Writing for Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota '08, SM '16, MBA '16 emphasizes the importance of implementing ethical frameworks when developing AI systems designed for use in healthcare. “The future of AI in healthcare not only needs to be intelligent,” writes Hayes-Mota. “It needs to be trusted. And in healthcare, trust is the ultimate competitive edge.”
Prof. Canan Dagdeviren speaks with Bloomberg Businessweek Daily reporters Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec about her work developing conformable ultrasound technology aimed at enabling earlier breast cancer detection. “This technology can be a part of your personal bra, and you can wear it and while drinking your coffee within seconds, it can tell you [about] any anomaly with pinpoint accuracy,” Dagdeviren explains.
Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory are developing “automated electric vessels to map the ocean floor and improve search and rescue missions,” reports Ramen Cromwell for Chronicle. "Ship-based echo sounders cover wide areas but with poor resolution, while undersea vehicles have resolution but search too slowly," says Andrew March, an assistant group leader in MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group. "It's called a moonshot. We know less about Earth’s seabed than the moon's surface."
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Financial Times reporters Claire Jones and Melissa Heikkilä about the economic implications of the AI boom. “There is a lot of pressure on managers to do something with AI… and there is the hype that is contributing to it,” says Acemoglu. “But not many people are doing anything super creative with it yet.”
ABC News reporter Will Reeve spotlights the AGNES, a suit developed by MIT AgeLab researchers in an effort to help wearers experience the effects of aging on the body. “One of the greatest challenges that we’ve uncovered here at the AgeLab and elsewhere is that we really can’t envision our future self,” says Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab. “If everyone could wear AGNES, they would be in better touch with what their future self is, and what I would hope is they would invest in themselves physically [and] cognitively.”
Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu participated in a “global dialogue on artificial intelligence governance” at the United Nations, reports Steve Lohr for The New York Times. “The AI quest is currently focused on automating a lot of things, sidelining and displacing workers,” says Acemoglu.
Researchers from MIT and Stanford tracked 11 large language models during the 2024 presidential campaign, and found that “AI models answered differently overtime… [and] they changed in response to events, prompts, and even demographic cues,” reports Ron Schmelzer for Forbes.
Vana, an MIT startup, is developing an app “that works like a wallet for personal data that can be used to train AI,” reports Megan Morrone for Axios. “Vana hopes people will use the app to control and pool their own data with others, shape how it’s used and share in the value it creates,” writes Morrone.
Financial Times reporter Melissa Heikkilä spotlights how MIT researchers have uncovered evidence that increased use of AI tools by medical professionals risks “leading to worse health outcomes for women and ethnic minorities.” One study found that numerous AI models “recommended a much lower level of care for female patients,” writes Heikkilä. “A separate study by the MIT team showed that OpenAI’s GPT-4 and other models also displayed answers that had less compassion towards Black and Asian people seeking support for mental health problems.”
Prof. Dimitris Bertsimas, vice provost for MIT Open Learning, speaks with Forbes contributor Aviva Legatt about AI usage among university students. “Universities have a responsibility to ensure students, faculty, and staff gain a strong foundation in AI’s concepts, opportunities, and risks so they can help solve society’s biggest challenges,” says Bertsimas.
Prof. Anant Agarwal speaks with Fortune reporter Nino Paoli about the benefits of a four-year college degree. “In this environment, learning deeply and building real expertise is more important than ever because the AI roles and applications are in the context of these other fields,” says Agarwal. “Degrees also future-proof your career by preparing you for the next big technology, whatever it might be.”
Prof. Rosalind Picard speaks with Bloomberg reporters Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec about technological advancements in wearable technology and how advances in the field could positively impact women’s healthcare. “The opportunities are huge for health with wearables and especially for women’s health,” says Picard. “There are so many conditions that are different for women than for men, and they’re not only vastly understudied but the kind of data is very under sampled.”
Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw SM '17, PhD '20 co-founded Rendezvous Robotics, a space infrastructure company developing new space technology, reports Aria Almalhodaei for TechCrunch. “The company is commercializing a technology called ‘tesserae,’ flat-packed modular tiles that can launch in dense stacks and magnetically latch to form structures on orbit,” writes Almalhodaei. “With a software command, the tiles are designed to unlatch and rearrange themselves when the mission changes.”
Boston Globe reporter Yogev Toby spotlights the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow program (MEET), an MIT initiative that brings together Israeli and Palestinian high school students to provide education in “computer science and innovation while promoting intercultural dialogue.” The program was designed to serve as a way to “bridge the social, economic, and ideological divide through innovation and entrepreneurship,” Toby explains. “The idea is to create connection and understanding through shared professional interests, dialogue, and teamwork.”
Prof. Dylan Hadfield-Menell speaks with CNN reporter Hadas Gold about the need for AI safeguards and increased education on large language models. “The way these systems are trained is that they are trained in order to give responses that people judge to be good,” explains Hadfield-Menell.