In the Media

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have published a study examining how extended “silence and a deliberative mindset create value in negotiation,” reports MSNBC reporter Selena Rezvani. “Our research suggests that pausing silently can be a simple yet very effective tool to help negotiators shift from fixed-pie thinking to a more reflective state of mind," says Prof. Jared Curhan. "This, in turn, leads to the recognition of golden opportunities to expand the proverbial pie and create value for both sides.”

Forbes reporter Howard Gleckman spotlights Prof. Amy Finkelstein’s new book, “We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care.” Finkelstein and her co-author propose a, “highly provocative, radical alternative to our current mess,” by combining, “a global health budget with universal, free, basic care for everybody,” Gleckma explains.

In an article that appeared in The Washington Post, Prof. Kenda Mutongi explores how “what has emerged on the streets of Nairobi is a kind of civic pragmatism, a host of improvisatory and creative practices that amount to a supplementary accommodation which grants the poor a meager means of survival.” Mutongi adds: “through an inventive kind of civic pragmatism, the citizens of Nairobi find ways of ‘instrumentalizing disorder’ that allow them to survive. Somehow, in a roundabout way, people keep trying to get by.”

MIT CSAIL researchers have developed a new air safety system, called Air-Guardian, that is designed to serve as a “proactive co-pilot, enhancing safety during critical moments of flight,” reports Jace Dela Cruz for Tech Times. 

Arvid Lunnemark '22, Michael Truell '22, Sualeh Asif '22, and Aman Sanger '22 co-founded Anysphere, a startup building an “‘AI-native’” software development environment, called Cursor,” reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “In the next several years, our mission is to make programming an order of magnitude faster, more fun and creative,” says Truell. “Our platform enables all developers to build software faster.”

MIT researchers Lisa Barsotti, Deep Chatterjee and Victoria Xu speak with Curiosity Stream about how developments in gravitational wave detection are enabling a better understanding of the universe. Barsotti notes that in the future, gravitational wave science should help enable us to, “learn more about dark matter about primordial black holds to try to solve some of the biggest mysteries in our universe.” Xu notes, “the detection of gravitational waves is a completely new window that has opened into our universe.”

Curtis Northcutt SM '17, PhD '21, Jonas Mueller PhD '18, and Anish Athalye SB '17, SM '17, PhD '23 have co-founded Cleanlab, a startup aimed at fixing data problems in AI models, reports Alex Konrad for Forbes. “The reality is that every single solution that’s data-driven — and the world has never been more data-driven — is going to be affected by the quality of the data,” says Northcutt.

Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, a MacArthur genius grant winner who brought attention to gender bias in science has died at 87, writes Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “She was an icon,” says Prof. Sherry Turkle. Turkle notes that Keller’s “analysis was profound because you realized that the very words that you used to talk about doing an experiment — or learning, or what it meant to understand — was deeply gendered.”

Insider reporter Katie Hawkinson explores how MIT researchers developed a new solar-powered desalination system that can remove the salt from seawater for less than the cost of U.S. tap water. Creating a device that relies on solar power, “eliminates a major financial barrier, especially for low-income countries experiencing water scarcity,” Hawkinson explains.

Quaise Energy co-founder Carlos Araque BS '01 MS '02 speaks with PBS Energy Switch host Scott Tinker about the future of geothermal energy. [Geothermal is “truly everywhere so it’s not a resource uncertainty, like there is with oil and gas, there’s always heat, but the technological gap prevents us from getting to it,” says Araque. These gaps “are the one caveat in unlocking this resource for everybody.”

Axios reporter Alison Snyder writes about how a new study by MIT researchers finds that preconceived notions about AI chatbots can impact people’s experiences with them. Prof. Pattie Maes explains, the technology's developers “always think that the problem is optimizing AI to be better, faster, less hallucinations, fewer biases, better aligned, but we have to see this whole problem as a human-plus-AI problem. The ultimate outcomes don't just depend on the AI and the quality of the AI. It depends on how the human responds to the AI.”

Prof. Iván Werning speaks with New York Times reporter Peter Coy about whether transitioning from pesos to the U.S. dollar could help control inflation in Argentina. Coy writes that Werning prefers “more conventional solutions such as bringing government budgets closer into balance.”

National Defense Magazine reporter Sean Carberry spotlights Mesodyne, an MIT startup that is developing a thermal photovoltaic power generator that could be used to help extend battery power during military missions. Mesodyne’s LightCell generator can deliver “high-efficiency direct current power from a quiet device with no moving parts that could change the equation of an operator carrying 100 pounds of batteries for a three-day mission,” Carberry explains. 

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that “managers in a large retail chain saw women as having less leadership potential even though their performance reviews were better, on average, than those of their male peers,” reports Sarah Green Carmichael for The Washington Post. “Analyzing data on 30,000 employees, the researchers found that overperforming didn’t do much to improve women’s scores on leadership potential. Their bosses continued to underestimate them.”

Prof. Moungi Bawendi shares his thoughts at an MIT press conference after being named a recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, reports the AFP. “None of us who started this field could have predicted 30 years later, it would be where we are today,” says Bawendi. “And you know it’s just amazing to me. If you have really great people working on a brand new field with brand new materials, innovation comes out in directions that you can’t predict.”