Technology and society

Prof. Ankur Moitra and Prof. John Urschel share their thoughts with Forbes’ Alex Knapp about OpenAI releasing more than 700 math preprint papers online. “We’re used to landmark results being accompanied by new insights and theories,” writes Moitra. “But these feel different. The claims are spectacular, the papers are incomprehensible and there’s no punchline in sight that explains why the mysteries suddenly unraveled.” Adds Urschel: “It’s obvious that how we do and evaluate mathematics is going to have to change. What I think is constant is the fundamental idea of understanding that underpins our profession. And I’m excited to learn from these breakthroughs.” 

Prof. Pat Pataranutaporn and graduate student Manuel Cherep speak to the Scientific American’s Mary Randolph about companies creating AI agents to assist users in personal tasks. “We have this narrative crisis about AI right now. There’s two opposite visions of the future, and while people worry about AI,” says Pataranutaporn, “there’s this cute AI tool that’s being released.” 

“Groundbreaking computer scientist” Margaret Hamilton, who at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab “led the team that created the onboard flight software for NASA’s moon-bound Apollo program and later in life was celebrated as a powerful symbol of women in technology,” has died at 90, writes Associated Press reporter Jamie Stengle. Hamilton “was very much a mathematician and into the abstraction of how to turn thought into software,” notes her daughter, Lauren. 

MassLive’s Liesel Nygard spotlights the late Margaret Hamilton, “a pioneering computer scientist who helped establish the field of software engineering and led the MIT team that developed the onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo moon missions.” Nygard writes, “Thanks to priority-driven ‘defensive’ software [in the lunar module’s computers] engineered by Hamilton and her team, the system automatically shut down unnecessary background tasks to focus on the landing, avoiding an emergency abort [of the Apollo 11 mission].”  

The Washington Post’s Juno Carmel details how the late Margaret Hamilton “developed early computer software that helped pave the way for the digital world as we know it today” and led the team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab that programmed the alarm code that played a crucial role in the Apollo 11 mission. Hamilton “was the lead developer for the software that powered the Apollo guidance computer, which weighed 70 pounds but had only 72 kilobytes of memory, a fraction of today’s smartphones,” notes Carmel. 

Margaret Hamilton, “best known for her major contributions to the Apollo missions” at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab, “died on Sept. 30 at age 90, leaving behind a trailblazing legacy of problem-solving and entrepreneurship that paved the way for a new branch of computer science and engineering,” writes reporter Margherita Bassi for Smithsonian Magazine. Hamilton’s “coding foresight and prowess really made that mission a success,” says Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Andrew Meade McGee. “She created the logical software basis for many of the critical systems we use to maintain our infrastructure today, and that silently power today’s modern aerospace world.” 

Margaret Hamilton, who developed the software that helped the Apollo 11 mission land safely on the moon and “whose historic accomplishments focused attention on the work of software engineers,” died on Sept. 30, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “She gave me, from the get-go, this notion that I could do anything, that there were absolutely no gender barriers,” says Hamilton’s daughter, Lauren. Hamilton’s life and work conveyed to her great-granddaughters “that very clear idea that they could have whatever future they wanted to create for themselves.” 

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.”