Technology and society

For The New York Times, reporters Carolyn Y. Johnson and Kenneth Chang spotlight the late computer scientist Margaret Hamilton and her role in the development of the field of software engineering, highlighting her work as a “trailblazing woman who played a crucial, largely unseen role.” MIT Presidential Advisor Maria Zuber shared: “When you see someone like her who went for it and lived her dream it makes it a little easier for the rest of us to dare to reach for the moon as well.” 

TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling highlights Tony Fadell, the “father of the iPod,” and Designer in Residence at MIT’s Morningside Academy for Design, exploring what he learned from working with the first wave of agentic AI technology, in his presentation at the inaugural MIT Future Fest. “It took me a couple of years first to understand how best to utilize [an assistant], and then to trust them with the most sensitive data, and have them be an agent where they’re setting up meetings with people,” says Fadell. “Trust and safety are going to be paramount with anything that we turn over to some kind of intelligence.” 

“Groundbreaking researcher,” Margaret Hamilton, “whose code helped land NASA’s Apollo astronauts on the moon to win the 20th-century space race has died,” reports CNN’s Jackie Wattles. “Through her work, Hamilton is also credited as one of the founders of the field of software engineering — a term she coined — by helping to establish it as a professional practice,” writes Wattles.  

The Guardian’s Uwa Ede-Osifo spotlights the life and legacy of the late Margaret Hamilton, “the computer pioneer whose software powered the first moon landing,” at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab. Prior to the Instrumentation Lab, Hamilton worked “on the software that could detect enemy aircraft,” at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory,” writes Ede-Osifo. “When the institute received a Nasa contract to develop the Apollo onboard flight software, she jumped at the opportunity.”  

Margaret Hamilton, “who led the 100-person team [at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab] that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon,” died on Sept. 30, reports Trip Gabriel for The New York Times. “Her skills led to her promotion to director of software engineering on the project, which developed the two 70-pound onboard computers for the Apollo flights: one in the command module, which carried the astronauts from Earth, and the second in the lunar module, which set down on the moon’s surface,” writes Gabriel. 

Joe Romm ‘82, PhD ‘87, “a physicist by training who became one of the most influential voices in the debate over climate change and how to stop it, using his blog to provide deep-dive insights and sharp-elbowed critiques,” died on Sept. 14, reports Clay Risen for The New York Times. “There’s nobody else like Joe Romm,” says Michael Mann, Romm’s colleague at the Penn Center. “There’s nobody else who brought all of these interlocking talents and proclivities together in the way that he did. That gave him such a unique voice, and it’s a voice that we sorely could use today.” 

Forbes’ Rashi Shrivastava highlights MIT spinout Liquid AI, which is building “liquid neural networks that process data more efficiently and don’t need expensive chips stored in data centers.” Shrivastava writes, “Liquid AI’s models are small enough that they can run directly on laptops and phones. There’s no cost to host them.”  

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.”  

In a video interview, Prof. Turkle speaks to CNN’s Madeline Holcombe about how AI chatbots may contribute to feelings of loneliness and isolation in adults. “Technology offered the possibility of feeling like friendship without the demands of vulnerability,” says Turkle. “It turns out you can’t have intimacy or friendship without vulnerability.” 

Prof. Asu Ozdaglar, head of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and graduate student Julia Schneider ‘26 speak to Spectrum News about MIT’s new Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making major. “Now is definitely the time to study more AI, not less,” says Schneider. “What we need is a bunch of people that are focused and excited and passionate about deeply understanding why these models do what they do.” She adds: “Ultimately I want to work on technology that ends up helping people.”  

Prof. David Autor and his team of researchers found that junior patent attorneys who used AI for assistance showed no net improvement in their skills, reports Andy Mukherjee for Bloomberg. “When researchers subsequently tested everyone on an unassisted, offline task to gauge internalized judgment, the learning gains went entirely to senior lawyers,” writes Mukherjee. “Foundational expertise may be a prerequisite for extracting durable skill from AI-assisted practice,” the researchers noted.  

In The Wall Street Journal’s “Economics Newsletter,” reporter Greg Ip highlights a study by Prof. David Autor that found that AI did not significantly improve the performance of the 133 patent lawyers who participated. “Among junior lawyers, the performance of some got better, others got worse, and on average they were the same. Among senior lawyers, the lowest performers improved, the best didn’t,” writes Ip. “The conclusion: Lawyers don’t acquire durable new skills with AI.” 

Prof. Eric Klopfer, co-chair of MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training, is spotlighted by The Washington Post’s Susan Svrluga. Klopfer “said in many cases students are turning in homework that is better. And their performance on exams is worse,” writes Svrluga. AI is “the illusion of learning,” says Klopfer.  

Jeffrey Riley, executive director of MIT RAISE’s “Day of AI” K-12 program, speaks to WBUR’s Suevon Lee about the importance of teaching school-aged children AI literacy skills. “Kids need to know about voice clones and deepfakes and plagiarism,” says Riley. “We need to teach kids so that they're healthy skeptics of this technology, that they mistrust and verify the information they're getting from it.”  

MIT researchers are leading a new project documenting what major AI systems say about elections in an effort to understand how the technology influences the democratic process, writes Tiffany Hsu for The New York Times. “AI is becoming part of the way people encounter and make sense of political information, and yet we know relatively little about what that information environment actually looks like, how it differs for different user demographics, political identities and geographies,” says Prof. Chara Podimata, a leader of the project.