MIT Sloan School of Management

In a Gizmodo article, reporter Ellyn Lapointe features a new study, co-authored by Prof. Christopher Knittel and Prof. Catherine Wolfram, that reveals American households are spending an additional $400 to $900 per year due to extreme weather conditions. “U.S. households are experiencing the financial effects of climate change in ways that aren’t always obvious,” says Knittel. “These costs show up across different parts of people’s budgets, and over time they can become pretty significant.”

In a study examining the impact of AI tools on software development, researchers from MIT and Wharton examined the work of more than 100,000 developers and found a significant gap between what AI tools generate and the amount of software delivered to companies. Writing for Quartz, reporter Anthony Lopopolo notes: “The upshot [of the research] is that AI and human effort aren't substitutes at any stage beyond raw code generation. You can't replace reviewing, testing, and release management with more lines of code.”

For The Atlantic, reporter Rogé Karma describes how Prof. David Autor and Principal Research Scientist Neil Thompson found a basic pattern for technological changes and job displacement based on the evolution of inventory clerk versus accounting clerk positions. “The story is almost never as simple as: We’re in a race with machines and machines will win,” says Autor. “What matters for a given profession is whether technology enhances a worker’s expertise or commodifies that expertise.”

Sloan Senior lecturer Ben Shields speaks with GBH reporter Rafael Nam about why tickets for the World Cup opening match have not yet sold out. “The hope or bet — for FIFA is that once the matches start — and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is,” says Shields. 

Financial Times reporter John Burn-Murdoch highlights a new study by Prof. Mert Demirer and colleagues that examines productivity levels among software developers work before and after they adopted AI tools. Burn-Murdoch notes the paper found that “AI delivers big productivity boosts for low-level tasks, but these translate into much smaller gains for final products.” 

A study co-authored by Prof. Michiel Bakker finds that use of AI tools can impact cognitive function and problem-solving abilities in a relatively short period of time, reports Rob Taub for NewsNation. “We show that just 10–15 minutes of AI interaction can result in significant impairments in independent performance and persistence — capacities that are foundational to lifelong learning,” the researchers explain. “If brief exposure produces measurable erosion, the cumulative effects of daily AI use over months or years may be profound and difficult to reverse.”

Prof. Emeritus Paul Osterman speaks with Fortune reporter Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez about how a number of company layoff announcements recently have blamed the introduction of AI technologies for staff reductions. He notes that some layoffs are also likely tied to the increasing number of contract, gig and temporary workers used by employers, who can be cut at any moment. “We created a stable employment system of high wages and shared prosperity in the past,” he said. “That’s what we should be thinking about doing now.” 

John Richardson, a senior lecturer in Sloan, and Attia Qureshi co-authored a piece for CNBC with tips on how to say "no" in negotiations. "Saying “no” can be hard for many people. We want to be polite, even if we think a proposal is unattractive," they write. "The goal here is to give an unequivocable “no” in a way that lets you gracefully exit the interaction, while still preserving the relationship." 

7 News reporter Polikseni Manxhari spotlights Erin Dawicki Sloan Fellow MBA ’24 and her work developing LymeAlert, an at-home kit that can test ticks for Lyme disease. “We really see this as a community-based healthcare initiative where we can all contribute significant information and hopefully figure out how to stop these little buggers in their tracks,” says Dawicki. 

A new at-home test developed by Erin Dawicki Sloan Fellow MBA ’24 can identify Lyme disease in a tick in just 15 minutes, Juli McDonald for CBS Boston. "Our goal is to get this into everybody's medical kits. Not everyone finds the tick, but when you do, if you can test it immediately at home and know you've been exposed," Dawicki explains.

Washington Post reporter Kevin Schaul examines the impact of AI on a number of fields, highlighting a recent study co-authored by graduate student Anand Shah that found that over the past few years there appears to have been an increase in self-represented and AI-generated legal filings. “Every system that has decreased cost to entry from AI should expect increased demand,” says Shah. 

Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Paul Osterman examines the rising use of contractors, freelancers and gig-workers by employers around the country. “While not all workers need to be forced into standard employment, they deserve some minimum level of protection and benefits—that includes gig workers and freelancers, who often don’t have any,” Osterman notes. “Workers need not pay a high price so employers can secure the flexibility they need.”

Prof. Taha Choukhmane co-authored a new study examining how Americans are using AI in their financial planning and found that “AI consistently gave better advice to people who asked better questions,” reports Daniel de Visé for USA Today. “It might be that AI is going to be a little more useful for people who already know a little bit about finance and financial literacy,” Choukhmane explains.

Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with Fast Company reporter Natalie Nixon about the risks of offloading creative work to AI systems. In one study, Aral and his colleagues found that with more creative work outsourced to AI, there was a resulting “slow homogenization of output that occurs when AI, trained on the same publicly available internet, starts flattening the edges that make creative work distinctive.” In another study, Aral’s team found, “cognitive offloading to AI (the act of outsourcing tasks you could do yourself) erodes the very skills you’re handing off.” 

Sloan Visiting Prof. Gilbert Metcalf joins Marketplace to discuss whether suspending the gas tax could help consumers with rising prices. Metcalf notes that halting the tax likely won’t help, as gas prices have already risen by 40% or higher in some parts of the country. He also notes pausing the tax would hurt the country’s deficit, explaining that “every dollar that we take away in gas tax revenue means that's another dollar we have to spend out of the general budget” for infrastructure.