AI Reports · MIT · 2026-10-02 · Blog / commentary
Computational tools for society’s most complex challenges
MIT Associate Professor Cathy Wu uses machine learning and reinforcement learning to help map out improvements to complex systems, including transportation. Wu argues that designing transportation systems involves modeling dozens to thousands of variants, which is beyond the reach of today's tools if the process is to be evidence-driven. Reinforcement learning is presented as a way to free transportation researchers and their practitioner partners to design the systems they want.