In the Media

Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota SB '08, MS '16, MBA '16 writes for Forbes about the ethical framework needed to mitigate risks in artificial intelligence. “[A]s we continue to unlock AI's capabilities, it is crucial to address the ethical challenges that emerge,” writes Hayes-Mota. “By establishing a comprehensive ethical framework grounded in beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice and responsibility, we can ensure that AI's deployment in life sciences aligns with humanity's best interests.”

MIT researchers have found that lawyers prefer, and better understand, simplified texts, rather than legalese, reports Jesse Greenspan for Scientific American. “The researchers presented 105 U.S. attorneys with contract excerpts written in both “legalese” and plain English and tested their comprehension and recall for each,” explains Greenspan. “While the attorneys outperformed laypeople overall, they still found the legalese contracts harder to grasp than those written in plain English.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a soft robot that can be controlled by a weak magnetic field and travel through tiny spaces within the human body, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “Because of their soft materials and relatively simple manipulation, researchers believe such mechanisms could be used in biomedical situations, such as inching through human blood vessels to deliver a drug at a precise location,” explains Paul.

Writing for Forbes, Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, makes the case that liquid neural networks “offer an elegant and efficient computational framework for training and inference in machine learning. With their compactness, adaptability, and streamlined computation, these networks have the potential to reshape the landscape of artificial intelligence and drive further breakthroughs in the field.”

In an episode of The Moth, Anh Vu Sawyer MBA '20 speaks about what it was like for her to attend MIT Sloan as a 64-year-old student. “The experience of being at MIT showed who I really am” says Sawyer. “That I can still dream. It opened many opportunities; it opened many doors.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Bobrow spotlights Laurel Braitman PhD '13 for her work teaching writing and communication skills to healthcare workers. “We need people who are trained in science and medicine to be able to tell stories about what matters in public health in a way that makes people listen,” says Braitman. “But to do that, they have to be in touch with what they really feel.”

Researchers at MIT have developed PIGINet (Plans, Images, Goal and Initial facts), a neural network designed to bring task and motion planning to home robotics, reports Brian Heater for Tech Crunch. “The system is largely focused on kitchen-based activities at present. It draws on simulated home environments to build plans that require interactions with various different elements of the environment, like counters, cabinets, the fridge, sinks, etc,” says Heater.

Writing for Times Higher Ed, Prof. Carlo Ratti makes the case that in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, big data and analytics could “help admissions officers quantitatively capture the kinds of disadvantages applicants face and the kinds of diversity they may represent.”

Prof. Jon Gruber speaks with Boston Public Radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagen about the economics behind the Ozempic phenomenon, an antidiabetic drug being used to manage weight loss. “This is very new phenomenon and I think we are just starting to grapple with it,” says Gruber. “I think one positive aspect… it will put pressure on Congress to once again think more seriously about broader price of drug reform.”

Prof. Yang Shao-Horn spoke at the State of the Art Jewelry Summit to discuss the jewelry industry’s impact on carbon emissions and sustainability efforts, reports Caroline Palmer for the Financial Times. Shao-Horn's suggestions to tackle the problem involved a mix of a carbon tax, “which could encourage the use of new technology, including electric vehicles, as well as shifting mining practices away from open site to the development of mobile mining vehicles powered by renewable energy or hydrogen,” writes Palmer.

MIT researchers have discovered an RNA-guided DNA-cutting enzyme in eukaryotes, reports Science. “The researchers speculate that eukaryotic cells may have gained the newly identified editing genes from transposable elements—so-called jumping genes—they received from bacteria,” writes Science.

Prof. Max Tegmark speaks with Guardian reporter Steve Rose about the potential of artificial intelligence. “The positive, optimistic scenario is that we responsibly develop superintelligence in a way that allows us to control it and benefit from it,” says Tegmark. “If we can build and control superintelligence, we can quickly go from being limited by our own stupidity to being limited by the laws of physics. It could be the greatest empowerment moment in human history.”

Sublime Systems, a startup founded by Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang and former MIT postdoc Leah Ellis, is working to decarbonize cement making – a process which currently accounts for eight percent of global carbon emissions. “The world has a huge appetite for cement, and Sublime is working to scale its production to meet it,” writes Casey Crownhart for The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. 

Prof. Helen Elaine Lee speaks with Boston Globe reporter Renée Loth about the importance of writing, especially for incarcerated individuals. “In the wasteland of boredom and absence that is incarceration, it’s something to be devoted to that’s powerful and productive,” says Lee. Writing “is an assertion of humanity and abundance,” says Lee.

MIT has been selected as the world’s best university in the 2024 QS World University Rankings, reports Cecilia Rodriguez for Forbes. MIT has secured “the top position for the 12^th consecutive year,” writes Rodriguez.