In the Media

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a filter from used brewery yeast capable of removing lead and other metals from water, reports Rich Johnson for NewsNation. “Through a process called biosorption, the yeast can bind to lead, as well as the metals commonly used in electronic components,” explains Johnson. “That, say the researchers, could be a game-changer when recycling those metals. But the more valuable impact may be the ability to filter drinking water, starting with home faucets, and eventually scaling up to serve municipal water systems.” 

Writing for the Financial Times, Jon Hilsenrath revisits lessons from the occupational shifts of the early 2000s when probing AI’s potential impact on the workplace. He references Prof. David Autor’s research, calling him “an optimist who sees a future for middle-income workers not in spite of AI, but because of it…creating work and pay gains for large numbers of less-skilled workers who missed out during the past few decades.”

Prof. David Autor is a guest of Meghna Chakrabarti on WBUR’s On Point, discussing his research on the potential impact of AI on the workforce. Autor says “AI is a tool that can enable more people with the right foundational training and judgment to do more valuable work.”

MIT spinoff Electrified Thermal Solutions is developing electrically charged bricks that generate and store heat as part of an effort to one day replace fossil fuels, reports Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News. “If you are running an industrial plant where you’re making cement or steel or glass or ceramics or chemicals or even food or beverage products, you burn a lot of fossil fuels,” explains Daniel Stack SM '17, PhD '21, chief executive of Electrified Thermal Solutions. “Our mission is to decarbonize industry with electrified heat.”

On NPR’s Short Wave, climate correspondent Lauren Sommer reports on MIT researchers using artificial intelligence to decode the secret language of sperm whales. Prof. Daniela Rus says, “it really turned out that sperm whale communication was indeed not random or simplistic but rather structured in a very complex, combinatorial manner.”

Prof. David Autor speaks with New York Times reporter Jim Tankersley about the economic implications of President Biden’s decision to codify and escalate tariffs on Chinese goods. Autor’s “latest research warns of the economic perils of poorly designed trade policy, but it also explains why presidents might keep pursuing it,” explains Tankersley. 

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new machine-learning model capable of “predicting a physical system’s phase or state,” report Kyle Wiggers and Devin Coldewey for TechCrunch. 

MIT physicists have “successfully placed two dysprosium atoms only 50 nanometers apart—10 times closer than previous studies—using ‘optical tweezers,’” reports Darren Orf for Popular Mechanics. Utilizing this technique can allow scientists to “better understand quantum phenomena such as superconductivity and superradiance,” explains Orf. 

Nature reporter Andrew Robinson reviews “The Heart and the Chip,” a new book by Prof. Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone. The book “focuses on combining human and robotic strengths to pair ‘the heart and the chip’ in three interlinked fields: robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning,” explains Robinson. 

Researchers at CSAIL have created three “libraries of abstraction” – a collection of abstractions within natural language that highlight the importance of everyday words in providing context and better reasoning for large language models, reports Darren Orf for Popular Mechanics. “The researchers focused on household tasks and command-based video games, and developed a language model that proposes abstractions from a dataset,” explains Orf. “When implemented with existing LLM platforms, such as GPT-4, AI actions like ‘placing chilled wine in a cabinet' or ‘craft a bed’ (in the Minecraft sense) saw a big increase in task accuracy at 59 to 89 percent, respectively.”

Matt Elenjickal writes for Fast Company about pressuring companies to drive sustainable practices, noting the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics’ 2023 State of Supply Chain Sustainability report, which found that “investors continue to be the fastest-growing source of pressure on company leadership when demanding progress against sustainability goals.” 

Scientific American’s Nick Hilden reports on the influence that popular narratives have on our collective perceptions. Graduate student Pat Pataranutaporn notes: “why do we always imagine science fiction to be a dystopia? Why can’t we imagine science fiction that gives us hope?”

The Hill reporter Tobias Burns spotlights the efforts of a number of MIT researchers to better understand the impact of generative AI on productivity in the workforce. One research study “looked as cases where AI helped improved productivity and worker experience specifically in outsourced settings, such as call centers,” explains Burns. Another research study explored the impact of AI programs, such as ChatGPT, among employees. 

MIT astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that is 50% bigger than Jupiter, but still the second lightest planet ever found, with a density similar to cotton candy,” reports Leah Asmelash for CNN. The planet could provide a useful window into how puffy planets form. “The bigger a planet’s atmosphere, the more light can go through,” Prof. Julien de Wit explains. “So it’s clear that this planet is one of the best targets we have for studying atmospheric effects. It will be a Rosetta Stone to try and resolve the mystery of puffy Jupiters.”

Researchers at MIT have discovered “three of the oldest stars in the universe lurking right outside the Milky Way,” reports Elisha Sauers for Mashable. “These little stars are nearly 13 billion years old, and they haven't changed one bit since," says Prof. Anna Frebel. "The stars will continue to exist for about another 3 to 5 billion years or so."