In the Media

Prof. Pat Pataranutaporn speaks with The Guardian reporter Andrew Gregory about the lack of safety warnings and disclaimers in AI overviews, specifically in AI-generated health materials. “The absence of disclaimers when users are initially served medical information creates several critical dangers,” says Pataranutaporn. “Disclaimers serve as a crucial intervention point. They disrupt this automatic trust and prompt users to engage more critically with the information they receive.”

Prof. Jim Walsh speaks with WBUR’s Here & Now host Tiziana Dearing about increased military presence in the Middle East and methods to de-escalate tensions. 

Researchers at MIT have made “recycled plastic into floor trusses for housing,” reports Rima Sabina Aouf for Deezen. The researchers “3D printed a functional, construction-grade element using a composite material they developed from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) plastic – mostly derived from discarded drinks bottles – mixed with glass fibers,” explains Aouf. 

 Prof. David Autor speaks with Bloomberg reporter David Westin about the shift toward automation in the workforce and the impact on workers. “There are many ways for us to use AI,” says Autor. “It’s incredibly flexible, malleable, plastic technology. You could use it to try to automate people out of existence. You could also use it to collaborate with people to make them more effective. But I also think that it depends on how we invest, how we build out those technologies.” 

A new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has found a correlation between addiction and eye care, reports Hadley Barndollar for MassLive. “The study found nearly half of the patients with opioid use disorder being treated for the eye infection were eligible to initiate medication-assisted treatment,” explains Barndollar. “But medications were only initiated when an addiction consult occurred, highlighting how much more eye doctors responding to emergency rooms can offer patients beyond vision care.” 

Writing for The Atlantic, Prof. Deb Roy explores the impact of chatbots on language and learning development. “The ordinary forces that tether speech to consequence—social sanction, legal penalty, reputational loss—presuppose a continuous agent whose future can be made worse by what they say,” writes Roy. “With LLMs, there is no such locus. …When the speaker is an LLM, the human stakes that ordinarily anchor speech have nowhere to attach.” 

MIT Sloan School of Management Dean Richard M. Locke spoke with Financial Times Global Education Editor Andrew Jack about the 2026 Global MBA Ranking. MIT Sloan topped the ranking for the first time, and Locke said that “[MIT] Sloan is forging tight links with other parts of MIT, which is renowned for its engineering and science expertise, and focusing more on how AI could be used 'as a tool not to replace jobs but enhance them'. He add[ed]: 'We are exploring how we reinvent management education for the 21st century.’"

Aesthetica Magazine reporter Eleanor Sutherland spotlights “Freezing Time,” a new exhibit at the MIT Museum featuring the work of Harold “Doc” Edgerton, a “pioneer of high-speed imaging who made it possible to see what the human eye cannot.” This is “the first exhibition to really interrogate Edgerton’s experimental journey in developing his innovative image-making processes,” says Michael John Gorman, director of the MIT Museum. 

Eastern Edge, a food hall bordering the MIT campus, has debuted in Kendall Square, featuring nine local food vendors with roots in the Cambridge community, reports Kara Baskin for The Boston Globe. “It’s built to be a gathering space, and that’s something that we really enjoy at Clover,” says Julia Wrin Piper, CEO of Clover. “At MIT, it’s a privilege to be in a space where every great idea that humankind has ever had has been debated. That’s something that’s very unique to this specific food hall – to be in this hyper-intellectual space and be very grounded by these delicious experiences.”  

Boston Magazine reporter Rachel Leah Blumenthal spotlights the opening of Eastern Edge, a new food hall debuting in Kendall Square. The venue, which borders the MIT campus, features a variety of vendors over its 11,000-square-foot space, and accepts TechCash.  

Prof. Angela Belcher and Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia chat with Edgar B. Herwick III of GBH’s The Curiosity Desk about their efforts aimed at improving diagnostics for ovarian cancer. “We now know that ovarian cancer doesn’t originate in the ovaries. About 80% of the time, ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes, but it can sit there as this precancerous lesion,” explains Belcher. “There’s new technologies that can be invented and developed to detect it much earlier, because if it’s detected earlier…there’s such an opportunity to make an impact.”  

Jerry Lu MFin ’24 speaks with Fast Company reporter Grace Snelling about his work developing a new AI tool that can be used to help figure skaters land their jumps and Olympic audiences better understand just how challenging a quadruple Axel is. “Some of the artistic sports were missing this data-driven storytelling ability—if you watch hockey on TV, it looks slow, but if you watch it in person, it looks fast,” Lu explains. 

Lecturer Jim Aloisi speaks with Boston Globe reporter Ian Prasad Philbrick about fare evasion on the MBTA, and a need for transit reform. “The drill here shouldn’t be to obsess or focus about how much,” says Aloisi. “The drill should be where can we make cost-effective interventions that matter?”

A new study by Prof. Sara Seager and her colleagues has found a solar system that contradicts the patterns commonly “seen across the galaxy and in our own solar system,” reports Jacopo Prisco for CNN. The study offers “some of the first evidence for flipping the script on how planets form around the most common stars in our galaxy,” says Seager. “Even in a maturing field, new discoveries can remind us that we still have a long way to go in understanding how planetary systems are built.”  

The MIT Welcome Center will host a community event to celebrate the Lunar New Year with “calligraphy, face painting, paper-lantern making, and hot cocoa,” reports Annie Sarlin for The Boston Globe. “The event will also include tai chi lessons and a performance from the MIT Lion Dance” team, writes Sarlin.