School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson examine what the recent issues at OpenAI mean for the future of artificial intelligence. “Sam Altman’s dismissal and rapid reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, confirms that the future of AI is firmly in the hands of people focused on speed and profits, at the expense of all else,” they write. “This elite will now impose their vision for technology on the rest of humanity. Most of us will not enjoy the consequences.”

Four faculty members from across MIT - Professors Song Han, Simon Johnson, Yoon Kim and Rosalind Picard - speak with Curiosity Stream about the opportunities and risks posed by the rapid advancements in the field of AI. “We do want to think about which human capabilities we treasure,” says Picard. She adds that during the Covid-19 pandemic, “we saw a lot of loss of people's ability to communicate with one another face-to-face when their world moved online. I think we need to be thoughtful and intentional about what we're building with the technology and whether it's diminishing who we are or enhancing it.”

Prof. Adam Berinsky speaks with MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the impact of misinformation on democracy and the upcoming 2024 election. “The larger issue is that there is this climate of distrust,” says Berinsky. 

Forbes reporter Nancy Wang spotlights Tara Bishop '97 and Eileen Tanghal '97, co-founders of Black Opal Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on health tech. “Tara and Eileen’s story at Black Opal Ventures is a testament to how diversity and innovation can disrupt traditional landscapes,” writes Wang. “Their pioneering strategies and investments herald a new era for healthcare venture capitalism, where diversity and technology converge to create a more inclusive and impactful future.”

Prof. Emeritus Olivier Blanchard speaks with Robert Armstrong of the Financial Times about inflation, the rise in long yields and the fiscal endgame in the U.S. Blanchard urges regulators to, “have plans for a steady reduction of primary deficits to close to zero. Slow, steady, convincing, credible.”

Prof. Héctor Beltrán speaks with Lily Jamali of Marketplace about his new book, “Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands,” which explores the culture of hackathons and entrepreneurship in Mexico. "Ultimately, it’s about difference, thinking about Silicon Valley from Mexico,” says Beltrán. "Also, from a Chicano/Latino perspective, because as I show throughout the book, there’s these connections, tensions, intersections between the Latino community in the U.S., the Latin American community, the Mexican community.”

Prof. Nick Montfort speaks with Inside Higher Ed reporter Lauren Coffey about the use of AI tools in art and education. “The primary concern should be how can we provide new education, how can we inform students, artists, instructors,” says Montfort. “How can we, not so much bolt policies or create guardrails, but how can we help them understand new technologies better and their implications?”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson write for Project Syndicate about how to structure U.S. international trade policies so that they benefit American workers and global stability. “Two new principles can form the basis of U.S. policy. First, international trade should be structured in a way to encourage a stable world order,” they write. “Second, appealing to abstract 'gains of trade' is no longer enough. American workers need to see the benefits. Any trade arrangement that significantly undermines the quality and quantity of middle-class American jobs is bad for the country and its people, and will likely incite a political backlash.”

Prof. M. Taylor Fravel speaks with NPR reporter Emily Feng about a new Pentagon report highlighting China’s accelerated efforts to develop a nuclear arsenal. “It’s a complete transformation of China's approach to nuclear weapon,” says Fravel. “[The information found in the report] confirms “the rapid modernization foreshadowed several years ago is on track.”

Prof. Charles Stewart III speaks with Matter of Fact host Soledad O’Brien to explain the role and history of the Speaker of the House. “In a nation of people who are naysayers and distrusting of authority, distrusting of institutions and political parties, the American Congress remains the most capable parliamentary institution on this planet,” says Stewart.

In an article that appeared in The Washington Post, Prof. Kenda Mutongi explores how “what has emerged on the streets of Nairobi is a kind of civic pragmatism, a host of improvisatory and creative practices that amount to a supplementary accommodation which grants the poor a meager means of survival.” Mutongi adds: “through an inventive kind of civic pragmatism, the citizens of Nairobi find ways of ‘instrumentalizing disorder’ that allow them to survive. Somehow, in a roundabout way, people keep trying to get by.”

Forbes reporter Howard Gleckman spotlights Prof. Amy Finkelstein’s new book, “We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care.” Finkelstein and her co-author propose a, “highly provocative, radical alternative to our current mess,” by combining, “a global health budget with universal, free, basic care for everybody,” Gleckma explains.

Prof. Iván Werning speaks with New York Times reporter Peter Coy about whether transitioning from pesos to the U.S. dollar could help control inflation in Argentina. Coy writes that Werning prefers “more conventional solutions such as bringing government budgets closer into balance.”

MIT has been named to Times Higher Education’s 2024 World’s Best Universities list, reports Cecilia Rodriguez for Forbes. “The largest edition of the World University Rankings 2024 includes 1,904 universities—up from 1,799 last year—from 108 countries and regions, assessing research-intensive universities across 18 performance indicators covering their core missions of teaching, research, knowledge transfer and internationalization,” writes Rodriguez.

Prof. Eric Klopfer, co-director of the RAISE initiative (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment in Education), speaks with GBH reporter Diane Adame about the importance of providing students guidance on navigating artificial intelligence systems. “I think it's really important for kids to be aware that these things exist now, because whether it's in school or out of school, they are part of systems where AI is present,” says Klopfer. “Many humans are biased. And so the [AI] systems express those same biases that they've seen online and the data that they've collected from humans.”