In the Media

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.

In the first installment of his Wallpaper series on ordinary objects that define daily life, Prof. Carlo Ratti describes the origins of the mosquito coil, a spiral shaped insect repellent, and its cultural significance as a ‘zampirone,’ during Italian summers. Named after its 19^th century creator Giovanni Battista Zampironi, the zampirone represents “typically Italian technology: the technology of compromise,” writes Ratti. “We might also say that the zampirone is a typically Italian technology: the technology of compromise. It does not build a barrier, but creates a temporary condition of habitability.”

In an interview with Fortune reporter Nick Lichtenberg, Prof. Daron Acemoglu discusses AI’s economic impact and his book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy. Acemoglu estimates AI will deliver roughly 0.55% in total factor productivity gains. “It’s not that you cannot get big productivity gains from automation. It is that it’s not as easy as sometimes it’s presumed,” says Acemoglu. 

Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Elisabeth Reynolds describe how the U.S. can maintain its technological leadership by investing in research focused on critical minerals, semiconductors, biotechnology, quantum computing, drones and advanced manufacturing.  “Invention is important, but technological leadership in the 21st century will go to the country that adopts these new ideas rapidly and applies them in clever ways,” Johnson and Reynolds write. “And that will require the U.S. to build vibrant innovation and industrial ecosystems that adopt and diffuse new technologies, including AI.”

For Axios Boston, reporter Steph Solis highlights “Anita,” a solar-electric boat created by alumnus James Worden ‘89 that is due to launch this year. The boat was previewed at the 80th anniversary Charles River sail-a-thon. “The prototype, named ‘Anita’ after Worden's late wife, moves silently with no fumes or exhaust and uses LiFePO4 battery cells with a battery management system (it lets you charge the batteries while they're in use),” writes Solis. 

Prof. Eric So joins CBS News Tech Watch to discuss a new Pew Research Center study that reveals 40% of U.S. adults perceive AI’s future impact to be negative, as well as his upcoming book, The Collision: What AI Does to Us. “The growth of AI is simply overwhelming for so many people in terms of the pace of progress. But also, a reflection of the fact that for so much of human history, human level intelligence was our most scarce resource, our most defensible advantage,” says So. “It was why we were paid the salaries that we are. And now AI is increasingly commoditizing that. It’s being mass produced in a way that really causes us to question what’s going on to make us valuable in the future.”

Prof. David Kaiser joins GBH “Particles of Thought” podcast host Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi to discuss his hunt for primordial black holes. “It’s a lot easier to find stuff coming off of a very bright, hot source, than a cold, dim one. So, the Hawking temperature of a black hole that has the same mass as our sun, or a little bigger would be so cold we would literally never be able to measure [its] radiation,” says Kaiser. “You’ll never see it [Hawking Radiation] from stellar collapse black holes, you’ll never see it from supermassive black holes, or even colder. The only hope to ever see it would be a smaller mass black hole.”