Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money about a recent survey that claims "almost 40% of Americans, ages 18 to 64, have used generative AI." "My concern with their numbers is that it does not distinguish fundamentally productive uses of generative AI from occasional/frivolous uses," says Acemoglu.
Sloan Visiting Senior Lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith speaks with Joe McKendrick of Forbes about the ongoing discussions about AI safety guidelines. “While ensuring safety is crucial, especially for frontier AI models, there is also a need to strike a balance where AI is a catalyst for innovation without putting our organizations and broader society at risk,” explains McDonagh-Smith.
Profs. Canan Dagdeviren and Hugh Herr speak with CNN discuss their work aimed at empowering patients and doctors. Inspired by her aunt’s experience with breast cancer, Dagdeviren and her students are developing new wearable devices that could help detect cancer at an earlier stage. Says Herr of his work developing prosthetics that can be controlled by the human nervous system: “There will be a point where technology is so sophisticated that we can actually rebuild limbs after amputation that will be as good and, ultimately, they will be better than intact biological limbs.” Herr adds that in the future he hopes “the conversation will not be about human limitation anymore. It will be about human ability and human expression.”
Writing for MarketWatch, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, emphasizes that the dockworker strike was “emblematic of broader shifts in the American workforce and the integration of technology in the workplace. As older generations retire and younger ones seek more flexible, technology-driven careers, traditional industries must adapt or be left behind.”
On October 8, the MIT Museum is hosting a “Techno, Art, and Music Robots talk with artist and engineer Moritz Simon Geist,” reports The Boston Globe. The talk will focus on “the intersection of music and robotics,” writes The Boston Globe.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski about AI automation in the workforce. Autor notes that when it comes to AI’s impact on the labor market the “concern should not be the number of jobs. We're actually running out of workers, not running out of jobs because of our demographics, but whether we have jobs that reward people's expertise and knowledge rather than jobs that displace expertise and knowledge and don't leave people with a viable, highly paid thing to do.”
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with BBC reporter Isabelle Gerretsen about the future of electric vehicles and how shifting to EVs can help reduce carbon emissions. Trancik and her research lab developed an online tool, dubbed Carboncounter, that can analyze the climate impact of different vehicles. “A shift to an electric vehicle is one of the single most impactful decisions that someone can make if they want to reduce their own emissions," explains Trancik.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski about the anticipated impact of AI in various industries. “We are just learning how to use AI and what it's good for, and it will take a while to figure out how to use it really productively,” says Autor.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Bloomberg reporter Jeran Wittenstein about the current state of AI and the technology’s economic potential. “You need highly reliable information or the ability of these models to faithfully implement certain steps that previously workers were doing,” says Acemoglu of the state of current large language models. “They can do that in a few places with some human supervisory oversight” — like coding — “but in most places they cannot. That’s a reality check for where we are right now."
MIT researchers have found that more workers without college degrees are optimistic about AI and automation initiatives in the workplace, than those workers with a college diploma, reports Rebecca Klar for Bloomberg Law. The study found “27.4% of workers without a college degree estimated that automation will be beneficial for their job security, compared to 23.7% of workers with a college degree,” explains Klar.
Researchers at MIT have found that “60% of workers who work with robotics and AI think they’ll see positive career impacts as a result in terms of productivity, satisfaction, and job safety,” reports Sam Becker for Fast Company.
Writing for Scientific American, MIT Prof. David Rand and University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Allen highlight new challenges in the fight against misinformation. “Combating misbelief is much more complicated—and politically and ethically fraught—than reducing the spread of explicitly false content,” they write. “But this challenge must be bested if we want to solve the ‘misinformation’ problem.”
Researchers at MIT have developed “AstroAnts,” autonomous, magnetic, robotic rovers roughly the size of a Hot Wheels toy car designed to monitor space vehicles and other hard-to-reach machinery, reports Jesus Diaz for Fast Company. “The idea is that, by constantly watching over the temperature and structural integrity of their cosmic rides, spaceships will be more resilient to the extreme conditions of space and astronauts will be safer,” explains Diaz.
Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, and Nico Enriquez, a graduate student at Stanford, make the case that the United States should not only be building more efficient AI software and better computer chips, but also creating “interstate-type corridors to transmit sufficient, reliable power to our data centers.” They emphasize: “The United States has the talent, investor base, corporations and research institutions to write the most advanced AI models. But without a powerful data highway system, our great technology advances will be confined to back roads.”
CNN visits the lab of Prof. Canan Dagdeviren to learn more about her work developing wearable ultrasound devices that could help screen for early-stage breast cancer, monitor kidney health, and detect other cancers deep within the body. “Wearable technology will grow rapidly in the near future,” says Dagdeviren. “But in the far future, they will be one of the most powerful tools that we will be seeing in our daily life.”