Skip to content ↓

📬 Want a dose of MIT in your inbox? Subscribe to the MIT Daily and/or MIT Weekly newsletters.

Top News

Looking for audio? Listen to the MIT News podcast

Recent Highlights

More MIT News articles

In the Media

Financial Times

A new research paper by Prof. David Autor and Principal Research Scientist Neil Thompson explores the forthcoming impact of AI on jobs, reports Tim Harford for Financial Times. “[W]hile there are few certainties, Autor and Thompson’s framework does suggest a clarifying question: does AI look like it is going to do the most highly skilled part of your job or the low-skill rump that you’ve not been able to get rid of?,” writes Harford. “The answer to that question may help to predict whether your job is about to get more fun or more annoying — and whether your salary is likely to rise, or fall as your expert work is devalued like the expert work of the Luddites.” 

Mashable

Researchers at MIT have “analyzed how six popular LLMs portray the state of press freedom — and, indirectly, trust in the media — in responses to user prompts,” reports Chase DiBenedetto for Mashable. “The results showed that LLMs consistently suggested that countries have less press freedom than official reports, like the non-governmental ranking like the World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), published by Reporters Without Borders,” explains DiBenedetto. 

Forbes

Forbes reporter Eric Wood spotlights various studies by MIT researchers exploring the impact of ChatGPT use on behavior and the brain. “As stated, the impact of AI assistants is likely dependent on the users, but since AI assistants are becoming normative, it’s time for counseling centers to assess for maladaptive uses of AI, while also promoting the possible benefits,” explains Wood.

Possible

Prof. David Autor joins Possible podcast hosts Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger to discuss everything from the cross-country road trip that helped inspire his research focused on technology, work and inequality to how AI might impact American workers. Autor notes that if AI technologies are implemented in the best way possible for humankind, “we would give people more secure and fulfilling work. We would give them more access to education and access to better healthcare, everywhere. And those things alone would improve welfare in so many dimensions. Not just in terms of material standard living, not just in comfort, but investing in our kids, creating opportunity for the next generation.”

Fast Company

Researchers at MIT have developed a new atmospheric water harvester that eventually could be used to supply safe drinking water worldwide, reports Sarah Bregel for Fast Company. The device is “about the size of a standard window” and made from “hydrogel, a material that absorbs water, and lithium salts that can store water molecules,” explains Bregel. 

The Boston Globe

Writing for The Boston Globe, President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif examines how the proposed endowment tax on colleges and universities will likely “raise the cost of a college education and hurt US competitiveness.” Reif notes that universities use income from their endowments to provide financial aid for students and support research. “Without financial aid, students from less wealthy backgrounds would not be able to attend the country’s great private universities,” writes Reif. “This would be not just a loss to them but also to the nation itself, which benefits when talented people from all backgrounds have the same opportunity to rise based on academic achievement.”

Forbes

Forbes contributor Tanya Fileva spotlights how MIT CSAIL researchers have developed a system called Air-Guardian, an “AI-enabled copilot that monitors a pilot’s gaze and intervenes when their attention is lacking.” Fileva notes that “in tests, the system ‘reduced the risk level of flights and increased the success rate of navigating to target points’—demonstrating how AI copilots can enhance safety by assisting with real-time decision-making.”

Yahoo! News

Researchers at MIT have developed an “AI-powered tool that scans scientific literature and over 1 million rock samples to identify materials that can partially replace cement in concrete,” reports Samanatha Hindman for Yahoo! News. The new system could “change how we build cities forever,” says Hindman. “The system sorts materials based on their physical and chemical properties, narrowing them down by how well they hold concrete together when mixed with water (hydraulic reactivity) and how they strengthen it over time (pozzolanicity).” 

Mashable

Mashable reporter Elisha Sauers spotlights some of the exoplanets identified thus far in 2025, including BD+05 4868 Ab, a rocky exoplanet discovered by MIT astronomers that has a “comet-like tail stretching more than 5.5 million miles.” BD+05 4868 Ab is “about the size of Mercury and orbits its star every 30.5 hours,” Sauers explains. “At roughly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the planet appears to be shedding material — about one Mount Everest’s worth per orbit — that becomes its tail.”

FOX 13

Noman Bashir, a fellow with MIT’s Climate and Sustainability Consortium, speaks with Abby Acone of FOX 13 about the environmental impacts of generative AI, and the benefits and challenges posed by increasing use of AI tools. Bashir emphasizes that the use of generative AI should be “very judicious, not a blind application of AI for all applications.”

Boston Herald

Writing for The Boston Herald, President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif and Alan M. Leventhal, founder of Beacon Capital Partners, underscore the importance of protecting Massachusetts’ research infrastructure, noting that the state’s life sciences sector alone supports 143,000 jobs. “It is imperative that we act now to preserve the research infrastructure that Massachusetts has built so carefully over the last decades. This is the time for the Commonwealth’s leadership in government, academia, business, and philanthropy to join forces and take bold action,” they write. “Decisive action will enable us to preserve our world-leading research infrastructure and protect the economic health of our Commonwealth for the benefit of all our citizens.” 

The New York Times

Prof. Danielle Li speaks with New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber about the various impacts of AI in the workplace on employees. “That state of the world is not good for experienced workers,” says Li. “You’re being paid for the rarity of your skill, and what happens is that A.I. allows the skill to live outside of people.”

Community Updates

Featured Multimedia

Additive manufacturing (3D printing) holds promise for fabricating complex glass structures that would be unattainable with traditional glass manufacturing techniques. Lincoln Laboratory’s innovative approach allows additive manufacturing of multimaterial glass items without the need for costly high-temperature processing techniques.

MIT Face to Face, an MIT-wide community drawing project inspired by 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient Es Devlin, aimed to bridge various silos in the MIT community that separate and keep us from knowing one another.

“Orient yourself not just toward the construction and acquisition of new tools, but to the needs of people,” said science communicator Hank Green, in the OneMIT ceremony keynote remarks. He urged MIT’s newest graduates to focus their work on the “everyday solvable problems of normal people,” even if it is not always the easiest or most obvious course of action.

MIT has launched the Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM)—a bold effort to re-imagine how we make things in the 21st century. Building on MIT’s founding legacy in manufacturing, INM brings together leading faculty and industry partners to drive advances in productivity, resilience, sustainability, and workforce development.

In a world without MIT, radar wouldn’t have been available to help win World War II. We might not have email, CT scans, time-release drugs, photolithography, or GPS. And we’d lose over 30,000 companies, employing millions of people. Can you imagine?

More News