Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that “showing AI-generated images of a less car-reliant American city boosted support for sustainable transportation policies,” reports Linda Poon for Bloomberg. “Let’s help them imagine what it would actually be like to live in a car-less neighborhood, and a car-less city,” says postdoctoral associate Rachit Dubey.
Prof. John Sterman speaks with New York Times reporter Susan Shain about the effectiveness of flight offsets. Sterman explains that few offset project results are verifiable, immediate and durable, part of his criteria for legitimacy. Better recommendations include insulating your home or buying an electric car.
A new report by Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee explores the “implications of generative AI in economic growth, looking at everything from its possible effects on job skills and wages to how it may transform entire industries to its potential risks and pitfalls,” reports Sheryl Estrada for Fortune.
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with The Hill reporters Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk about the implications of the latest climate rule put in place to mitigate power plant emissions. “What we’ve seen, even without these rules, is that coal generation is failing,” says Knittel. “These new rules will certainly push to speed that transition up.”
Writing for Project Syndicate, Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson draw upon the work of economist David Ricardo and his insights on the Industrial Revolution to explore how to respond to the challenge posed by AI to good jobs. “It is still possible to have pro-worker AI, but only if we can change the direction of innovation in the tech industry and introduce new regulations and institutions,” they write.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Parmy Olson spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that finds AI chatbots can be highly persuasive when reinforced with facts and could potentially be used to help tackle conspiracy theories. “The scientists invited more than 2,000 people who believed in different conspiracy theories to summarize their positions to a chatbot — powered by OpenAI’s latest publicly available language model — and briefly debate them with the bot,” Olson writes. “On average, participants subsequently described themselves as 20% less confident in the conspiracy theory; their views remained softened even two months later.”
Writing for Forbes, Prof. Christian Catalini makes the case that when it comes to today’s digital infrastructure, from AI and robotics to financial services and digital marketplaces, “if the United States wants to continue to lead, it needs to create the right conditions for competition to thrive. Like in the early days of the internet, this starts with policymakers embracing and nurturing a novel architecture based on open protocols.”
Researchers at MIT have found that AI can “be remarkably persuasive when reinforced with facts,” reports Parmy Olson for Bloomberg. “The scientists invited more than 2,000 people who believed in different conspiracy theories to summarize their positions to a chatbot — powered by OpenAI’s latest publicly available language model — and briefly debate them with the bot,” explains Olson. “On average, participants subsequently described themselves as 20% less confident in the conspiracy theory; their views remained softened even two months later.”
Axios reporter Steph Solis spotlights Kura, an MIT startup that is “developing a platform to help immigrants safely deliver money to loved ones back home.” Solis explains that: “Families worldwide rely on wire services like Western Union and Moneygram, but in some countries picking up money means waiting in long lines and exposing oneself to thieves.” Clifford Nau MBA ’22 and Stephanie Joseph, a Harvard alum, “wanted to build a safer alternative that would be available 24/7.”
Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto spotlights how MIT President Sally Kornbluth is “determined to harness MIT’s considerable brainpower to tackle” climate change. During a clean-tech entrepreneurship event hosted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, Kornbluth highlighted the newly announced Climate Project at MIT, “which commits $75 million and dozens of faculty to solving some of the biggest climate problems.” Kornbluth also noted that MIT’s “culture of entrepreneurship” makes the Institute uniquely positioned to help address the challenges posed by climate change.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Prof. S.P. Kothari and Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen explain why U.S. consumers “continue to feel they are suffering from inflation, although the annual rate of inflation dropped sharply during 2023.” “The answer is that consumers have a broader time horizon,” they write. “[Consumers] are looking at the rate of price increases over the past three years. From January 2021 to January 2024, the consumer price index for all items rose by 17.96%.”
Writing for Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota '08, SM '16, MBA '16 explains how transformative strategies in global healthcare are “reshaping the pharmaceutical market dynamics.” This new method “transcends traditional financial tactics representing a fundamental shift in global health practices towards sustainable and universal access to essential medicines,” writes Hayes-Mota.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere explored the effectiveness of climate commitments made by banks to mitigate the effects of climate change, reports Nicole Goodkind for CNN. “Our results cast doubt on the efficacy of voluntary climate commitments for reducing financed emissions, whether through divestment or engagement,” the researchers note.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that climate pledges made by banks to reduce carbon emissions and finance energy transitions may not be as effective as previously thought, reports Eshe Nelson for The New York Times. “The researchers found that since 2018 the banks had reduced lending 20 percent to sectors they had targeted in their climate goals, such as oil and gas and transport,” explains Nelson. “That seems like progress, but the researchers argued it was not sufficient because the decline was the same for banks that had not made the same commitment.”
Senior Lecturer John Parsons speaks with Grist reporter Gautama Mehta about the future of nuclear energy in the United States. “It’s also possible that nuclear, if we can do it, is a valuable contribution to the system, but we need to learn how to do it cheaper than we’ve done so far,” explains Parsons. “I would hate to throw away all the gains that we’ve learned from doing it.”