Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Financial Times reporter Rana Foroohar about the impact of automation on the labor market. “It’s likely that the short- to midterm gains from AI will be distributed unequally, and will benefit capital more than labor,” says Acemoglu.
Ars Technica reporter Jacek Krywko spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new photonic chip that that can “compute the entire deep neural net, including both linear and non-linear operations, using photons.” Visiting scientist Saumil Bandyopadhyay '17, MEng '18, PhD '23 explains that: “We’re focused on a very specific metric here, which is latency. We aim for applications where what matters the most is how fast you can produce a solution. That’s why we are interested in systems where we’re able to do all the computations optically.”
Forbes reporter Yola Robert spotlights Sloan alumna Mona Patel for her philanthropic work supporting education for girls and underserved communities. “For Patel, her passion for supporting education stems from her experience coming to America as an immigrant student and witnessing how transformational it was for her,” writes Robert.
In commentary for Newsweek, Prof. Sherry Turkle explores the consequences of Facebook’s announcement that the company would no longer conduct fact-checking. “Facebook is a major influencer of culture and politics,” says Turkle. “It did everything to put itself into this position. Once there, to argue that it's not and say that its users are responsible for moving its content in the direction of truth is irresponsible.”
WCVB-TV's Chronicle spotlights Prof. Linda Griffith, “a forerunner in the field of biological engineering,” for her research investigating endometriosis and breaking the stigma around menstruation. Griffith founded the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research in 2009 and “one of their objectives is to help develop ways of staging endometriosis, similar to how cancer is characterized.” Griffith notes that by focusing on menstruation and making it a science, “I think we will really change the game for women.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu highlights the economic and societal implications of integrating automation in the workforce, reports Taylor Nicole Rogers for The Financial Times. “Acemoglu says that robots’ current capabilities mean that those most at risk of being displaced are in blue-collar jobs and lack college degrees, which may make it difficult for them to shift into the high-tech roles likely to be created by automation,” writes Rogers.
Prof. David Rand speaks with Wired reporter Brian Barrett about the implications of Meta’s new “community notes” system in addressing bias on social media platforms. “The motivator for all of this changing of Meta’s policies and Musk’s takeover of Twitter is this accusation of social media companies being biased against conservatives,” says Rand. “There’s just not good evidence of that.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found “that investors who use OpenAI’s GPT-4o to summarize earnings calls realize higher returns than those who don’t,” reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “The researchers recruited investors and had GPT-4o give them AI summaries aligned with their investing expertise,” explains Wiggers. “Sophisticated investors got more technical AI-generated notes, while novices got simpler ones.”
A new tabletop exercise, developed by researchers at MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has found that “a further buildup of U.S. nuclear capabilities would have limited effect on whether China might use its own nuclear weapons should a war over Taiwan erupt,” reports Brad Dress and Ellen Mitchell for The Hill. “The first large-scale war game of such an incident,” they write, “found that a U.S. buildup that goes past current modernization plans would not bolster nuclear deterrence in relation to Taiwan.”
Writing for Wired, Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, highlights the future of “physical intelligence, a new form of intelligent machine that can understand dynamic environments, cope with unpredictability, and make decisions in real time.” Rus writes: “Unlike the models used by standard AI, physical intelligence is rooted in physics; in understanding the fundamental principles of the real world, such as cause-and-effect.”
MIT Profs. Angela Belcher, Emery Brown, Paula Hammond and Feng Zhang have been honored with National Medals of Science and Technology, reports Michael T. Neitzel for Forbes. Additionally, R. Lawrence Edwards '76 received a National Medal of Science and Noubar Afeyan PhD '87, a member of the MIT Corporation, accepted a National Medal on behalf of Moderna. The recipients have been awarded “the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievements and leadership in science and technology,” explains Neitzel.
MIT Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein discusses key insights from his new book, “Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation,” with Fast Company. “One of the biggest blessings skeptical Humanism can offer a world of tech-certainty, in which AI chatbots freely and frequently hallucinate garbage answers and advice (like Google Gemini’s suggestion to use glue to keep cheese from sliding off pizza), is that it’s honorable to admit not knowing an answer,” explains Epstein.
Sloan research fellow Michael Schrage speaks with Fortune reporter Sheryl Estrada about the impact of AI on CFO roles. “The ongoing ‘Compound AI’ revolution, which involves approaching AI tasks by combining multiple interacting components, will increasingly transform the CFO role into that of an AI-powered chief capital officer (CCO),” says Schrage. “This is an analytics-driven shift that isn’t optional but imperative for enterprise growth.”
Prof. Anna Frebel spotlights the work of Cecilia Payne, whose research “laid the foundation of stellar astrophysics,” reports Liz Kruesi for National Geographic. “It is such a fundamental piece of understanding for humanity,” says Frebel of the importance of Payne’s work discovering that stars are mainly made up of hydrogen and helium
Prof. William Thilly, a “leader of groundbreaking research into human genetic mutations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, and the inventor of Kellogg’s Apple Jacks cereal,” has died at age 79, reports Jade Lozada for The Boston Globe. “I will always remember Bill as my first mentor and a scientific father figure,” says alumnus Tushar Kamath. “I can’t imagine having pursued a career of medical research without the formative experiences he offered me.”