Artificial Intelligence at MIT Sloan

In the News

• The New York Times

  DebunkBot, an A.I. chatbot designed by researchers to “very effectively persuade” users to stop believing unfounded conspiracy theories, made significant and long-lasting progress at changing people’s convictions, according to a study published in the journal Science by co-author David Rand. “It is the facts and evidence themselves that are really doing the work here,” he said.

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• Business Insider

  The glaring problem with publicly available AI tools is that they're "inherently sociopathic," professor Andrew W. Lo and co-author wrote in a research report. "This sociopathy seems to cause the characteristic glibness of large language model output; an LLM can easily argue both sides of an argument because neither side has weight to it," they wrote. It may be able to role-play as a financial advisor by relying on its training data, but the AI needs to have a deeper understanding of a client's state of mind to build trust.

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• The Economist

  Despite the fact that the early internet was dominated by men, for example, young American women were more online than their male counterparts by 2005. On top of this, professor Danielle Li notes that the studies do not actually show whether men's current ChatGPT use translates into better or more productive work. At the moment, the technology may be more of a digital toy, she says. Perhaps, then, high-achieving women are simply better at avoiding distraction.

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• Scientific American

  While Google's AI answers may initially cause a big jump in the search engine's energy costs, the costs may begin to decrease again as engineers figure out how to make the system more efficient, said professor of the practice Rama Ramakrishnan. "The number of searches going through an LLM is going to go up, and therefore, probably, the energy costs are going to go up. But I think the cost per query seems to be going down."

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• CNBC

  Professor Stuart Madnick and his team have simulated cyberattacks in the lab, resulting in explosions. They were able to hack into computer-controlled motors with pumps and make them incinerate. Attacks that cause temperature gauges to malfunction, pressure values to jam, and circuits to be circumvented can also cause blasts in lab settings. Such an outcome, Madnick said, would do far more than simply taking a system offline for a while, as a typical cyberattack does.

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• Harvard Business Review

  Associate Dean Dimitris Bertsimas and co-author wrote: "For those private market investors willing to embrace external data, the rewards can be significant. By harnessing the power of external data, they can gain a crucial advantage in an increasingly competitive market, driving success for themselves and their portfolio companies."

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