Policy

A new study co-authored by MIT scientists finds that the Department of Justice’s China Initiative may have caused researchers of Chinese descent to leave the U.S. for China, reports Ryan Quinn for Inside Higher Ed. The study authors found that researchers of Chinese descent had “general feelings of fear and anxiety that lead them to consider leaving the United States and/or stop applying for federal grants. If the situation is not corrected, American science will likely suffer the loss of scientific talent to China and other countries.”

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that new building codes put in place to combat climate change could impact home affordability in the greater Boston area, reports Paula Ebben for CBS Boston, “If widely adopted, [the codes] could add up to $23,000 to the cost of an average home, leaving an additional 33,000 Massachusetts residents priced out of the market,” writes Ebben.

A study from MIT and elsewhere has found that a new building code in Massachusetts designed to promote “net zero” development, “would increase construction costs and potentially worsen the state’s housing crisis,” reports Greg Ryan for NBC Boston.

MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher speaks at the Aspen Ideas Festival on how to regulate AI while maximizing its positive impact, reports NBC. “I think when we think about regulation [of artificial intelligence] we need to think about this in the ways we’ve traditionally thought about things – risk, reward, tradeoffs – and that tends to be domain specific,” says Huttenlocher. “It’s hard to have sort of an abstract notion of this new technology and what the risk [and] reward is across all domains.”

Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Thomas Malone about the need to adapt copyright laws in the era of generative AI. “One promising possibility is to introduce a new body of law based on the premise that different legal protections are appropriate when these massive AI systems can process vast amounts of information far faster and less expensively than humans can,” writs Malone.

In a letter to the editor of The Washington Post, MIT President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, vice provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, emphasize the importance of ensuring international graduate students can stay and work in the U.S. after graduation. “International graduate students are one of the 21st century’s most valuable resources,” they write. “It is time for the United States to start treating them that way.”

Writing for The Conversation, postdoc Ziv Epstein SM ’19, PhD ’23, graduate student Robert Mahari and Jessica Fjeld of Harvard Law School explore how the use of generative AI will impact creative work. “The ways in which existing laws are interpreted or reformed – and whether generative AI is appropriately treated as the tool it is – will have real consequences for the future of creative expression,” the authors note.  

A study by MIT researchers shows that “workers have cost employers a 25% tax rate, while the rate of software and equipment has stood around 5%,” write Diego Areas Munhoz and Samantha Handler for Bloomberg. “This lopsidedness in tax code gives employers more reason to invest in automating goods like machines and computer software instead of workers.”

“Power and Progress,” a new book by Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson, has been named one of the best new books on economics by the Financial Times. “The authors’ nuanced take on technological development provides insights on how we can ensure the coming AI revolution leads to widespread benefits for the many, not just the tech bros,” writes Tej Parikh.

Writing for The New York Times, Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof Simon Johnson make the case that “rather than machine intelligence, what we need is ‘machine usefulness,’ which emphasizes the ability of computers to augment human capabilities. This would be a much more fruitful direction for increasing productivity. By empowering workers and reinforcing human decision making in the production process, it also would strengthen social forces that can stand up to big tech companies.”

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have published a study on why voters who value democracy participate in democratic backsliding, reports Jason Willick for The Washington Post. The authors have identified “a strong linear relationship between perceptions of the other side’s willingness to subvert democracy and partisans’ own willingness to do so,” writes Willick.

Neil Thompson, director of the FutureTech research project at MIT CSAIL and a principal investigator MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, speaks with Politico reporter Mohar Chatterjee about generative AI, the pace of computer progress and the need for the U.S. to invest more in developing the future of computing. “We need to make sure we have good secure factories that can produce cutting-edge semiconductors,” says Thompson. “The CHIPS Act covers that. And people are starting to invest in some of these post-CMOS technologies — but it just needs to be much more. These are incredibly important technologies.”

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.”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with VOX Talks host Tim Phillips about his new book written with Prof. Simon Johnson, “Power and Progress.” The book explores “how we can redirect the path of innovation,” Phillips explains.

Bloomberg reporter Adrian Wooldridge spotlights a new book titled “Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity” by Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Daron Acemoglu. “The authors’ main worry about AI is not that it will do something unexpected like blowing up the world,” writes Wooldridge. “It is that it will supercharge the current regime of surveillance, labor substitution and emotional manipulation.”