In the Media

Boston Globe reporter James McCown highlights the architectural design of the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, noting that it is, “the most exciting work of academic architecture in Greater Boston in a generation.”Dean Daniel Huttenlocher adds: “The building was designed to be the physical embodiment of the college’s mission of fortifying studies in computer science and artificial intelligence. The building’s transparent and open design is already drawing a mix of people from throughout the campus and beyond.”

An essay co-authored by Prof. Simon Johnson in Project Syndicate argues that for all the predictions about AI’s effect on the workforce, the most likely outcome is that many people will face pressure to change jobs as the labor market adjusts. Policymakers must focus on human capital, he writes, and “shared prosperity can flow from new technology, but only if its adoption is accompanied by upgraded human skills and more proactive worker redeployment.”

Prof. Anna Frebel joins Arun Rath of WGBH’s All Things Considered to discuss her recent discovery of some of the universe’s oldest stars, an out-of-this-world identification made the help of MIT undergraduates Hillary Andales, Ananda Santos and Casey Fienberg. “When you meet someone new, you want to know what their name is, how old they are, maybe where they live and what they do, right?” says Frebel. “We do the same with all the astronomical objects in the sky.” 

NBC Boston reporter Matt Fortin visits the lab of Prof. Julien de Wit to learn more about his work discovering two new planets, a puffy, Jupiter-sized planet located over 1,000 light years away that has the consistency of cotton candy and an Earth-sized planet that may lack an atmosphere. “Through studying other atmospheres we get to improve our understanding of our own climate,” de Wit explains. “It’s like a sensitive mirror that helps us reflect back on us, so it’s all these different vantage points that we are gaining. That’s what exoplanetary science gives us.”

Prof. Seth Lloyd and other physicists have begun to show that in the quantum realm, theoretical routes to the past called time loops might be closer to reality, writes New Scientist’s Miriam Frankel. When first publishing his ideas about quantum time loops, Lloyd says he “probably wouldn’t have done it” given all the questions received about time travel, but now testing time loops is experimentally feasible.

Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s new study projects just mild economic upside in the U.S. stemming from AI advancement, writes Business Insider’s Filip De Mott. According to Acemoglu, AI-led U.S. GDP growth in the next 10 years will rise just 0.93% to 1.16%, due to uncertainty on how much AI can really advance total factor productivity.

The California Institute of Technology has announced the eight distinguished scientists who will be this year’s Brown Investigators, each receiving up to $2 million over five years to support research on fundamental challenges in the physical sciences, writes Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. Recipient Prof. Nuh Gedik will, “develop a new kind of microscopy that images electrons photo-emitted from a surface while also measuring their energy and momentum.”

Prof. Regina Barzilay joins The Economist’s “Babbage” podcast to discuss how artificial intelligence could enable health care providers to understand and treat diseases in new ways. Host Alok Jha notes that Barzilay is determined to “overcome those challenges that are standing in the way of getting AI models to become useful in health care.” Barzilay explains: “I think we really need to change our mindset and think how we can solve the many problems for which human experts were unable to find a way forward.”  

For the first time ever, researchers at MIT have observed electrons form “fractional quasiparticles without enabling the influence of a magnetic field,” reports Daniel Garisto for Quanta Magazine. This discovery “may carry the seeds of long-sought quasiparticles with stable memories that could underpin a new and powerful approach to quantum computing.” 

Financial Times reporter Robin Wigglesworth spotlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s new research that predicts relatively modest productivity growth from AI advances. On generative AI specifically, Acemoglu believes that gains will remain elusive unless industry reorients “in order to focus on reliable information that can increase the marginal productivity of different kinds of workers, rather than prioritizing the development of general human-like conversational tools,” he says.

Current AI models require enormous resources and often provide unpredictable results. But graduate student Ziming Liu and colleagues have developed an approach that surpasses current neural networks in many respects, reports Manion Bischoff for Scientific American. “So-called Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (KANs) can master a wide range of tasks much more efficiently and solve scientific problems better than previous approaches,” Bischoff explains.

Ara Mahar, a technical associate at the McGovern Institute, speaks with CBS News about what inspired their interest in kimonos – a traditional Japanese garment. “Mahar became so enamored [with the kimono] they moved to Japan to formally study it in 2016,” explains CBS. “Mahar became an expert, and moved back to Boston two years later. Mahar now gives demonstrations and lectures throughout the area.” 

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that the sun’s magnetic field “could form much closer to the star’s surface than previously thought,” reports Will Sullivan for Smithsonian Magazine. “The findings could help improve forecasts of solar activity that can affect satellites, power grids and communications systems on Earth—and produce magnificent auroras,” explains Sullivan. 

MIT have developed a new ingestible vibrating capsule that could potentially be used to aid weight loss, writes Newsweek’s Robyn White. Prof. Giovanni Traverso said the capsule “could facilitate a paradigm shift in potential therapeutic options for obesity and other diseases affected by late stomach fullness.”

Senior Research Scientist C. Adam Schlosser, deputy director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, speaks with Joshua Miller of The Boston Globe about the 11th consecutive month of record high global temperatures and the overall pace of climate change. The rising temperatures fall “very consistently with what the science is telling us about human interference with climate,” Schlosser explains.