Research Scientist Nick van der Meulen speaks with Financial Times reporter Bethan Staton about how automation could be used to help employers plug the skills gap. “You can give people insight into how their skills stack up . . . you can say this is the level you need to be for a specific role, and this is how you can get there,” says van der Meulen. “You cannot do that over 80 skills through active testing, it would be too costly.”
Designer and artist Es Devlin has been named the recipient of the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, reports Arushi Jacob for The Boston Globe. The award recognizes and honors “individuals in the arts, spanning a variety of mediums,” explains Jacobs. “The award aims to invest in the careers of cross-disciplinary artists, like Devlin.”
Graduate student Aruna Sankaranarayanan speaks with Mashable reporter Cecily Mauran the impact of political deepfakes and the importance of AI literacy, noting that the fabrication of important figures who aren’t as well known is one of her biggest concerns. “Fabrication coming from them, distorting certain facts, when you don’t know what they look like or sound like most of the time, that’s really hard to disprove,” says Sankaranarayanan.
Postdoctoral associate Peter Slattery speaks with Forbes reporter Tor Constantino about the importance of developing new technologies to easily distinguish AI generated content. “I think we need to be very careful to ensure that watermarks are robust against tampering and that we do not have scenarios where they can be faked,” explains Slattery. “The ability to fake watermarks could make things worse than having no watermarks as it would give the illusion of credibility.”
MIT Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein speaks with Boston Globe reporter Christine Mehta about his new book "Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation.” “Epstein is not the first to argue that a secular phenomenon has become a religion (the list grows longer every year), but to him, obsessions like the American workplace, sports, or CrossFit are at best middling cults,” writes Mehta. “Technology, on the other hand, is the religion of today’s world, Epstein says, displacing the influence of everything else on our lives.”
Prof. Jacopo Buongiorno speaks with Nature reporter Davide Castelvecchi about how AI has increased energy demand and the future of nuclear energy.
Liquid AI, an MIT startup, is unveiling a new AI model based on a liquid neural network that “has the potential to be more efficient, less power-hungry, and more transparent than the ones that underpin everything from chatbots to image generators to facial recognition systems, reports Will Knight for Wired.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu, a recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economic sciences, speaks with CNBC about the challenges facing the American economy. Acemoglu notes that in his view the coming economic storm is really “both a challenge and an opportunity,” explains Acemoglu. “I talk about AI, I talk about aging, I talk about the remaking of globalization. All of these things are threats because they are big changes, but they’re also opportunities that we could use in order to make ourselves more productive, workers more productive, workers earn more. In fact, even reduce inequality, but the problem is that we’re not prepared for it.”
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. 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.