In the Media

MIT researchers have discovered “a red dwarf [star] slowly and steadily consuming its orbital object, a brown dwarf [star],” in a process that could continue for millions of years, writes reporter Mary Randolph for the Scientific American. The discovery was “a happy accident,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “We’re excited to see if we can find a star eating a planet or maybe even two planets eating each other—different types of combinations of these objects.”  

VulcanForms, a 3-D printing manufacturer that produces “complicated metal parts for a variety of industries, at speed and at scale,” founded by Martin C. Feldmann ’14 and Prof. John Hart, is expected to double its workforce within the next year, reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe. “We were born out of MIT, we’ve kind of got our DNA here,” says Kevin Kassekert, chief executive of VulcanForms. “Massachusetts is a place where you can attract the best talent in the world.” 

Forbes’ Amit Sinha spotlights nearly 50 years of the RSA algorithm, “one of the most important practical implementations of public-key cryptography,” developed by Prof. Ronald Rivest and his colleagues Profs. Adi Shamir and Len Adleman. RSA turned public-key cryptography “into a practical method for secure communication between parties who had never met and shared no prior secret,” notes Sinha. “It also made digital signatures practical, enabling identity verification and authentication across open networks.” 

MIT astronomers have discovered a “star slowly and steadily consuming material from another low-mass object,” writes Catherine Stoddard for Fox News. “At the rate which the star is feeding, it’ll take likely hundreds of thousands, or maybe even billions of years for it to completely consume its nearby neighbor,” notes Stoddard.  

Prof. Frances Ross and Research Scientist Julian Klein speak with Physics reporter Akashni Raghubar Latchanna about an electron microscopy technique they developed to move atoms within a material, creating new possibilities for engineering electrical, optical, and quantum properties. “If we can control the electronic or optical functions of the materials, we might potentially make those devices more brain-like, more portable, and less power-hungry,” Ross said. 

Prof. R. Scott Kemp speaks to The New York Times’ Selam Gebrekidan about the U.S. planning to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. Kemp “said accidents were more probable on the moon,” writes Gebrekidan. “With little containment, even smaller accidents would produce much more radioactive fallout. There is no wind on the moon but, with less gravity, debris can travel far after an explosion.”  

In an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Prof. Daron Acemoglu discusses his views on AI and how the technology could lead to worker displacement, without intervention. Concerns about AI and the labor market “should move us into thinking about what we can do because there is a lot we can do,” says Acemoglu. "Because the future is so uncertain, because the future is so much subject to our choice and agency, it is all the more important that we have this discussion." 

Research Scientist Judah Cohen speaks to USA Today’s Doyle Rice, Dinah Voyles Pulver and Janet Loehrke about the intensity of the polar vortex this year, and his predictions on what sort of weather the upcoming winter season will bring across the country. “The polar vortex is no longer record strong (signaling a milder winter) and it is actually a bit weaker than normal as it is undergoing a polar vortex stretch,” says Cohen. "It looks like that over the next two weeks the PV will be near normal or slightly weaker than normal.” 

On Slate’s “What Next: TBD” podcast, Prof. Sherry Turkle explains the current “state of emergency” brought on by humans seeking connection with AI chatbots, detailed in her latest book “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.” In conversations with chatbots “empathy is undermined and our capacity for relationships with other people is undermined,” says Turkle. “It’s an emergency because empathy and our capacity for relationships with other people is what makes us human, and you can’t just have that deteriorated.”  

MIT researchers have developed Ataraxos, an AI system capable of winning the challenging game Stratego. The system could one day help decision makers with real-world problems that involve hidden information, reports Jacek Krywk for Ars Technica. “Board games have fixed rules and clear winners, while real-world problems like negotiations, financial markets, or military conflicts usually don’t,” writes Krywk. “But the Ataraxos team argues the gap is smaller than it looks, since tackling any real problem starts with building a simplified model of it.” 

For The Architectural Record, reporter Izzy Kornblatt details how the Metropolitan Warehouse was converted into the MIT School of Architecture + Planning’s signature building, a reimagining that “makes the case for the reconstituting of existing structures as a creative act of design.” Kornblatt notes: “The completion of this project also marks a repositioning of design within both MIT and Cambridge. The building gives the School of Architecture and Planning distinctness—a perceptible structure of its own. Yet one of the project’s aims...is to frame design as a set of practices and techniques that are as relevant for scientists and start-up founders as they are for architects.”   

Prof. Dennis Whyte joins Hakeem Oluseyi, host of GBH’s “Particles of Thought,” to discuss cofounding MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems from a class assignment that blossomed into actionable research. The students “were not saddled with conventional wisdom” about superconducting technology, says Whyte. In the class, “we were throwing all kinds of crazy ideas at the fridge on this and some of them stuck,” says Whyte. “I’ve had the privilege to see my students succeed. We [professors] have a job where we get an amazing privilege where we get to discover.”  

Prof. Sherry Turkle joins Tracey Follows, host of “Me:chine Dialogues,” to discuss issues with AI companionship, as described in her latest book “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.” “Chatbots are not interested that there's no water to drink, or that the weather is crazy, or we can't live in the heat, or the garbage isn't picked up,” says Turkle. “They don't live in that world. So the world needs you. Reality needs you. The idea that you're sitting there being told you're the greatest, you're wonderful, you're fantastic, by a thing that isn't a person: that's a corporate endgame.”

A working paper co-authored by Prof. Kate Kellogg found that building organization wide AI tools created “substantial work beyond employees’ day-to-day jobs,” writes Fortune’s Bilin Lin. “That work included trial-and-error experimentation, reviewing and refining outputs with colleagues across departments, and continually adapting solutions as AI models evolved. Much of that work remained invisible to leadership,” notes Lin.  

Prof. Samuel Madden joins Tiziana Dearing, host of WBUR’s “Morning Edition,” to discuss the findings of MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training. “Cognitive surrender is the idea that people come to rely too heavily on these AI tools for their learning and they start outsourcing the critical thinking and the development of the foundational tools they think they need to succeed in life, to these AI tools,” says Madden. “It’s not just writing, but we see this [cognitive surrender] in our courses as well.”