IDSS

Prof. Simon Johnson, one of the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, joins the PBS NewsHour to discuss the inspiration for his research, the role of institutions in economies around the world and how technology could be harnessed to create better jobs for all. Johnson notes that through his work with the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, he and his colleagues hope to “get more good jobs in the United States and around the world.” He adds that in the past, “we have managed things so that technology delivered benefits for a broad cross-section of society. But that's not what we have done in the past four decades. We need a course-correction, and that's what we're going to work on.”

Boston Globe reporter Alexa Gagosz spotlights the work of Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics for their research examining global inequality. MIT President Sally Kornbluth called Acemoglu and Johnson, who first stepped foot on MIT’s campus in 1985 as a graduate student, “prolific and influential scholars” whose work “reflects a very MIT interest in making a positive impact in the real world.” Kornbluth added: “Their historical investigations have a great deal to teach us about how and why real societies fail or thrive. And they [have] both become familiar voices in the news, public intellectuals trying to help us all make sense of a tumultuous world.”

Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson PhD '89 have been awarded the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their work explaining the gaps in prosperity between nations and advancing our understanding of inequality, reports Jeanna Smialek for The New York Times. “Reducing the huge differences in income between countries is one of our times’ greatest challenges,” said Jakob Svensson, chairman of the economics prize committee. Thanks to the economists’ “groundbreaking research,” he said, “we have a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.” Acemoglu reacted to winning the prize, noting that: “You dream of having a good career, but this is over and on top of that.” 

Researchers at MIT have found that commercially available AI models, “were more likely to recommend calling police when shown Ring videos captured in minority communities,” reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “The study also found that, when analyzing footage from majority-white neighborhoods, the models were less likely to describe scenes using terms like ‘casing the property’ or ‘burglary tools,’” writes Wiggers. 

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. Jessika Trancik speaks with New York Times reporter Austyn Gaffney about new research detailing the true impact of climate policies designed to reduce emissions. “Many of the technological tools that are needed to address climate change are now available,” says Trancik.  “And ready to be adopted at scale because of a host of different types of policies that came before.”

TechCrunch reporter Kyle Wiggers writes that MIT researchers have developed a new tool, called SigLLM, that uses large language models to flag problems in complex systems. In the future, SigLLM could be used to “help technicians flag potential problems in equipment like heavy machinery before they occur.” 

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.

BostInno reporter Isabel Tehan spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a model to predict how different shoes will impact different individual runners. “The model takes into account runner height, weight and other body dimensions, and the properties of the shoes — including stiffness or springiness — and can predict how that individual would run in a particular pair of shoes,” writes Tehan. “Ideally, we could make a shoe that's right for you and the way you run,” explains postdoc Sarah Fay.

Prof. Jessika Trancik writes for Newsweek about the importance of government policy in supporting the transition to electric vehicles. “Policy is needed to make EVs widely accessible to people while the technology and markets continue to mature,” writes Trancik, “and to ensure the process moves quickly enough to help slow the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Associated Press reporter Alexa St. John to discuss electric vehicle emissions and ownership costs. Trancik notes, “buyers should consider total cost of ownership, which for an EV is generally less than that of a gas-powered counterpart due to savings on maintenance and fuel.”

Prof. Tavneet Suri speaks with NPR reporter Nurith Aizenman about her ongoing research studying the impact of universal basic income with GiveDirectly, a U.S. charity that provides villagers in Kenya with a universal basic income. Suri says her results thus far, “add to the evidence that many poor people are trapped in poverty by a lack of capital for precisely the kinds of transformative investments they would need to vault them into higher incomes.”

Prof. Tavneet Suri speaks with NPR hosts Ari Shapiro and Nurith Aizenman about her research with GiveDirectly a U.S. based charity that provides villages in Kenya with universal basic income. Suri’s work studies how the method of income delivery payments – monthly income or single lump sum payments – can impact communities. “We need to see if these effects last,” says Suri. “Does it just disappear, or was this enough to keep them going forever?” 

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Bloomberg reporter Kyle Stock about the importance of scrappage programs, especially those that incentivize electrifying the current fleet of vehicles in the United States. “At any given point in time, you care about the composition of the fleet,” says Trancik. “Funding programs that would help turn over the fleet more rapidly makes a lot of sense.”

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Boston Globe reporter Aruni Soni about her new study that finds reducing the cost of solar energy will be accelerated by improvements in soft tech. “We found that the soft technology involved in solar energy really has not changed and hasn’t improved nearly as quickly as the hardware,” says Trancik. “These soft costs, in many systems, can be 50 percent or even more of the total cost of solar electricity.”