MIT Sloan School of Management

At MIT’s AI Policy Forum Summit, which was focused on exploring the challenges facing the implementation of AI technologies across a variety of sectors, SEC Chair Gary Gensler and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher discussed the impact of AI on the world of finance. “If someone is relying on open-AI, that's a concentrated risk and a lot of fintech companies can build on top of it,” Gensler said. “Then you have a node that's every bit as systemically relevant as maybe a stock exchange."

Researchers at MIT have found that “Salet” is the best starting word for Wordle, reports Erik Kain for Forbes. “The algorithm that MIT used solved—on average—Wordle’s puzzles with just 3.421 guesses, which they determined was better than audio or crane,” writes Kain. “And salet performed 1% better than Wordle Bot’s recent best word, slate, despite having the same letters.”

MIT researchers have found that “Salet” is statistically the best starting word for Wordle, reports Nicolas Vega for CNBC. “If you play Salet and you play intelligently you can assuredly win the game within five guesses,” says graduate student Alexander Paskov. “You don’t even need that last guess.”

Researchers from MIT’s Research Laboratory for Electronics have developed a portable desalinator that can turn seawater into safe drinking water, reports Ian Mount for Fortune. Research scientist Jongyoon Han and graduate student Bruce Crawford have created Nona Technologies to commercialize the product, writes Mount.

Prof. Jonathan Parker and other researchers have found that Covid-19 relief payments have served as a form of insurance for families, reports Howard Schneider for Reuters. Although, “’the small short-term spending response and its pattern suggest that the (economic-impact payments) went to many people who did not need the additional funds,’” writes Schneider.

Prof. Emeritus Stuart Madnick and Keri Pearlson, executive director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan, write for The Wall Street Journal about the seven actions that corporate leaders can take to ensure that employees contribute to maintaining a secure organization. “New vulnerabilities emerge every day, as malicious cybersecurity actors find fresh ways to attack or infiltrate organizations. Technology can help, but it can only do so much,” write Madnick and Pearlson. “Just as important is a culture where all employees fill in the gaps—by noticing anomalies, questioning things that might look legitimate but are slightly off in some way, or stopping compromised processes that would otherwise proceed.”

Prof. Emeritus Stuart Madnick writes for The Wall Street Journal about the importance of transparency when companies are impacted by cyberattacks. “It has become clear that through laws and regulations, we need to increase the quantity, quality, and timeliness of cyberattack reporting,” writes Madnick. “Only by having more detailed information on who is getting attacked, how they are getting attacked and what is being stolen can everybody begin to arm themselves with the right defenses.”

Researchers from MIT are working with the Staten Island Performing Provider System to develop an algorithm that can predict who in the system is at risk for an opioid overdose, reports Maddie Bender for the Daily Beast. “In preliminary testing, Conte’s team and MIT Sloan researchers found their model was highly accurate at predicting overdoses and fatal overdoses, even with delays in the data of up to 180 days,” writes Bender.

Prof. Thomas Kochan writes for Fortune about how California’s new Fast Food Council can positively impact businesses, investors, employers, and workers. The council is “composed of industry, worker, and government representative to set minimum wage, safety, and employment and training standards for workers in large fast food chains and their franchises,” writes Kochan.

Writing for WBUR, Prof. Emeritus Thomas Kochan and Wilma Liebman, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, explore the current rise in worker activism and how to rebalance the relationship between employees and management. “The challenge, as ever, is to translate successful organizing campaigns into successful negotiations, resulting in labor agreements that provide ongoing representation for workers,” they write.

Sloan Lecturer Bill Fischer writes for Forbes about the disruption possibilities in new and alternative dairy products, non-prescription hearing augmentation devices and electric vehicle technology. “Disruption is, at least in these three industries, alive and well and posing a considerable threat to formerly successful, incumbent market-leaders,” writes Fischer.

Prof. Ariel Furst, and alumna Claire Beskin and Loewen Cavill were named the winners of the first annual MIT Female Founders Pitch, reports Stephanie MacConnell for Forbes. Furst’s company, Pharmor, has developed an inexpensive protective coating that allows microbes to be produced and transported in non-ideal conditions. Beskin’s company, Empallo, uses machine learning to unlock information on siloed patient data. And Cavill’s company, AuraBlue, has developed a wearable device that can predict hot flashes and enable a cooling pad to counteract the change in body temperature in menopausal women.

Lita Nelsen BS ’64, MS ’66, MBA ’79 writes for The Boston Herald about the Bayh-Dole Act, a landmark piece of legislation that allows universities to keep the patents to their own inventions. “As the head of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office for almost three decades, I helped license thousands of technologies to the innovative companies that sprung up around campus,” writes Nelsen. “The Bayh-Dole Act has indisputably helped the U.S. life sciences sector become the envy of the world.”

Lecturer Malia Lazu writes for Banker & Tradesman about how the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority needs to reestablish its relationship with the state and its citizens. “Making a major investment in transportation should not be seen as social service and a waste of tax dollars, but as economy building,” writes Lazu.

Prof. Andrew Lo speaks with Forbes contributor Russell Flannery about his work using finance to help lower the cost of drug development for cancer treatment and therapies. “I started thinking about how we could use finance pro-actively to lower the cost of drug development, increase success rates, and make it more attractive for investors,” says Lo. “Because that's really what the issue is: you need investors to come into the space to spend their billions of dollars in order to get these drugs developed.”