In a letter to the Financial Times, Prof. Donald Sadoway underscores the need for new smelting capacity to meet the growing need for copper for the transition to clean energy. “Imagine a process that produces superior metal at lower cost with zero greenhouse gas emissions,” writes Sadoway. “Such technology would recapture domestic market share from foreign producers. We must invent the future; we cannot simply legislate for it.”
Favelas 4D, an MIT Senseable City Lab project, uses 3D laser scanning technology to produce digital maps of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to help build infrastructure that benefits local communities. “A digital map can benefit crucial delivery systems like medical supplies and mail, as well as improve waste and water collection for favela residents,” writes Teodosia Dobriyanova for Mashable.
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, and Luke Yoquinto, a research associate at the AgeLab, emphasize the importance of increased investment in aging-related research in an article for The Boston Globe. Coughlin and Yoquinto call for “ramping up age-related disease research across the board: not just in health care and robotics, but also in smart-home tech, user design, transportation, workplace technologies, education and training, and nutrition. R&D in these fields won’t just improve lives; it will also strengthen tomorrow’s economy.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Prof. Kate Kellogg explores how managers can more effectively help their employees transition to using new technologies. “Managers need to realize that introducing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and robotics aren’t straightforward,” writes Kellogg. “Managers who hope to successfully implement these technologies need to focus on issues of employee status and roles, and the amount of new work that will need to be done.”
As a research assistant at MIT, Ai Hasegawa designed a project meant to help same-sex couples have a baby that shares both parents’ DNA, writes Jacqui Palumbo for CNN. “With progressing stem cell research and technology – such as the gene-editing technique CRISPR – it is only a matter of time,” writes Palumbo.
Wall Street Journal reporter Amrith Ramkumar spotlights MIT startup Presto, which is combining with a special-purpose acquisitions company and going public. “Presto offers several different technologies that it says automate restaurants and improve the dining experience,” writes Ramkumar.
Prof. Julie Shah speaks with Washington Post reporter Tatum Hunter about whether AI technologies will ever surpass human intelligence. “Any positive or negative use or outcome of this technology isn't predetermined. We have a lot of choices that we make,” Shah says. “And these should not be decisions that are left solely to technologists. Everybody needs to be involved because this technology has such a broad impact on all of us.”
Prof. Carlo Ratti speaks with David Freeman and Gwen Aviles of NBC Mach about his predictions for science and technology in 2019. “Next year will see more innovations that make technology less intrusive — a kind of screen detox,” says Ratti.
Greg Epstein speaks with Rachel Kraus of Mashable about serving as the Institute’s first humanist chaplain, and offers a “sample required reading list” for “humanists in and around the world of technology which will shape our future.”