Writing for Forbes, Research Scientist, Christian Catalini, founder of the Cryptoeconomics Lab, discusses the future of crypto. “We've now been waiting for crypto's "killer app" for over a decade, just like AI was waiting for its ChatGPT moment,” writes Catalini. “By focusing on utility instead of speculation, crypto can finally deliver on its long-awaited promise.”
Prof. Emeritus Thomas Kochan speaks with Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnson about the impact of return-to-office mandates on employers and employees. “If Friday and Monday are strong preferences [to work remotely], you’re really risking alienating more people,” says Kochan. “You can expect they’re going to lose some of their talent to employers that have more favorable hybrid arrangements.”
Senior lecturer Tara Swart speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Netburn about healthy compartmentalization. Swart says “at its most useful, compartmentalization is the ability to acknowledge challenges in your personal circumstances or current events, and make a conscious decision to not allow those things to take over your thoughts and emotions,” writes Netburn. “But that doesn’t mean shutting out the world.”
MIT has been named to the number two spot in Times Higher Education’s world reputation rankings, reports Times Higher Education. MIT is “dedicated to the teaching of science and technology. The sheer number of Nobel laureates affiliated with the institution – an impressive 101 – reveals the caliber of MIT graduates,” Times Higher Education notes. “Scientific discoveries and technological advances to come out of the college include the first chemical synthesis of penicillin, the development of radar, the discovery of quarks and the invention of magnetic core memory, which aided the development of digital computers.”
In an article co-authored for The Economist, Senior Lecturer Donald Sull explores the impact of artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) on corporate company culture. “Leaders who do adopt AI for cultural insights can use these to make their employees happier, lower the odds of reputational disasters and, ultimately, boost their profits,” writes Sull. “Measurement is not the only piece of the ‘successful culture’ puzzle, but it is a crucial one. Culture has always been an enigma at the heart of organizational performance: undoubtedly important, but inscrutable. With AI, meaningful progress can be made in deciphering it.”
Prof. Arnold Barnett speaks with CNN reporter Jacopo Prisco about his forthcoming study examining the safety of air travel. “The main takeaway is that in the period between 2018 and 2022, the worldwide death risk per boarding was one in 13.4 million,” writes Prisco. “That means that if you picked a flight completely at random and just took it, your chance of dying in a plane crash or a terrorist act was about one in 13 million.”
A study by MIT researchers has uncovered an, “intricate relationship between jobs and the nation’s energy transition,” reports Kaleigh Harrison for Environment + Energy Leader. The study, “presents an unprecedented county-level examination of the U.S., identifying regions most intertwined with fossil fuels – ranging from intensive drilling and mining operations to heavy manufacturing sectors,” writes Harrison. “The findings underscore not only the expected impact on traditional energy bastions but also highlight the broader, often overlooked, implications for areas heavily invested in manufacturing.”
Researchers from MIT have found that our current retirement savings system “largely favors higher-income and white employees,” reports Remy Samuels for Plan Sponsor. The researchers concluded that “employer matching and tax benefits are more unequally distributed than wages,” explains Samuels. “While the median Black and Hispanic earners receive 75 cents and 79 cents, respectively, for every dollar of earnings received by the median white earner, median Black and Hispanic earners receive only about 50 cents for every dollar of matching contributions that median white earners receive.”
Prof. David Rand speaks with VOA News about the potential impact of adding watermarks to AI generated materials. “My concern is if you label as AI-generated, everything that’s AI-generated regardless of whether it’s misleading or not, people essentially are going to stop really paying attention to it,” says Rand.
Fast Company reporter Kristin Toussaint spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new map detailing how the shift to clean energy could impact jobs around the country. The researchers found that workers could be most impacted in areas that drill for oil and gas, as well as “regions with a high concentration of manufacturing, agriculture, and construction—all industries that rely heavily on coal, oil, and gas.”
Senior Lecturer John Parsons speaks with CNN reporters Angela Dewan, Ella Nilsen and Lou Robinson about the future of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) – nuclear technology that is smaller and less costly to build than traditional, large-scale reactors. “The target here is to produce electricity cheaper than coal and gas plants,” says Parsons. These fossil fuel plants “are terribly simple and cheap to run – they’re just dirty.”
Prof. John Sterman speaks with Boston Globe reporter Alexa Coultoff about his experience retrofitting his home to achieve a fully net-zero house. “Sterman said he asked himself what actions would have the biggest payoff and went from there,” writes Coultoff. “For example, his home’s original windows from the 1920s were in rough shape, so he decided to tighten the building’s envelope, resulting in wider windowsills, where, added bonus, he can now display a robust plant collection.”
Prof. Emeritus Henry Jacoby writes for The Hill about the potential impact of the 2024 presidential election on climate change. “Laissez-faire, ‘do nothing’ climate policy is a recipe for present and future climate and societal harm,” Jacoby writes. “The climate system will not magically self-repair if we continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
New York Times opinion writer Peter Coy spotlights the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, a new effort aimed at analyzing the forces that are eroding job quality for non-college workers and identifying ways to move the economy onto a more equitable trajectory. Nothing is “inexorable,” said Prof. Daron Acemoglu during the project’s kickoff event. “The answer in most cases is, AI will do whatever we choose it to do.”
In a new study examining the potential impact of AI on jobs that employ computer vision, MIT researchers found, “a vast majority of jobs previously identified as vulnerable to AI are not economically beneficial for employers to automate at this time,” reports Catherine Thorbecke for CNN. “In many cases, humans are the more cost-effective way, and a more economically attractive way, to do work right now,” says Research Scientist Neil Thompson, director of the FutureTech Research Project at CSAIL. “What we’re seeing is that while there is a lot of potential for AI to replace tasks, it’s not going to happen immediately.”