Research

Boston Magazine spotlights MIT’s leading role in the AI revolution in the Greater Boston area. “With a $2 million grant from the Department of Defense, MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab combines with a new research group, Project MAC, to create what’s now known as the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Over the next three years, researchers lead groundbreaking machine-learning projects such as the creation of Eliza, a psychotherapy-based computer program that could process languages and establish emotional connections with users (a primordial chatbot, essentially).”

Washington Post columnist Eduardo Porter spotlights various MIT research efforts aimed at ensuring that AI is used to empower human workers rather than replace them. Prof. David Autor notes: “AI, if used well, can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the U.S. labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization.”

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that high exposure to implausible and outlandish false claims can increase the belief in more ambiguous-seeming ones, reports Chris Stokel-Walker for Scientific American. The researchers “conducted five experiments with nearly 5,500 participants in all in which they asked these individuals to read or evaluate news headlines,” writes Stokel-Walker. “Across all the experiments, participants exposed to blatantly false claims were more likely to believe unrelated, more ambiguous falsehoods.”

Prof. Arnold Barnett speaks with NPR reporter Juliana Kim about airline safety and the risks associated with flying. According to Barnett, "from 2018 to 2022, the chances of a passenger being killed on a flight anywhere in the world was 1 in 13.4 million. Between 1968 to 1977, the chance was 1 in 350,000,” writes Kim.

Will Dunham at Reuters writes about new research from Prof. Evelina Fedorenko and others, which found that polyglots “who spoke between five and 54 languages” used less brain activity when processing their native language. "We think this is because when you process a language that you know well, you can engage the full suite of linguistic operations - the operations that the language system in your brain supports," says Fedorenko.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere are investigating the “pathways, risk factors, and molecules” involved in the development of colorectal cancer, reports Rick Sobey for The Boston Herald. “The research team has uncovered contributing causes to this rise in early-onset cases, including: overweight/obesity, physical inactivity, poor diet, and alterations in the gut microbiome,” writes Sobey.

MIT scientists have found that a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease involving flickering lights and low-pitched sound could also help prevent cognitive problems after cancer treatment, reports Clare Wilson for New Scientist. The treatment is aimed at stimulating 40 Hz brainwaves, which are linked to memory processing. The results suggest targeting such “brainwaves may result in broader benefits for the brain, including increasing the activity of immune cells and, most recently, boosting its drainage system, which could help clear a toxic protein called beta-amyloid.”
 

A new study conducted by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has found large language models (LLMs) can be used to predict the future as well as humans can, reports Chris Stokel-Walker for Fast Company. “Accurate forecasting of future events is very important to many aspects of human economic activity, especially within white collar occupations, such as those of law, business and policy,” says postdoctoral fellow Peter S. Park.

Bingxu Liu PhD '23 speaks with Science reporter Christie Wilcox about his work  studying STING, an immune protein that plays a key role in defending the human body against viruses, bacteria, and tumors. “STING is actually one of the most promising cancer immunotherapy targets,” explains Wilcox. “If you activate the STING pathway, it triggers a very strong immune response. But when it’s too strong, it can actually kill your T cells. Initial evidence suggest that T cells die because of some ion impact. Which begs the question: Can we just use STING to activate some parts of the immune response, like interferon, but also block the ion flow [that’s harming T cells]?” 

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere are studying how T-cell receptors recognize antigens, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. The team “hopes to develop antigen-specific immunotherapies which could also have treatment implications for infectious diseases and allergies,” writes Nietzel.

Prof. Catherine Wolfram speaks with Heatmap reporter Matthew Zeitlin about her new study examining the effectiveness of climate policies in reducing emissions. Wolfram and her colleague found that instituting a carbon fee and a clean electricity standard would reduce emissions the most. Wolfram added that if the U.S. were to institute a carbon fee, it would be a major step towards a worldwide carbon price. “The more countries that get in this game,” Wolfram said, “the more powerful that policy can be.”

A new study by Prof. Joseph Weber and his colleagues “attempts to understand how financial statement auditors detect, resolve, and deal with the aftermath of material misstatements (MMs) in companies’ financial statements,” reports Joseph Brazel for Forbes. 

Prof. David Autor speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Douglas about how there may be another “China shock” due to the influx of goods manufactured in China being made available in foreign markets. “It won’t be the same China shock,” says Autor, adding that “the concerns are more fundamental” as China is competing with advanced economies in cars, computer chips and complex machinery.

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Kristin Forbes delves into her new study examining how quantitative tightening (QT) programs impact markets. “QT programs have, so far, been working as central banks intended,” Forbes writes. “At the same time, they have provided a small degree of support for central banks’ efforts to tighten financial conditions, with minimal impact on market functioning and liquidity. QT has worked in the opposite direction to quantitative easing, but the effects are much, much more muted.”

Senior Research Scientist Lisa Barsotti speaks with MIT Technology Review reporter Sophia Chen about how she and her colleagues developed a new device that uses quantum squeezing to help the LIGO detectors identify more celestial events, such as black hole mergers and neutron star collisions. “With these latest squeezing innovations, installed last year, the collaboration expects to detect gravitational waves up to 65% more frequently than before,” Chen explains.