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Prof. Justin Reich speaks to PBS reporter Hannah Grabenstein about the dangers of children using Google’s AI overview, and AI mode. “It's deeply disturbing how poorly these widely accessible tools do,” says Reich. “These are things that technology companies have to fix. And teachers and educators, until this is fixed, probably need to turn a bunch of this off.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Washington Post reporter Benjamin Guggenheim about his views on advancing AI, and how the technology might impact the labor market over the next decade. “What we saw at the end of ‘25 and the beginning of ‘26 was an acceleration. I think the agentic AI models are certainly much better in terms of a number of tasks, such as coding and other sort of simple cognitive tasks,” says Acemoglu.
Bloomberg’s Daniel Moss features a paper by Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. David Autor that finds lower birthrates and aging populations between 1970 and 2020 have increased the average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per worker. “Our findings challenge the prevailing pessimism: lower birth rates, and the aging and shrinking populations they have produced, have raised rather than lowered GDP per worker during these decades,” says Acemoglu.
Prof. Thomas Levenson speaks with Financial Times’ “The Story of Money” podcast hosts, Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth, about his book, Money for Nothing: The South Sea Bubble and the Invention of Modern Capitalism and how the South Sea Bubble, the 1720 stock market crash surrounding the British South Sea Company, compares to the current political climate. “One of the things about the South Sea Bubble itself is it’s almost always told as a morality tale: look at what greed does for you. It drives you mad, it ruins nations,” says Levenson.
Bloomberg’s Catarina Saraiva reports on a new study by Profs. Daron Acemoglu and David Autor and graduate student Keelan Beirne, which finds that aging and shrinking populations raise, rather than lower, the country’s Gross Domestic Product per worker. “In cross-country data, declining birth rates lead to higher total factor productivity, larger capital stocks, a shift toward exports in high-tech industries, and more labor-saving patenting,” the authors write.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu joins New York Times reporter Bill Wasik for a panel discussion about the impact of AI on job security and its potential to supplement work. “The current view is that somehow [AI] agents are going to do a lot of the work and we just need to supervise them,” says Acemoglu. “I find that very unrealistic. But if it was realistic, it would be a horrible thing.”
Profs. Daron Acemoglu and David Autor join Jon Stewart on his podcast, “The Weekly Show” to discuss what the future might look like for American workers and the importance of creating guardrails and policies that help ensure AI can be integrated in way that is positive for workers. “There’s constructive ways to steer. We don't need to shut it down. We don't need to regulate it to death so it can't move. The U.S. is innovative, and that's great. We have a lot to be proud of, in that we have led this technology. We're building it out quickly. It's valuable,” says Autor. “We need to steer it. Just left to its own…it’s not going to be pro-worker.”
Fortune reporter Nick Lichtenberg highlights research by MIT economists that finds “automation doesn’t affect all parts of a job equally. The critical variable is whether the tasks being automated are the expert parts of a role or the administrative scaffolding around them.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with The Guardian reporter Julia Scott about the growing appeal of hands-on jobs for young workers. These jobs “are an area where there’s tremendous specialized knowledge,” says Autor. “It’s often acquired in the field. And it’s not easily automatable because it requires lots and lots of judgment, combined with a level of dexterity and adaptability in an ever-changing environment. That’s very, very challenging for robotics.”
Prof. Adam Berinsky speaks with Washington Post reporter Shira Ovide about American’s relationship with AI and social media. “Berinsky said the unfavorable opinions about AI aren’t that bad compared with Americans’ low confidence in many institutions, including big business, Congress and newspapers,” writes Ovide.
According to the 2026 QS World University Rankings, MIT has been earned a No. 1 global ranking in 12 subject areas, including chemical engineering; chemistry; civil and structural engineering; computer science and information systems; data science and artificial intelligence; electrical and electronic engineering; engineering and technology; linguistics; materials science; mechanical, aeronautical, and manufacturing engineering; mathematics; and physics and astronomy, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.
Prof. Justin Reich speaks with New York Times reporter Matthew Haag about the integration of educational technology tools, including AI, in schools. “Historically, when we try to guess the best ways of using new technologies, we’re often wrong,” explains Reich. “There are lots of people who are out there who will say, ‘This is what we need to do, this is best practice,’ and they’re making stuff up.”
New York Times reporter Holly Bass spotlights Prof. Joshua Bennett’s newest works, “We (The People of the United States)” and “The People Can Fly.” Bennett’s “texts remind us there is power in the collective body of a people and their culture,” writes Bass. “There is power in pressing on in the face of obstacles and opposition.”
Writing for Foreign Affairs, Prof. Caitlin Talmadge explores the state of the Strait of Hormuz amid the United States’ conflict with Iran. “In short, if Iran effectively mines the strait, all U.S. response options are suboptimal,” writes Talmadge. “The United States should therefore focus aggressively on preventing Iranian mine-laying in the first place and finding an off-ramp from the larger war. If it does not, Washington should expect that ongoing harassment of traffic in the strait will be but one of a number of responses that Iran has long prepared and will now deploy.”
A new working paper by researchers from MIT and other institutions explores the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), reports Ana Swanson for The New York Times. The researchers “found that American workers in communities that were more exposed to competition from Mexican imports saw a significant shortening of their life spans after the trade deal went into effect in 1994,” writes Swanson.