Prof. Stuart Madnick speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Seán Captain about how AI could make scamming easier and more dangerous. AI “raises the level of skepticism that we must have substantially,” notes Madnick. “Procedures will have to be put in place to validate the authenticity of who you are dealing with.”
Prof. Anna Stansbury and her colleagues have found that economics PhD recipients are more likely to have a parent with a graduate degree, reports Andrew Van Dam for The Washington Post. “This study is one of the first to describe academia’s struggles with economic diversity, but its racial diversity issues have been well documented,” explains Van Dam. “They’re particularly pronounced in economics, which has fewer underrepresented minorities among its PhD graduates (about 6 percent) than any other major field.”
Wired reporter Caitlin Harrington writes that a study by researchers from MIT and Stanford highlights the impact of generative AI tools on workers and raises a “provocative new question: Should the top workers whose chats trained the bot be compensated?”
Researchers from MIT have found that “although women received higher performance ratings than their male colleagues, they received 8.3% lower ratings for potential than men,” reports Caroline Castrillon for Forbes. “Because those ratings strongly predict promotions, female employees were 14% less likely to be promoted than male ones,” writes Castrillon.
Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson make the case that the development of artificial intelligence should be shifted “toward a focus on ‘machine usefulness,’ the idea that computers should primarily enhance human capabilities. But this needs to be combined with an explicit recognition that any resulting productivity gains must be shared with workers, in terms of higher incomes and better working conditions.”
Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Yossi Sheffi speak with Boston 25 about the potential impact of AI on the labor market. “We need people to have what’s called soft skills,” says Sheffi. “They need to be able to convince people, manage people, work with people, partner with people.” Johnson notes while there are still fields that are safe bets, but notes that the speed with which [AI] is moving and currently the acceleration is really dramatic.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have tested the impact of generative AI among 5,000 customer service agents within a Fortune 500 software company, reports Jo Constantz for Bloomberg. “The company’s lowest-skilled workers became 35% faster with the tool,” explains Constantz. “The researchers think this was because the AI essentially transferred top performers’ knowledge to less-experienced colleagues through the automatically-generated recommended responses.”
Prof. Danielle Li, graduate student Lindsey Raymond and Stanford University Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson released an “empirical study of the real-world economic effects of new AI systems,” reports Greg Rosalsky for NPR. The researchers found “AI caused a group of workers to become much more productive.” Rosalsky adds that the study also “shines a spotlight on just how powerful AI is, how disruptive it might be, and suggests that this new, astonishing technology could have economic effects that change the shape of income inequality going forward.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Senior Lecturer Malia Lazu spotlights American singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte and his political activism. “Instead of using his celebrity only for his own material gain, he spent much of that capital on political change,” writes Lazu.
Prof. Alexey Makarin speaks with NPR’s Michaeleen Doucleff about his research examining the impact of social media on teen mental health. "The body of literature seems to suggest that indeed, social media has negative effects on mental health, especially on young adults' mental health," says Makarin.
Prof. Zeynep Ton established the “Good Jobs Institute” to improve the quality of frontline jobs, reports Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg.
Writing for The Hill, Prof. David Rand and research affiliate Ben Tappin examine their recent study that finds “Americans are more receptive to information that challenges their party leader’s position than we — and most others — had previously thought.” Rand and Tappin emphasize that “our identities, motivations and values are not (yet) reducible to party loyalty, and arguments and evidence can still change people’s minds — even if only a little bit at a time.”
Writing for NBC Boston, Senior Lecturer Tara Swart shares various techniques that could help improve memory skills. “What separates people with excellent memory skills apart from those who struggle is that they have both a strong working memory (retaining information immediately after learning it) and long-term memory (recalling information more than a day after memorizing it,” writes Swart.
Writing for Forbes, senior lecturer Bill Fischer highlights lessons from the late pianist Ahmad Jamal on leadership and communication. “As a result, there are leadership lessons to be learned from the great jazz-masters, and in the case of delivering a message, or sharing ideas, Ahmad Jamal’s lessons are well-worth paying attention to,” writes Fischer.
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing about how high electric bills are impacting efforts to address climate change. The current artificial inflation of the volumetric rate “makes electrification hard, it makes it more expensive,” notes Knittel. “As we, as a Commonwealth, want to move toward electrification, it’s a big headwind that is going to push against our climate goals,” says Knittel.