Prof. David Autor discusses the potential future economic impact of AI in a panel discussion moderated by Wall Street Journal reporter George Anders. “Technology automates, it complements and it creates new expertise and new work,” says Autor. “I don’t think we’re headed into a new world where human judgment, moral reasoning, empathy and know-how have no economic value.”
In a New York Times opinion piece, Prof. Carlo Ratti examines the debate around Ferrari’s first electric vehicle (EV) and the future of EV self-driving technology. “The self-driving technology available in most EVs turns the car into something summoned on demand,” writes Ratti. “Our work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that autonomous driving could allow cities to operate with a small fraction of today’s vehicles while reducing parking demand by as much as 85 percent.”
For The Hill, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen and contributor Mark Iwry argue that the U.S. should implement federal legislation for automatic retirement savings plans. “Without burdening small employers, bipartisan auto-IRA legislation would make retirement saving easy for employees without an IRA or retirement plan at work,” write Pozen and Iwry. “Such legislation would extend tax-favored retirement savings to the tens of millions of workers now left behind, fulfilling the stated intent of the recent executive order ‘to ensure that every American worker has access to a simple, portable, low-cost retirement-savings option.’”
For the Boston Globe, reporter Aaron Pressman features MIT startup VulcanForms, a 3D printing manufacturer expected to create over 1,000 jobs with a new 1-million-square-foot-plant in Devens, MA. The facility will bring capacity for more customers in medical devices, aerospace and defense, and consumer goods industries. “MIT professor John Hart started the company with grad student Martin Feldmann [‘14] as a way to bring 3D printing techniques using lasers and powdered metals to larger-scale manufacturing jobs,” writes Pressman.
Fortune reporter Emma Burleigh spotlights MIT’s financial aid programs that provides free tuition to students whose parents earn less than $200,000 a year. Additionally, tuition, housing, dining, fees, books, and personal expenses for students with parental incomes of less than $100,000 are covered by MIT. “Famed research university MIT is not only footing the tuition bill of its lower-income students—it’s making ‘free college’ a reality,” writes Burleigh.
MIT researchers have found that colon cancer cells can “change their identity, allowing them to travel through the body and form new tumors,” reports Daniella Gray for Newsweek. The findings could point to future treatments that can prevent metastasis—the leading cause of death for colorectal cancer patients, Gray explains.
For Archinect, reporter Niall Patrick Walsh spotlights how the full archive of architect and alumnus I.M. Pei ‘40 has been donated to the MIT Museum. “Among the materials are drawings and documents from some of Pei’s best-known works, including the Louvre Museum modernization project in Paris, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland,” writes Walsh. “The archive also contains records relating to four buildings designed by Pei on the MIT campus: the Green Building, Dreyfus Building, Landau Building, and Wiesner Building.”
Chronicle of Philanthropy reporter Maria Di Mento spotlights how the creation of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing allowed MIT to develop new “interdisciplinary programs to prepare students for an AI-saturated world and help them understand the social and ethical implications of digital technologies.” Prof. Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing, explains that: “MIT realized that effective education in the age of AI has to look different than it has in the past. Traditional siloing of expertise won’t work when AI is expected to touch nearly every part of people’s lives and is changing the way people in disciplines outside of computing are advancing their work.”
Writing for Forbes, contributor Ron Schmelzer highlights Describe Anything, Anywhere, at Any Moment (DAAAM), a new system developed by MIT researchers that could enable robots to capture details of objects they see while exploring an environment. In the future, the system could allow factory workers to send robotic assistants to find items. DAAAM “lets a robot build a detailed map of a space, attach descriptions to objects in that map, and answer plain English questions later,” Schmelzer explains.
Fast Company reporter Nate Berg spotlights how the full archive of architect and alumnus I.M. Pei ‘40 will be housed at the MIT Museum, noting that the collection will be the largest single repository of works by Pei. “I think there’s something really fascinating about architectural projects that are not necessarily burdened by the realities of building,” says Jonathan Duval, assistant curator of architecture and design at the MIT Museum. “Those are moments where you can really see what an architect’s priorities and intentions might have been.”
The archive of the renowned architect and alumnus I.M. Pei ’40 - including 1,500 rolls of architectural drawings, 50 models, and 1,000 linear feet of manuscripts – will be coming to the MIT Museum, reports Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. “This landmark donation marks the homecoming of I.M. Pei to MIT,” says MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman. “The MIT Museum is thrilled to steward his legacy and, together with MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, establish a global hub for the study of I.M. Pei.”
Writing for Forbes about efforts to improve air travel safety, Tanya Eves highlights the Air-Guardian system, an eye-tracking monitor for pilots developed by CSAIL researchers that assists when attention wavers. “In tests, it reduced flight risk and improved navigation success rates,” writes Eves. “It's a model for how the virtual co-pilot relationship should work: not replacement, but a seamless, intelligent partnership that understands when to act and when to stay silent.”
For The New York Times Magazine’s interactive project “The Revolution Through the Eyes of Seven Everyday Founders” Adjunct Prof. Marjoleine Kars tells the story of Baptist preacher John Leland who championed religious freedom and the separation of church and state through the 18th century New Lights movement. “Leland proclaimed that all should be free to worship ‘either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods,’" says Kars. “It was precisely such convictions about spiritual independence that led Leland to yoke his pulpit to political activism.”
Prof. Simon Johnson discusses the impact of AI on jobs in an interview with Financial Times (FT) reporters Delphine Strauss and Sam Fleming for the FT’s “Economists Exchange” series. “We are trying very hard at MIT to find ways to incorporate AI into the curriculum but to push harder on the entrepreneurship angle, the creation of new products and services, the development of critical thinking,” says Johnson.
In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, Senior Fellow Brian Deese and writer Anna Pasnau highlight the potential for AI infrastructure such as large data centers to increase jobs for electricians, welders and plumbers. “AI’s potential as a collaborator — ‘extending human judgment, enabling new tasks, and accelerating skill acquisition’ — is as significant as its capacity to automate,” they write.