In the Media

Writing for Project Syndicate, Prof. Daron Acemoglu addresses the potential benefits and risks posed by AI advancements. “AI, properly developed and used, can indeed make us better – not just by providing ‘a bicycle for the mind,’ but by truly expanding our ability to think and act with greater understanding, independent of coercion or manipulation,” explains Acemoglu. “Yet owing to its profound potential, AI also represents one of the gravest threats that humanity has ever faced. The risk is not only (or even mainly) that superintelligent machines will someday rule over us; it is that AI will undermine our ability to learn, experiment, share knowledge, and derive meaning from our activities.”

Prof. Arnold Barnett speaks with New York Times reporter Christine Chung about airplane safety and risks. “Twelve million people board planes every day, on average, each year,” says Barnett. “The overwhelming majority of days not a single passenger is injured let alone killed.” 

Writing for The Boston Globe, President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif highlights the fundamental contributions made by universities across the United States in the advancement of scientific and technological innovations, and the role of government funding in these sectors. “Since World War II, the ideas born in university research laboratories have helped to make America great,” writes Reif. “Universities’ contributions should be recognized, and the systems that allow them to contribute should not be recklessly derailed.” 

CBS News reporter Chris Tanaka spotlights the 20^th anniversary of the Catalyst Collaborative – a collaboration between MIT and two non-profit theater companies aimed at creating and presenting plays that deepen public understanding of science and technology. "I think some of the scientists gave ideas, stories of science to the theater people, some of which later became plays,” says Prof. Alan Lightman on the Catlyst Collaborative. “And I think the scientists learned the way that artists think.”

The nondenominational MIT Chapel was named by Financial Times readers as one of the best places of worship in the world. “The Eero Saarinen-designed chapel at MIT is otherworldly,” they write. “This is what spiritual contemplation probably looks like in another galaxy.” 

“Pedro Gómez-Egaña: The Great Learning,” the newest exhibition at the List Visual Arts Center, features “an orchestra of sculptures meticulously curated with hidden instruments to create sound,” reports Marianna Orozco for The Boston Globe. The show will be on display through July 2025. 

MIT’s Artfinity festival kicked off with a performance of “SONIC JUBILANCE” at the newly opened Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, reports Maddie Browning for WBUR. The campus-wide festival, which runs through May 2, is open to the public and features student, faculty and staff participation in “concerts, augmented reality experiences, exhibitions, films and more,” writes Browning. Artfinity is an opportunity "to show that the arts are very important and very central to the lives of people at MIT,” said Prof. Marcus Thompson, festival co-lead.

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with GBH’s Boston Public Radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about the CARD Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “There is a legitimate role for credit in our society for those who use it appropriately,” explains Gruber. “And you don’t want to shut that down… We need to really be rethinking how we do regulation in the U.S.”

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with GBH reporter Robert Goulston about the potential impact of tariffs on imported metals and lumber. “When you place a tariff on an imported good, it’s not just the price of the imports that increase, but it’s also the price of the domestically manufactured products that increase,” explains Knittel. “Obviously the cost of importing steel and aluminum will increase, but domestic manufacturers will also raise their price because they can.”

Steve Mann PhD '97 has been awarded the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award for his contributions toward the development of virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable technology, eXtended Reality products and services, reports Thomas Coughlin for Forbes. “Widely regarded as ‘the father of wearable computing,’” Mann “invented, designed, and built the world’s first smartwatch capable of downloading and running a wide variety of apps for health, well-being, and fitness tracking, ushering in a new era of personal health,” explains Coughlin. 

Nature reporter Elizabeth Gibney spotlights QuEra, an MIT spinout that uses atoms and lasers to encode quantum bits or “qubits.” Gibney notes that in the QuEra system, “physicists trap an array of rubidium atoms using laser light and store quantum information in the energy levels of their electrons.”

Prof. David Autor joins Danielle Pletka and Marc Thiessen on their American Enterprise Institute podcast to discuss his research examining the impact of China entering the World Trade Organization, how the U.S. can protect vital industries from unfair trade practices, and the potential impacts of AI. “If you say, we're running a race against China, and certainly we are in many ways, we have two tools at our disposal. One is we can try to trip them up and hobble them. The other is we could bulk up and run faster. And we're going to have to do both,” says Autor. “We have to be willing to do the expensive stuff as well as the cheap stuff. The cheap stuff is like, let's put tariffs on them. The expensive stuff is let's invest in ourselves. And those are complementary activities.”

Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, speaks with Dezeen reporter Lizzie Crook about how this year’s event will be a “science-heavy edition of the festival examining the changing role of architecture at a time of environmental instability.” Says Ratti: "Architecture starts when the environment is against us and we adapt it to somewhere where we can live. We can look at this through science. There's going to be a lot of science in this year's biennale.”

Profs. Richard Binzel, Julien de Wit and Research Scientist Artem Burdanov speak with Boston Globe reporter Sarah Mesdjian about asteroid 2024 YR4 and their work developing a new method to “find and track far-away asteroids that were previously undetectable by using technology they compared to long-exposure images.” Says Binzel: “With improving technology, we are going to be aware of more and more of these objects.” He adds: “It’s a really important learning process what we’re doing right now. So when we find more and more of them, we know how to quickly process them and assess which of them are really worth looking further into.”

Prof. Jeff Gore speaks with WBUR Here & Now host Peter O’Dowd about retiring the U.S. penny. “I think that the primary cost of continuing to mint the penny is the fact that it means we feel we actually have to use it,” explains Gore. “I think that the value of our time that is wasted handling pennies is worth even more than the wasted materials.”