In the Media

Writing for Fast Company, Jeff Karp, a Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology affiliated faculty member, shares insights into handling professional and personal setbacks and failures. “When we feel burned by such things, it’s often because there’s the heat of emotional attachment,” writes Karp. “But when that cools, it’s possible to emerge with valuable insights and often more of a laser focus to use on the next venture. If you can take humbling first tries in stride, distill their lessons, and move on to the next thing, your chance of success becomes much greater.”

Fast Company reporter Shalene Gupta spotlights new research by Prof. David Autor that finds “about 60% of jobs in 2018 did not exist 1940. Since 1940, the bulk of new jobs has shifted from middle-class production and clerical jobs to high-paid professional jobs and low-paid service jobs.” Additionally, the researchers uncovered evidence that “automation eroded twice as many jobs from 1980 to 2018 as it had from 1940 to 1980. While augmentation did add some jobs to the economy, it was not as many as the ones lost by automation.”

Yuly Fuentes-Medel, program director for textiles in the MIT Fabric Innovation Hub, speaks with Washington Post reporter Daliah Singer about the need for a more sustainable shoe industry. “You don’t want to consider your shoe something you’re going to throw away, and that’s a long-term change,” says Fuentes-Medel. “It’s a mental model that needs to change for us to keep building all the products of the future.”

U.S. News & World Report reporter Cole Claybourn spotlights Amar Gopal Bose '51, SM '52 ScD '56, a former MIT faculty member, as one of fifteen famous Fulbright scholars. Bose, founder of Bose Corporation, “studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a full scholarship, earning his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering,” writes Claybourn.

Prof. David Autor speaks with New York Times reporter Steve Lohr about his hope that AI can be harnessed to become “worker complementary technology,” enabling individuals to take on more highly skilled work and find better paying jobs. “I do think there is value in imagining a positive outcome, encouraging debate and preparing for a better future,” Autor explains. “This technology is a tool, and how we decide to use it is up to us.”

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."

MIT researchers have developed a new tool to quantify how climate change will impact the number of “outdoor days” where people can comfortably spend time outside in specific locations around the world, reports Tim DeChant for TechCrunch. “The MIT tool is a relatable application of a field of study known as climate scenario analysis, a branch of strategic planning that seeks to understand how climate change will impact various regions and demographics,” writes De Chant.

Forbes reporter Oludolapo Makinde spotlights research by Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson that explores the impact of AI on the workforce. “Instead of aiming to create artificial superintelligence or AI systems that outperform humans, [Acemoglu and Johnson] propose shifting the focus to supporting workers,” writes Makinde.

Researchers at MIT have found that large language models mimic intelligence using linear functions, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “Even though these models are really complicated, nonlinear functions that are trained on lots of data and are very hard to understand, there are sometimes really simple mechanisms working inside them,” writes Wiggers. 

Graduate student Dhruv Gaur speaks with Boston.com reporter Lauren Daley about his viral message expressing support for Alex Trebek when he competed on “Jeopardy” in 2019, and his experience being invited back for the show’s first invitational tournament. “I listened to a ton of podcasts — old pop culture from the ‘70s ‘80s and ‘90s; history, Shakespeare,” says Gaur of how he prepared for the tournament. “I got really into quiz games on my phone or computer. I was shocked that nobody realized what I was doing because anytime I got a free second I’d be doing a quiz, or asking friends to go to bar trivia.”

MIT researchers have discovered a protein found in human sweat that holds antimicrobial properties and can “inhibit the growth of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease,” reports Matt Fortin for NENC. The team believes this “type of protein could be put into a topical cream to make something called ‘Lyme Block’ – like sunblock, but for preventing Lyme.”  "Ideally what we would love to do is give people more control over their own risk," says Principal Research Scientist Michal Tal. "And really try to develop this into a possible preventative that you could put on repellant or sunblock to protect against other elements of the outdoors that you could also protect yourself against Lyme."

A new report by researchers from MIT and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has uncovered “how AI-based machine learning and predictive analytics are super-powering key performance indictors  (KPIs),” reports Sheryl Estrada for Fortune. “I definitely see marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, and financial folks using these value-added formats to upgrade their existing KPIs and imagine new ones,” says visiting scholar Michael Schrage.

NASA astronaut Christopher Williams PhD '12 shares his excitement over the upcoming solar eclipse with Space.com Elizabeth Howell, noting he is most excited that the celestial event will provide unique views of the sun’s outer atmosphere. Williams previously conducted radio astronomy research and helped build the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia during his time at MIT. "It was an incredible experience, because I got to both work on the cosmology and the science behind that,” recalls Williams. 

Financial Times reporters Andrew Hill and Emma Jacobs spotlight how Prof. Carlo Ratti and his colleagues have found that “people are traveling less far from their homes, consistent with more remote working.” The findings demonstrate a more flexible approach to commuting. “That’s good news [for cities], because the problem is not a problem of capacity, it’s a problem of peaks,” Ratti explains.

FutureTech researcher Tamay Besiroglu speaks with New Scientist reporter Chris Stokel-Walker about the rapid rate at which large language models (LLMs) are improving. “While Besiroglu believes that this increase in LLM performance is partly due to more efficient software coding, the researchers were unable to pinpoint precisely how those efficiencies were gained – in part because AI algorithms are often impenetrable black boxes,” writes Stokel-Walker. “He also points out that hardware improvements still play a big role in increased performance.”