In the Media

Senior Lecturer Luis Videgaray speaks with Government Technology reporter Nikki Davidson about concerns facing emerging AI programs and initiatives. Videgaray underscores the importance of finding vendors, "who are willing to protect the data in a way that is appropriate and also provides the state or local government agency with the required degree of transparency about the workings of the model, the data that was used for training and how that data will interact with the data supplied by the customer.”

A new study by Prof. Joseph Weber and his colleagues “attempts to understand how financial statement auditors detect, resolve, and deal with the aftermath of material misstatements (MMs) in companies’ financial statements,” reports Joseph Brazel for Forbes. 

Prof. Catherine Wolfram speaks with Heatmap reporter Matthew Zeitlin about her new study examining the effectiveness of climate policies in reducing emissions. Wolfram and her colleague found that instituting a carbon fee and a clean electricity standard would reduce emissions the most. Wolfram added that if the U.S. were to institute a carbon fee, it would be a major step towards a worldwide carbon price. “The more countries that get in this game,” Wolfram said, “the more powerful that policy can be.”

Prof. Stuart Madnick speaks with CNBC reporter Kevin Williams about how the rise of generative AI technologies could lead to cyberattacks on physical infrastructure. “If you cause a power plant to stop from a typical cyberattack, it will be back up and online pretty quickly,” Madnick explains, “but if hackers cause it to explode or burn down, you are not back online a day or two later; it will be weeks and months because a lot of the parts in these specialized systems are custom made.”

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Kristin Forbes delves into her new study examining how quantitative tightening (QT) programs impact markets. “QT programs have, so far, been working as central banks intended,” Forbes writes. “At the same time, they have provided a small degree of support for central banks’ efforts to tighten financial conditions, with minimal impact on market functioning and liquidity. QT has worked in the opposite direction to quantitative easing, but the effects are much, much more muted.”

Prof. David Autor speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Douglas about how there may be another “China shock” due to the influx of goods manufactured in China being made available in foreign markets. “It won’t be the same China shock,” says Autor, adding that “the concerns are more fundamental” as China is competing with advanced economies in cars, computer chips and complex machinery.

Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Evan Sellinger about her new book, “The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future With Robots,” in which she makes the case that in the future robots and humans will be able to team up to create a better world. “I want to highlight that machines don’t have to compete with humans, because we each have different strengths. Humans have wisdom. Machines have speed, can process large numbers, and can do many dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks,” Rus explains. “I see robots as helpers for our jobs. They’ll take on the routine, repetitive tasks, ensuring human workers focus on more complex and meaningful work.”

Prof. Skylar Tibbits speaks with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about his team’s work developing a new “additive manufacturing technique that can print rapidly with liquid metal, producing large-scale parts like table legs and chair frames in a matter of minutes.” Of his advice for engineers aiming to bring their ideas to fruition, Tibbits emphasizes: “Work hard, fail a lot, keep trying, don’t give up, and have amazing people around you. We're a research lab, so our whole goal is to go from impossible to possible. So, we're allowed to fail; we're not limited by profitability or customer demand or economy.”

New York Times Style Magazine reporter Susan Dominus spotlights the “maximalist, category-defying work” of MIT Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas, who is being honored with a retrospective at the MoMA. “Perception is something that really is an important part of my thinking,” Jonas explains. “How does the audience perceive my work? How does my work change their perception?” Michael Rakowitz SMVisS ’98 notes that Jonas, “is a foundational and transformative figure not just in the realm of video and performance and feminist art but in art that moves away from anthropocentrism.”

TechCrunch reporter Haje Jan Kamps spotlights AgZen, an MIT startup that has developed a new tool that optimizes the use of pesticides to avoid over application. “The real winner in all of this may prove to be public health and the environment,” writes Jan Kamps. “By reducing foliar pesticide usage by 30% to 50%, AgZen’s technology might help mitigate [environmental] impacts, aligning with the critical need for improved spray efficiency highlighted in recent reports.”

BioBot - a public health research, data and analytics firm co-founded by Mariana Matus PhD '18 and Newsha Ghaeli PhD '17 - is using wastewater testing to provide insights into growing infection rates and diseases across the country, reports Soledad O’Brien for WCVB-TV.

Prof. Nathaniel Hendren and Prof. Justin Steil speak with New York Times reporter Jason DeParle about the difficulty in building affordable housing in opportunity-rich neighborhoods. “A lot has changed in American life over the past 50 years, but the hostility to affordable housing has remained surprisingly durable,” Steil explains. “Where you grow up matters a great deal for shaping your life outcomes,” Hendren adds.

Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota writes for Forbes about the ways AI is reshaping drug development. “In the next three years, we can anticipate a more streamlined, efficient and cost-effective drug development process, ultimately leading to faster access to life-saving drugs for patients worldwide,” Hayes-Mota writes. “This is not just an evolution; it is a revolution in healthcare powered by the intelligence of machines.”

Prof. Charles Stewart III and Ben Adida PhD ’06 speak with Fast Company reporter Spenser Mestel about how to restore the public’s faith in voting technology. Adida discusses his work launching VotingWorks, a non-profit focused on building voting machines. VotingWorks is “unique among the legacy voting technology vendors," writes Mestel. “The group has disclosed everything, from its donors to the prices of its machines.”

Senior Research Scientist Lisa Barsotti speaks with MIT Technology Review reporter Sophia Chen about how she and her colleagues developed a new device that uses quantum squeezing to help the LIGO detectors identify more celestial events, such as black hole mergers and neutron star collisions. “With these latest squeezing innovations, installed last year, the collaboration expects to detect gravitational waves up to 65% more frequently than before,” Chen explains.