Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that experienced workers might be more impacted by ChatGPT, reports Mack DeGeurin for Gizmodo. “Customer support agents using a generative AI conversation assistant in a new study saw a 14% uptick in productivity compared to others who didn’t use the tool,” writes DeGeurin.
New York Times reporter John Markoff spotlights Ivan Sutherland PhD ’63 and his contributions to the development of modern computing. Markoff notes that while working on his PhD thesis at MIT, Sutherland “created Sketchpad on a Lincoln TX-2 computer and started a revolution in computer graphics.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere published a paper exploring the abilities of language models and how they differ from those of humans, reports Will Knight for Wired. Prof. Josh Tenenbaum says “GPT-4 is remarkable but quite different from human intelligence in a number of ways,” writes Knight. “It lacks the kind of motivation that is crucial to the human mind.”
Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with NPR Shortwave co-host Aaron Scott about the future of space sustainability. “I hope that humans pause and note that the actions we're taking now and in the next 10 years really are going to be decisive in the relationship between humans and our planet, and humans and other locations, like the Moon,” says Wood.
Financial Times correspondent Rana Foroohar spotlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson’s new book, “Power and Progress,” which “explores several moments over the last millennium when technology led to the opposite of shared prosperity.” In the book, Acemoglu and Johnson “take a different approach to the productivity gains of technology and how they get distributed compared with most of their peers.”
Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi speaks with Scientific American reporter Sara Reardon about the impact of AI chatbots on medical care. “Ghassemi is particularly concerned that chatbots will perpetuate the racism, sexism and other types of prejudice that persist in medicine—and across the Internet,” writes Reardon. “Scrubbing racism from the Internet is impossible, but Ghassemi says developers may be able to do preemptive audits to see where a chatbot gives biased answers and tell it to stop or to identify common biases that pop up in its conversations with users.”
Principal Research Scientist Leo Anthony Celi co-authored a study that found “a lack of racial and gender diversity could be hindering the efforts of researchers working to improve the fairness of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in health care,” reports Carissa Wong for Nature.
Thousands of scientists and tech leaders have signed an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute, co-founded by Prof. Max Tegmark, “calling for a six-month ‘pause’ in further development of AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its more advanced version, GPT-4,” reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “We’re trying to pause development…to ensure we can get the upside from AI without unnecessary downside,” says Tegmark.
Al Jazeera reporter Somesh Jha highlights the work of research associate Georgios Petropoulos, who is examining the ways in which artificial intelligence can impact jobs. “His work has shown that in past industrial revolutions too, the displacement of jobs might have dominated in the short run,” writes Jha, “but in the long term, when the markets adapt to the automation shock, increased productivity actually sets the stage for more employment opportunities.”
Bob Metcalfe ’69, a CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, has been awarded this year’s Turing Award for his work inventing Ethernet, reports Randy Bean for Forbes. “Turing recipients include the greatest pioneers in the advancement of computer science,” says Metcalfe. “I am grateful to be considered among these giants.”
Prof. Aleksander Mądry’s testimony before a House subcommittee was highlighted by Politico fellow Mohar Chatterjee in a recent newsletter exploring how large tech companies are dominating how generative AI technologies are developed and utilized. During his testimony, Mądry emphasized that “very few players will be able to compete, given the highly specialized skills and enormous capital investments the building of such systems requires.”
This year's Turing Award has been awarded to Bob Metcalfe ’69, a CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, for his work inventing Ethernet, a computer networking technology that for decades “has connected PCs to servers, printers and the internet in corporate offices and homes across the globe,” writes Cade Metz for The New York Times. “Almost everything you do online goes through Ethernet at some stage,” said Marc Weber of the Computer History Museum.
Bob Metcalfe ’69, a CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, has been honored as this year’s recipient of the Turing Award for the invention of the Ethernet, “a technology that half a century after its creation remains the foundation of the internet,” reports Stephen Nellis for Reuters. “The Ethernet got its start when Metcalfe, who later went on to co-found computing network equipment maker 3Com, was asked to hook up the office printer,” writes Nellis.
CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus Bob Metacalfe ‘69 has been awarded the 2022 Turing Award for his contributions to creating Ethernet, a method for enabling personal computers to communicate directly with one another over a wired connection, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Variants of the original Ethernet connect countless millions of computers around the world,” writes Bray.
MIT researchers have found that by “encouraging strategic EV charging placement, rather than allowing EV chargers to be situated merely due to charging company convenience or preferences” it may be possible to “mitigate or eliminate EV charging problems without the need for advanced technological systems of connected devices and real-time communications, which could add to costs and energy consumption,” reports Carolyn Fortuna for CleanTechnica.