Prof. Stuart Madnick speaks with CNBC reporter Cheryl Winokur Munk about the growing risk of "malvertising" – a new cyberattack technique that places online ads for malicious purposes. “You see something appearing on a Google search, you kind of assume it is something valid,” says Madnick. “You should assume that this could happen to you no matter how careful you are.”
Writing for Project Syndicate, Research Scientist Christian Catalini contributes to a Project Syndicate opinion piece makes the case for implementing cryptocurrency regulation that favors “builders over speculators.” Catalini and his co-authors write: “At the end of the day, policymakers in Washington must come together and draft new rules, rather than trying to squeeze crypto use cases into laws from nearly a century ago. And the industry, for its part, needs to tackle the many problems that traditional financial services and crypto leaders have long ignored.” They add: “The upside, much like in the early days of the internet, is a technology that can restore competition to sectors that haven’t seen it in decades.”
Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Reuters reporters Ann Saphir and Howard Schneider about the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower borrowing costs. “It's not one thing that causes everyone to move,” says Forbes. “It's different people focus on different data, different indicators, different risks, and then they all end up in the same place.”
Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Associated Press reporter Christopher Rugaber about the Federal Reserve’s announcement declaring the end of the three-year inflation surge. “It really has been a remarkable success, how inflation went up, has come back, and is around the target,” says Forbes. “But from the viewpoint of households, it has not been so successful. Many have taken a big hit to their wages. Many of them feel like the basket of goods they buy is now much more expensive.”
Forbes contributor Peter High spotlights research by Senior Research Scientist Peter Weill, covering real-time decision-making, the importance of digitally savvy leadership and the potential of generative AI. High notes Weill’s advice to keep up. “The gap between digitally advanced companies and those lagging is widening, and the consequences of not keeping pace are becoming more severe. ‘You can’t get left behind on being real time,’ he warned.”
A new paper by MIT researchers has found that “aviation safety is improving by the decade,” reports Monica Pitrelli for CNBC. The paper “states that the risk of dying on a commercial flight globally was 1 per 13.7 million passenger boardings from 2018 to 2022 — a significant improvement from the decade before, and far cry from the one death for every 350,000 boardings that occurred between 1968-1977,” explains Pitrelli.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Thomas Kochan explores how workers, unions, CEOs and politicians can all draw lessons from the Market Basket protests in 2014. "The key lesson for workers and unions is to draw on customers and citizens as allies and sources of power," writes Kochan. "If workers’ demands make sense, customers and community members will support them."
Senior lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith speaks with Forbes reporter Joe Mckendrick about the history behind the AI hype cycle. “While AI technologies and techniques are at the forefront of today’s technological innovation, it remains a field defined — as it has from the 1950s — by both significant achievements and considerable hype," says McDonagh-Smith.
Researchers at MIT are working toward training AI models “as subject-matter experts that ethically tailor financial advice to an individual’s circumstances,” reports Tanza Loudenback for Business Insider. “We think we’re about two or three years away before we can demonstrate a piece of software that by SEC regulatory guidelines will satisfy fiduciary duty,” says Prof. Andrew Lo.
Prof. Thomas Kochan speaks with Boston Globe reporter Dana Gerber to reflect on the impact of 2014 Market Basket protests. Kochan, who co-authored a case study about the protests, says “it’s still the most unprecedented worker action that we’ve seen in our century. We’ve never seen a non-union group take action in support of their CEO, and hold that solidarity — from the executives to the clerks to the truck drivers — for six weeks. And to get the support of the customers was a remarkable achievement.”
Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Bloomberg reporters Jonnelle Marte and Reade Pickert about potential Fed rate cuts. “The last few years have been a wake-up call,” Forbes said. “You want to do a framework review that is robust to many different economic circumstances.”
Prof. Stuart Madnick speaks with NPR host Alisa Chang about the recent influx of security breaches and how individuals can prepare for future attacks. “There are certain responsibilities companies have, particularly with the disclosure of private information,” explains Madnick. He emphasizes that individuals, "have to realize there are risks and behave as cautiously and fruitfully as you can.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that commercial air travel continues to get safer, with the risk of a fatality 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018 to 2022 period, reports Brittany Anas for Forbes. “Researchers explain that this trend in safer flights can be understood through ‘Moore’s Law,’ which is the observation that innovators find ways to double computing power of chips every roughly 18 months,” Anas writes. “However, in this case, the MIT team points out, commercial travel has become almost twice as safe in each decade since the late 1960s.”
In a letter to the editor of The Boston Globe, Prof. Emerita Lotte Bailyn underscores the importance of leaders and prominent public figures taking family leave. “As someone who has long studied the effect of employer policies and practices on the success of an enterprise, I know the extreme importance of a leader’s actions,” writes Bailyn. “What they model, not the words they say, has the strongest impact on the culture of an organization”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that air travel has never been safer, with the fatality rate falling to 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018-2022 period, reports Agence France-Presse. Prof. Arnold Barnett compared aviation safety increases to "'Moore's Law,’ the famous prediction by Intel founder Gordon Moore that the computing power of chips doubles roughly every 18 months. From 1978-1987 the risk of dying was 1 per 750,000 boarding passengers; from 1988-1997 it was 1 per 1.3 million; and in 1998-2007, 1 per 2.7 million.”