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In her address to the Class of 2026 during the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony, Lisa Su ’90, SM ’91, PhD ’94, Advanced Micro Devices CEO, emphasized that “the world does not just need people who know how to use powerful tools, it needs people who know what to use them for, people with a sense of purpose, judgment, courage.” She added: “For everything that AI can do, AI can’t decide which problems are worth solving. It can’t make the hard judgments when the data is not there. It can’t take responsibility for the outcomes. These are actually our responsibilities, and they matter now more than ever.”

MIT engineers have developed a new low-temperature process for extracting battery-grade lithium from hard rock, while also reducing waste, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. “Mining is essential to technology and therefore to society, yet it is perceived negatively by much of the public as a destructive, polluting industry, in some cases with good reason,” explains Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang. “We hope to help change that perception by showing that there are cleaner, more sustainable ways to do it.”

Prof. Emeritus Paul Osterman speaks with Fortune reporter Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez about how a number of company layoff announcements recently have blamed the introduction of AI technologies for staff reductions. He notes that some layoffs are also likely tied to the increasing number of contract, gig and temporary workers used by employers, who can be cut at any moment. “We created a stable employment system of high wages and shared prosperity in the past,” he said. “That’s what we should be thinking about doing now.” 

Writing for The Boston Globe, President Sally Kornbluth emphasizes the importance of investment in discovery science, what she calls “curiosity on a mission." Kornbluth notes: “When someone we love needs therapies that could have emerged but didn’t or when other countries now investing in science can launch new science-based industries or run their societies on vast resources of fusion energy or reap the benefits of quantum computing power or advanced medical breakthroughs, America will wish it sustained its leadership in scientific research here and now.”

MIT researchers have developed a new method for precisely moving columns of individual atoms within a material, which could give rise to exotic quantum properties and shed light on quantum behavior, reports Tim Wogan for Physics World. “I’m excited because of the scalability of this that allows us to look at the interactions between the defects rather than just creating a defect itself,” explains Prof. Frances Ross. 

During a live interview in the GBH studios with Curiosity Desk host Edgar B. Herwick III, Research Scientist AJ Perez shares his work developing a new method to reuse recycled plastic to 3D print construction-grade materials for home building, which could help reduce home construction costs. “This all started with the idea of trying to build the roughly one billion homes the world needs,” says Perez. 

John Richardson, a senior lecturer in Sloan, and Attia Qureshi co-authored a piece for CNBC with tips on how to say "no" in negotiations. "Saying “no” can be hard for many people. We want to be polite, even if we think a proposal is unattractive," they write. "The goal here is to give an unequivocable “no” in a way that lets you gracefully exit the interaction, while still preserving the relationship." 

Researchers at MIT have developed a new online tool called the “AI Labor Exposure Map,” which breaks down different job tasks by those that can be performed by AI, and those that cannot. The team found that, “[i]n many cases, the human-centric parts of a job are still essential,” reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Instead of laying off workers, an employer could use the research to identify tasks that could be automated, so that the workers can be reassigned to handle only the uniquely human tasks.” 

Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Paul Osterman examines the rising use of contractors, freelancers and gig-workers by employers around the country. “While not all workers need to be forced into standard employment, they deserve some minimum level of protection and benefits—that includes gig workers and freelancers, who often don’t have any,” Osterman notes. “Workers need not pay a high price so employers can secure the flexibility they need.”

Sloan Visiting Prof. Gilbert Metcalf joins Marketplace to discuss whether suspending the gas tax could help consumers with rising prices. Metcalf notes that halting the tax likely won’t help, as gas prices have already risen by 40% or higher in some parts of the country. He also notes pausing the tax would hurt the country’s deficit, explaining that “every dollar that we take away in gas tax revenue means that's another dollar we have to spend out of the general budget” for infrastructure.