Industry

Prof. Julie Shah speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Weber about the implementation of automation in the work force. According to Shah, “when companies adopt automation successfully, they end up adding workers as they become more productive and fill more orders,” writes Weber. “And machines’ lack of flexibility has often resulted in what Shah calls ‘zero-sum automation,’ where gains in productivity are canceled out by the need for people to fix or reprogram robots and compensate for their drawbacks.” 

ClimateWire reporter John Fialka writes that MIT engineers have developed a new process to convert carbon dioxide into a powder that can be safely stored for decades. “The MIT process gets closer to an ambitious dream: turning captured CO2 into a feedstock for clean fuel that replaces conventional batteries and stores electricity for months or years,” writes Fialka. “That could fill gaps in the nation's power grids as they transition from fossil fuels to intermittent solar and wind energy.”

MIT researchers have devised a new carbon capture system that “relies on the reaction between CO2 in flue gas and a fine mist of electrically charged particles,” reports Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. The researchers believe their design could be “95 per cent efficient at capturing carbon dioxide, while measuring less than 4 meters long,” Padavic-Callaghan notes. “Their analysis also showed that the approach would reduce capital costs of adding carbon capture to power plants by about 2.6 times compared with current technology.”

MIT AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin speaks with New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo about why the tech industry tends to ignore older people. “The market is aging,” says Coughlin. “The market is numerous. The market has got more money than the people they have been building products for.”

Fortune has named Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine, as one of the top 13 seed stage, climate tech VCs to watch, reports Lucy Brewster for Fortune. “Rae tops venture firm The Engine, which beyond being a fund, is an investing arm that spun out of MIT,” explains Brewster. “Yet Rae invests in an array of companies and sources founders from beyond just university walls.”

In a letter to the editor of The Economist, Prof. David Autor makes the case that while pursuing industrial policy has substantial risks, “forswearing industrial policy has equally many risks, especially when our chief economic and strategic competitors are currently using it to great effect.”

Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with Marketplace host Meghan McCarty Carino about how AI has impacted the workplace, highlighting the wide deployment of robots in warehouses. “Instead of people running around the warehouses, the people stand and the robots run around the warehouses,” Sheffi said. “But they bring the work to the people who then put it in boxes, package them.”

Boston Metal, an MIT startup, is developing a new method for producing steel that reduces carbon emissions, reports Catherine Clifford for CNBC. “The main goal of Boston Metal is green steel, but the company will also use its core electrolysis technology to produce tin, niobium, and tantalum metals from what is otherwise considered waste from the mining process,” writes Clifford.

Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Aleksander Mądry join GBH’s Greater Boston to explore how AI can be regulated and safely integrated into our lives. “With much of our society driven by informational spaces — in particular social media and online media in general — AI and, in particular, generative AI accelerates a lot of problems like misinformation, spam, spear phishing and blackmail,” Mądry explains. Acemoglu adds that he feels AI reforms should be approached “more broadly so that AI researchers actually work in using these technologies in human-friendly ways, trying to make humans more empowered and more productive.”

The Economist spotlights how Boston Metal, an MIT startup, has developed a new process for creating steel that avoids producing greenhouse gas emissions. “Instead of releasing CO₂ or steam, its approach produces pure oxygen—which is not merely harmless, but actually valuable,” The Economist notes.

Prof. Yossi Sheffi, director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, speaks with David Wade of WBZ News about AI and the future of work. "Jobs will change, clearly some jobs will disappear. I don't want to minimize it," says Sheffi. “Some jobs will disappear, but this is a very small number. Most of the impact of technology is to assist."

Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Yossi Sheffi speak with Boston 25 about the potential impact of AI on the labor market. “We need people to have what’s called soft skills,” says Sheffi. “They need to be able to convince people, manage people, work with people, partner with people.” Johnson notes while there are still fields that are safe bets, but notes that the speed with which [AI] is moving and currently the acceleration is really dramatic.”

Prof. Yossi Sheffi joins Bloomberg Business Hour to discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on businesses, supply chain management, and risk management. “In general, over the last 50 years, supply chain has changed dramatically, infusing more and more technology into the operation,” says Sheffi.

Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech company founded by Jason Kelly BS ’03, PhD ’08, Reshma Shetty PhD ‘08, Barry Canton PhD ’08, Austin Che PhD ’08 and Professor Tom Knight, is working to develop synthetic fragrances, reports Scott Kirsner for The Boston Globe.

Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick spotlights Prof. Yossi Sheffi’s new book, “The Magic Conveyor Belt: Supply Chains, AI, and the Future of Work.” McKendrick writes that Sheffi emphasizes the need to "better understand the supply chains on which our businesses and society depend, and our conception of supply chains needs to be broadened — from product and parts delivery networks to the very essence of organizations themselves.”