRACY
With the rise of increased misinformation and partisan animosity, our team has been working on understanding ways to help people better verify information, understand human behaviors around sharing and being influenced by misinformation, and what approaches (or treatments) are effective in countering partisan animosity which prevents constructive democratic dialogue and participation.
Read the recently released Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity
FINTECH & DATA PRIVACY
Through a variety of projects and research, our team is working to propel balanced, democratic, and inclusive governance to support a decentralized future for the world’s flows of data, money, goods, and intellectual property. From developing the open Data Rights Protocol and Secure Asset Transfer Protocol, to designing governance models, to harnessing digital federation platforms and data cooperatives to empower SMEs and local small communities.
HUMAN MOBILITY & BEHAVIOR
Using anonymized large-scale public data, our team is working to expand understanding of human movement, behavior, interaction, and their social impacts.
TRUST::DATA CONSORTIUM
The mission of The Trust::Data Consortium is to create open source tools and services that foster the development of a secure internet-based network of trusted data and enable next-generation AI, financial services, commerce, and governance.
With the emergence of massive global data ecosystems, The Trust::Data Consortium aims to provide people, organizations, and computers the ability to manage access to their data more securely, efficiently and equitably, while protecting personal data from incursion and corruption. As we have moved from the analog world to the digital world, our data, security and governance systems have not kept pace. It has created numerous issues ranging from data insecurity (such as the large-scale government and private sector data losses of recent years) to a widening digital divide between rich and poor, including the global disenfranchisement of over 1.5 billion people who lack legal identity.
Leading Financial Services, Healthcare, and Insurance companies are leveraging TRUST::DATA frameworks to develop novel solutions that improve data privacy, reduce operating cost, and virtually eliminate risks associated with privacy.
Visit the Trust::Data Consortium site
MIT LIVING LABS
With our novel “Living Labs” paradigm for research in the field, MIT Connection Science brings together interdisciplinary experts to develop, deploy, and test – in actual living environments – new technologies and strategies built on safe, trusted, data sharing.
A key issue today is that data is siloed, whether it’s personal data, data inside an organization, or data sharing across different organizations. Data discovery and integration is difficult and presents complex technical, organizational and policy challenges. A Living Lab allows MIT to be a microcosm for many big data efforts whether in government or in industry. One of our goals is to work with organizations in opening up repositories of information that contain the data needed to discover valuable new insights about important topics such as inclusive finance and health services, innovation, learning and sustainability. MIT is well positioned to take a leadership role in demonstrating not only how organizations can leverage data in the future, but how we collect, manage, and use personal information, from setting appropriate privacy policies to demonstrating AI systems that can implement it in practice.
See our current and previous labs
OPEN-SOURCE DIGITIAL SYSTEMS
OPAL – Bringing GDPR compliant security, transparency and accountability to data ownership, sharing, and use. Adopted by banks, hospitals, and governments
Tradecoin – A new model for digital money, adopted by both business and governments
The Prosperity Collaborative – Creating better tax systems through innovative technology, in alliance with World Bank, EY, and New America
The Open Music Initiative – Blockchain systems that allow musicians to own and profit from their music
MIT Connection Science is happy to accept tax deductible donations in any amount to support our research.