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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.”
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.
Prof. Charles Stewart III and Ben Adida PhD ’06 speak with Fast Company reporter Spenser Mestel about how to restore the public’s faith in voting technology. Adida discusses his work launching VotingWorks, a non-profit focused on building voting machines. VotingWorks is “unique among the legacy voting technology vendors," writes Mestel. “The group has disclosed everything, from its donors to the prices of its machines.”
Prof. Abhijit Banerjee shares advice with Nature reporter Helen Pearson for those in science careers looking to find “satisfaction from their work – and make a difference to the world.” Banerjee attributes “his own career to a series of happy accidents,” writes Pearson. Banerjee says, “a lot of it is accidents that make us who we are…sometimes we learn something about ourselves as a result of them.”
Prof. Jon Gruber speaks with GBH hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about the impact of political corruption on economics worldwide. The United States “has an incredibly dedicated, professionalized civil government,” says Gruber. “People go into government and spend much of their careers serving really the public good.”
Quartz reporter Michelle Cheng spotlights a working paper by Prof. David Autor which shows that “AI could enable more workers to perform higher-stakes, decision-making tasks that are currently relegated to highly-educated workers such as doctors and lawyers.” As Autor explains, “in essence, AI used well can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the US labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have estimated that the use of algorithms in public domains may provide “real value to the public while also saving the government money,” reports Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. The researchers suggest algorithms “that target workplace safety inspections, decide whether to refer patients for medical testing, and suggest whether to assign remedial coursework to college students,” have had similar impacts as those in public domains.
MIT has been named to the number two spot in Times Higher Education’s world reputation rankings, reports Times Higher Education. MIT is “dedicated to the teaching of science and technology. The sheer number of Nobel laureates affiliated with the institution – an impressive 101 – reveals the caliber of MIT graduates,” Times Higher Education notes. “Scientific discoveries and technological advances to come out of the college include the first chemical synthesis of penicillin, the development of radar, the discovery of quarks and the invention of magnetic core memory, which aided the development of digital computers.”
Writing for Financial Times, economist Ann Harrison spotlights research by Prof. Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo PhD '16 and Prof. David Autor, that explores the impact of automation on jobs in the United States. Acemoglu and Restrepo have “calculated that each additional robot in the US eliminates 3.3 workers” and that “most of the increase in inequality is due to workers who perform routine tasks being hit by automation,” writes Harrison.
New York Times reporter Ana Swanson spotlights a working paper co-authored by Prof. David Autor which suggests “the sweeping tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump imposed on China and other American trading partners were simultaneously a political success and an economic failure.” Autor and his colleagues found that “the aggregate effect on U.S. jobs of the three measures — the original tariffs, retaliatory tariffs and subsidies granted to farmers — were ‘at best a wash, and it may have been mildly negative.’”
Jared Sadoian ’10 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Kara Baskin about his work as director of operations for Cambridge Street Hospitality. “My day consists of email and spreadsheets, and budgeting and planning and analysis,” says Sadoian. “At the same time, it’s very firmly rooted in guest-facing hospitality that most readers might be more familiar with: talking to guests and taking reservations and making sure that folks are happy in the restaurants, and solving problems. Maybe it’s making a drink. This job is all-encompassing, and I love it for that reason, because I ran away from the office life.”
New York Times opinion writer Peter Coy spotlights the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, a new effort aimed at analyzing the forces that are eroding job quality for non-college workers and identifying ways to move the economy onto a more equitable trajectory. Nothing is “inexorable,” said Prof. Daron Acemoglu during the project’s kickoff event. “The answer in most cases is, AI will do whatever we choose it to do.”
The Economist spotlights new research by Prof. Ivan Werning suggesting a refined economic model to address the post-pandemic economy. Werning’s model adjusts “not just to a shift in demand from services to goods, but to supply-chain disruption, energy shocks and employees in some sectors working from home,” explains The Economist. “As such, inflation moved through the economy in waves, starting in select goods then spreading out.”
Writing for Wired, Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu predicts that expectations for generative AI will need to recalibrated during the year ahead. Acemoglu notes that he believes in 2024, “generative AI will have been adopted by many companies, but it will prove to be just ‘so-so automation’ of the type that displaces workers but fails to deliver huge productivity improvements.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with Bloomberg about the future of generative AI and the technology’s potential impact on productivity and the labor market. “When we interact with AI, we need to learn how to treat it not as authoritative, but as a guide to support decision making, and that’s really critical,” says Autor.