In the Media

John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, highlights Prof. David Autor’s research in a show on the impacts of automation.

Heather Goldstone and Elsa Partan report for WCAI’s Living Lab Radio that 50 years ago, faculty and students at MIT held a teach-in protesting the Vietnam War. Alan Chodos, a visiting student at the time who helped organize the gathering, explains that the idea was inspired by the question, “What could MIT do to make it clear that scientists, in particular, were very concerned about this.”

Associated Press reporter Jimmy Golen writes about this year’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, highlighting the growing use of analytics in sports. “Over two days, college math majors rubbed elbows with team and tech executives looking for fresh ideas and talented minds to implement them,” writes Golen.

Anne Mostue reports for Bloomberg Baystate Business on the launch event for the new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Eric Schmidt, former executive chairman of Alphabet, noted that the new college will be able to achieve something that has not been possible before, namely to “aggressively diffuse this new technology into fields which need it, but can’t get it on their own.”

VentureBeat reporter Kyle Wiggers highlights a panel discussion focusing on AI and entrepreneurship held during an event for the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “We know that entrepreneurs drive the economy,” said Eric Schmidt, former executive chairman of Alphabet. “What do you need to have [AI] companies? You need entrepreneurs. And let me tell you: we need more entrepreneurs.”

In a letter to The Guardian, Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm, Randolph Kirchain and Jeremy Gregory of the Concrete Sustainability Hub argue that “concrete remains a vital means of social and economic transformation for developing nations.” The authors add that “we ought to expand our understanding of it and use its full potential to enable sustainable development.”

Bloomberg News reporter Amanda Gordon writes about the three-day event for the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “MIT is going to be the anchor of what we will know in society as public interest technology,” said Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, during a panel discussion on considering the social impacts of AI.

Diane Greene SM ’78, a life member of the MIT Corporation, speaks with Becky Quick of CNBC about the future of AI. Greene explains that companies can now combine data with computational power, so that an “algorithm can learn from the data. Once you start doing that you start getting insights you’ve never gotten before that can leapfrog what you’re able to do.”

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes about how MIT alumni Mike Pappas and Carter Huffman started a company that allows video game players to customize their voices. The company’s software “measures the tone, pitch, and emotional intensity of the speaker’s voice, then applies these qualities to any user’s speech in real time.”

Profs. Regina Barzilay and Dina Katabi discuss how AI could transform the field of medicine in a special episode of CNBC’s Squawk Box, broadcast live from MIT’s celebration for the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Barzilay explains that her goal is “to teach machines to do stuff that humans cannot do, for instance predict who is going to get cancer within two years.”

President Rafael Reif and Stephen Schwarzman discuss the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing on Squawk Box. “We are integrating those computing and AI tools into all the disciplines we have, so every student here, no matter what he or she majors in, will be very comfortable using these new tools to practice their profession,” explains Reif.

WBUR’s Deborah Becker speaks with Prof. Regina Barzilay about her work applying AI to health care and Prof. Sangbae Kim about how the natural world has inspired his robotics research during a special Radio Boston segment highlighting innovation in the greater Boston area.

Xconomy reporter Jeff Engel writes about the three-day celebration held for the new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Engel writes that during the event, Eric Schmidt, technical advisor for Alphabet, noted that the new college will help address the AI talent shortage. “The level of demand across everything is exploding in this field,” Schmidt explained.

Houston Rockets general manager and Sloan Sports Analytics Conference cofounder, Daryl Morey, spoke about this year’s conference, which “brings together industry professionals, team executives, students, and others to discuss the increasing role of analytics in sports,” writes Nicole Yang for The Boston Globe. “The big fun is the really, really detailed geeky stuff,” said Morey.

Prof. Eric Alm speaks with New Scientist reporter Elie Dolgin about his work building a repository of gut microbes. “What we are doing is taking a snapshot of the biodiversity of human gut microbes on Earth today,” Alm explains, “and then preserving that for future generations so that we always have the biodiversity that co-evolved with us stored somewhere.”