MIT researchers have found that job applicants who used AI to improve spelling and grammar on their resumes were eight percent more likely to be hired, reports Bryan Robinson for Forbes. “If you take two identical workers with the same skills and background, the one with the better-written resume is more likely to get hired,” explains graduate student Emma van Inwegen. “The takeaway is that employers actually care about the writing in the resume; it’s not just a correlation.”
Sloan Senior Lecturer Robert (Bob) Pozen speaks with U.S. News & World Report reporter Geoff Williams about ways to create a healthy work-life balance. “Ironically, all of this technology has led, some people in some organizations, to think they have to be 'on' all the time and go from one meeting to another because it’s so easy to schedule it,” says Pozen. “You have to have ground rules.”
Brian Deese, an MIT Innovation Fellow, speaks with CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin about the state of the U.S. economy. “Perceptions of the economy have gotten increasingly polarized along political lines, and so when you look at that polling around sentiment and the economy one of the things it reflects is that increasing polarization that we are seeing everywhere and reflected in that data,” says Deese. “But number two, we do know historically that as economic data improves it leads to improved sentiment and in general, the incumbents benefit from that.”
Prof. Zeynep Ton speaks with Marketplace host Meghan McCarty Carino about the impact of automation, such as self-service kiosks or chatbot customer service agents, on retail shopping. When thinking about self checkout stations and chatbots, Ton recommends companies evaluate whether the technologies can “improve value for the customer? And would this improve productivity for employees and make their jobs better so that they can serve the customers much better too.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with CNBC about the potential impact of AI in the workplace. “I think the incentive in the industry… especially with the idea that you have to dominate the market by becoming the largest players, I think those are not helping because those are making us rush down the easiest road, the lowest resistance path, which is often automation,” says Acemoglu. “I don’t think that is going to get us the kind of aspirations that are articulated where we can make blue collar workers, electricians, nurses, teachers much more capable because we have given them tools to be better workers and to make much higher quality services.”
The work of Professors David Autor and Daron Acemoglu is highlighted in an article for The Economist that examines “how jobs are being transformed for the better.” A recent paper co-authored by Autor “demonstrated that tight American labour markets are leading to fast wage growth,” while a study from Acemoglu and others found “that use of robots meant higher wages for workers who were not replaced, and that these benefits spread beyond the automating firms.”
Four faculty members from across MIT - Professors Song Han, Simon Johnson, Yoon Kim and Rosalind Picard - speak with Curiosity Stream about the opportunities and risks posed by the rapid advancements in the field of AI. “We do want to think about which human capabilities we treasure,” says Picard. She adds that during the Covid-19 pandemic, “we saw a lot of loss of people's ability to communicate with one another face-to-face when their world moved online. I think we need to be thoughtful and intentional about what we're building with the technology and whether it's diminishing who we are or enhancing it.”
Financial Times reporter Andrew Hill highlights “The Geek Way,” a new book by Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee that explores the success behind “geek” culture in companies. Hill notes that McAfee has, “pinpointed some important norms sustaining the world’s most admired, and fastest growing, organizations.”
Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee speaks with Bloomberg hosts Carol Massar and Tim Steinbeck about his new book “The Geek Way” and the future of artificial intelligence. “I personally am not worried about the existential, the alignment risks of AI,” says McAfee. “All very powerful tools bring risks and harm with them, and they demand vigilance. We have got to be careful about it. I don’t think AI is any big exception to that trend or requires us to do radically different things, we just have to be vigilant and stop the bad uses.”
Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee speaks with CNBC about the contributing factors to a successful start-up company. “Incumbent industries and companies are so fond of really elaborate planning cycles and the geeks just build things, get feedback and do again on a fast cadence,” says McAfee.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that “Black women who work in predominately white teams may have worse job outcomes,” reports Ruth Umoh for Fortune. The researchers, “studied 9,037 inexperienced new hires in a large, elite professional service firm from 2014 to 2020, focusing on retention and promotion rates,” explains Umoh. “Black women were the only demographic whose turnover and promotion rates were significantly affected by the racial identify of their coworkers.”
Writing for Fortune, Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee discusses his new book “The Geek Way,” and explains how the structure of Montessori schools are influencing modern day business and company culture. “A bunch of geeks are now doing for companies what Maria Montessori did for schools,” writes McAfee. “They’re reimagining them, improving them, and exposing false assumptions. A large and growing cohort of business leaders are now building very different companies — and, not coincidentally, very successful ones.”
Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee writes for Fast Company about the makings of a successful corporate culture. “I’ve come to believe that the most fundamental reason Silicon Valley companies are disrupting so many industries is that they’ve iterated and experimented their way into a corporate culture that supports high levels of agility, innovation, and execution simultaneously,” writes McAfee. “I call this culture the geek way. It’s based on four norms expected by those around you (and not just the bosses).”
Prof. Pierre Azoulay speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Fernandez about new research that highlights how immigrant workers, “account for nearly one-in-five of the top 1% wage earners in the U.S.” Azoulay notes that: “One reason that immigrants do better is that they locate in places that are growing fast and the earnings potential are high. They do not randomly locate around the United States.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson write for Project Syndicate about how to structure U.S. international trade policies so that they benefit American workers and global stability. “Two new principles can form the basis of U.S. policy. First, international trade should be structured in a way to encourage a stable world order,” they write. “Second, appealing to abstract 'gains of trade' is no longer enough. American workers need to see the benefits. Any trade arrangement that significantly undermines the quality and quantity of middle-class American jobs is bad for the country and its people, and will likely incite a political backlash.”