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Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with WBUR Here & Now host Scott Tong about the impact of AI on the white-collar job market and the economy. “The advances in AI models have been pretty impressive,” says Acemoglu. “But right now, much of this is still in the lab, so to speak, meaning it has not spread to the productive sector of the economy. We are not seeing massive job losses…but of course we should be planning for how these models will be used and what their impact should be.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Fortune reporter Jake Angelo about his work studying the “origins of economic and political decay,” and the need for the U.S. to crack down “on economic inequality and tempering with job destruction.” “If we go down this path of destroying jobs [and] creating more inequality, U.S. democracy is not going to survive,” says Acemoglu.
A working paper by Prof. Jonathan Gruber and his colleagues has found “that admitting more immigrations would help save the lives of Americans, particularly seniors,” reports Stuart Anderson for Forbes.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Bloomberg reporter David Westin about the shift toward automation in the workforce and the impact on workers. “There are many ways for us to use AI,” says Autor. “It’s incredibly flexible, malleable, plastic technology. You could use it to try to automate people out of existence. You could also use it to collaborate with people to make them more effective. But I also think that it depends on how we invest, how we build out those technologies.”
Prof. Joshua Bennett speaks with NPR host Michel Martin about his new book “The People Can Fly: American Promise, Black Prodigies, and the Greatest Miracle of All Time.” The book “weaves together folklore, history and memoir to sort through what it means to be a prodigy, especially a Black prodigy,” explains Martin. Bennett cites fatherhood and his mother’s ideals as his inspiration for the book: “In becoming a father who's raising my children in a very different context in suburban Massachusetts and not in the Bronx and in South Yonkers and having very different experiences than my parents did… I just started to think, what's the full breadth of what I've inherited around this idea of what it means to pursue an education? And that's really what inspired it.”
MIT has been ranked the No. 1 university in “arts and humanities, business and economics, and social sciences” in Times Higher Education’s Rankings by Subject for 2026, reports Patrick Jack for Times Higher Education.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Bloomberg Businessweek Daily hosts Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec about American politics. “In my mind, worryingly, there is a little bit of a theory which is that all of these actions are aimed at centralizing power in the hands of an executive presidency with fewer and weaker checks which come either from institutions or norms.”
Prof. Barry Posen speaks with Newsweek reporter Andrew Stanton about the stockpile of United States weapons.
Prof. Jonanthan Gruber speaks with Boston 25 reporter Amal Elhelw about increased health insurance premiums. “It’s an enormous emotional toll,” says Gruber. “It’s just not a stress we should put on people in a nation as wealthy as America.”
New York Times reporters Miguel Salazar and Laura Thompson feature “The People Can Fly,” an upcoming book by Prof. Joshua Bennett on their list of “nonfiction everyone will be talking about in 2026. “Bennett explores “what does it mean to be a gifted Black child in a country that treats them as an anomaly,” drawing on “the early archives of figures like James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, and Stevie Wonder – and his own experiences as an academic.”
Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Carl Higbie of Newsmax about the long-term profitability of new AI technologies, noting that AI's long-term success will ultimately be decided not by technological promise, but by whether AI tools can deliver sustainable profits. "Integrating AI actually is very difficult," Acemoglu explains. "You need to understand your organization, what your employees really add, and then bring AI to help them. Rote automation is not going to work."
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with New York Times reporter Patricia Cohen about various factors influencing the global economy, including “the revolution in artificial intelligence, rapidly aging populations, climate change, and a worldwide turn against liberal democracy and a rules-based international order.” Acemoglu explains that: “We are living through a singularly turbulent time.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu spoke at the City University Graduate Center’s panel discussion about the development of AI in the workforce. Acemoglu says “[AI could take] very different directions, and which direction we choose is going to have great consequences in terms of its labor market impact.”
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with David Frum from The Atlantic’s “The David Frum Show” to shed light on the American healthcare system and health care disparities. “The issue in the U.S. is there are the haves and the have-nots—the haves get comparable health care to the rest of the world at a much higher price; the have-nots get worse health care at a much higher price,” says Gruber. “There’s really two fundamental challenges in U.S. health care: There’s disparities, and there’s costs.”
Research by Kelsey Moran PhD '25 and her colleagues have found that immigrant health care workers are crucial to helping older Americans live independently at home, reports Stuart Anderson for Forbes. “The study found a 10 percentage point increase in the less-educated immigrant population in an area reduces by 29% the probability someone 65 years or older would live in a nursing home or other institutional setting,” explains Anderson.