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Prof. Adam Berinsky speaks with Boston Globe reporter Aidan Ryan about misinformation in the age of generative AI. “I don’t think that AI is necessarily going to make misinformation better, in the sense of making it more persuasive,” says Berinsky.“But it’s easier to create misinformation.”

Prof. Emeritus Olivier Blanchard speaks with New York Times reporter Peter Coy about the impact of wage increases on inflation. “Fundamentally, it is hard to believe that when the economy is overheating there is not going to be pressure of some sort on wages and prices,” says Blanchard.

MIT and Google are offering a free Generative AI for Educators course “designed to help middle and high school teachers learn how to use generative AI tools to personalize instruction, develop creative lessons and save time on administrative tasks,” reports Jack Kelly for Forbes.

Prof. David Autor speaks with Nature reporter Dalmeet Singh Chawla about the long-term impact of his research on policy documents. Autor’s work from November 2003 “is now the third most cited in policy documents worldwide,” writes Chawla. “Autor thinks his study stands out because his paper was different from what other economists were writing at the time. It suggested that ‘middle-skill’ work, typically done in offices or factories by people who haven’t attended university, was going to be largely automated, leaving workers with either highly skilled jobs or manual work.”

Prof. Roger Levy, Prof. Tracy Slatyer and Prof. Martin Wainwright have been awarded John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, reports Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. A Guggenheim fellowship “is one of the most sought-after honors in academe, the arts, and culture,” explains Feeney. “It helps underwrite a proposed art or scholarly project.”

MIT researchers have developed a new type of spring-like device that uses a flexible element to help power biohybrid robots, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The muscle fiber/flexure system can be applied to various kinds of robots in different sizes,” Heater writes, adding that the researchers are, “focused on creating extremely small robots that could one day operate inside the body to perform minimally invasive procedures.”

Domingo Godoy '14 speaks with WCVB reporter Emily Maher about running the 2024 Boston Marathon as a member of Team Brookline and his quest to raise money for the Brookline Education Foundation, which provides grants to teachers in the town’s public schools. Godoy, who ran the Boston Marathon in 2014 on the MIT Strong team in honor of Officer Sean Collier, recalls that seeing a lot of people the year after the Marathon bombing show up “to run, people that were basically injured at these events was pretty overwhelming.” This year, he’s looking forward to supporting his community and seeing his family and friends cheer him on. “They will be there with huge signs,” Godoy said. “I’m super pumped to get to Beacon Street, hopefully strong, and say hi to them."

Prof. David Autor speaks with PBS host Walter Isaacson about the fear surrounding AI’s impact in the workforce and his view that AI could provide new opportunities for middle class workers. “Most of the time, technology is good for the elite and not so good for everybody else,” says Autor. “[AI] is a case where the technology might compete a little bit more with the elite and enable more people to do valuable work,” resulting in higher wages and more job opportunity for the middle class. 

Boston Globe reporter Malcolm Gay spotlights the “AI: Mind the Gap” exhibition at the MIT Museum, “which explores the social, cultural, and political implications of deepfakes and other forms of generative AI.” The exhibit is “meant to address the idea that technology can manipulate what we perceive as true or false,” said Lindsay Bartholomew, exhibit content and experience developer for the MIT Museum. “But you also need to appreciate what you can do as a human, you have some agency here.”

Doug Ricket '01, MEng '02 co-founded PayJoy, a startup that aims to “provide a fair and responsible entry point for individuals in emerging markets to enter the modern financial system, build credit, achieve economic freedom, and access digital connectivity,” reports Mary Ann Azevedo for TechCrunch. “PayJoy is applying a buy now, pay-as-you-go model to the estimated 3 billion adults globally who don’t have credit by allowing them to purchase smartphones and pay weekly for a 3- to 12-month period. The phones themselves are used as collateral for the loan,” explains Azevedo.