In a talk at MIT, Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, expressed his hope that “technology companies and academic researchers will find ways to let government investigators get into encrypted devices without creating broad ‘back doors’ that undermine computer security,” writes Brian Bergstein for Technology Review.
Hiawatha Bray writes for The Boston Globe about the talk Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, delivered on encryption at MIT. Bray writes that Hannigan urged technology companies and governments to “develop a joint strategy that will provide police and intelligence agencies the data they need, while preserving the public’s right to digital privacy.”
Reuters reporter Svea Herbst-Bayliss writes that in her remarks at MIT, Madame Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, spoke about steps that could be taken to tackle climate change. "If subsidies were removed and carbon prices set properly now and taxed that would go a long way in addressing the climate change issues the world is facing,” says Lagarde.
Vice President for Open Learning Sanjay Sarma speaks with Politico’s Cogan Schneier about MITili, a new initiative aimed at fostering education research. “A defining feature of [MIT] is that when you create a challenge, everyone attacks it in different ways,” explains Sarma. “The integrated approach seems to unleash a lot here.”
MIT has launched a number of new initiatives “to expand and research digital and online education for learners of all ages,” reports Inside Higher Ed.
Prof. Frank Wilczek writes for The Wall Street Journal about his experience participating in the Nobel Week Dialogue in Sweden from the comfort of his home in Cambridge, thanks to a robot that allowed conference attendees to interact with him remotely. “With more powerful sensors and actuators, out-of-body experiences will become even more compelling,” Wilczek writes.
Wall Street Journal reporter Alexandra Wolfe profiles Prof. Cynthia Breazeal and examines her latest work developing a robot, dubbed Jibo, that can assist humans with daily tasks and serve as a companion. “I’m really thinking about social robots as an extender of our human capacity,” Breazeal explains.
The Washington Post's Courtney Kueppers writes about the importance of disconnecting from technology, even if only briefly. She quotes Prof. Sherry Turkle’s latest book to emphasize her point: “To reclaim solitude we have to learn to experience a moment of boredom as a reason to turn inward, at least some of the time.”
In this Today Show segment, Prof. Earl Miller and Prof. Robert Desimone discuss how the brain reacts to the information overload that comes from using multiple digital tools at once. “The brain has a great deal of difficulty processing multiple bits of data at once,” explains Miller. "We are very, very single minded.”
MIT researchers have developed an algorithm that could reduce how long planes wait before takeoff, reports Lee Moran for The Huffington Post. The formula allows air traffic controllers to use data on weather conditions and runway traffic to “hold airplanes at the gate, which would help avoid congestion.”
In an article for The Washington Post about robots and humans, Wendell Wallach highlights Prof. David Mindell’s book “Our Robots, Ourselves.” “Mindell clearly demonstrates that the efforts of people and robots can be complementary and inextricably entangled, and can evolve together,” writes Wallach.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Jo Craven McGinty highlights a study by researchers from MIT and Harvard that calculated the damage caused by Volkwagen cheating on emissions standards tests. “We estimated the vehicles affected were driven 40.5 billion kilometers from 2008,” explains Prof. Steven Barrett.
Boston Magazine reporter Madeline Bilis writes about the Reality Editor, an application developed by researchers from the MIT Media Lab. “Users can ‘edit reality’ by drawing virtual lines to and from objects with their smartphone’s camera to alter their uses and capabilities,” Bilis explains.
In a New York Times article about automation and employment, John Markoff highlights the work of several MIT researchers. A new study by Prof. Frank Levy that examines how automation could impact lawyers finds that “for now, even the most advanced A.I. technology would at best make only modest inroads into the legal profession.”
In an article for New Scientist, Liz Else writes about Prof. Sherry Turkle’s new book, in which she calls for people to put down their phones and talk to one another in person. Else writes that Turkle “is really making a passionate bid for us to remain human in the way we always have been.”