Government

Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks to Associated Press reporter Christopher Rugaber about the continued impact of the Iran war on oil and gas prices in the U.S.. “I don't see any end to the war in Iran right now,” says Forbes. “Given what everyone has been through in the last few years of high inflation, consumers are more sensitive, companies are more sensitive, they raise prices faster ... The risks are much more on more persistent inflation than it falling quickly.”  

President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif joins Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman to discuss how new policies regarding student visas, coupled with cuts to federal funding for universities, are severely disrupting America’s innovation economy. “The whole innovation ecosystem we have in America has been the best since World War II and has created this tremendous economy for the country. A great deal of that economy has to do with federal funding of research, doing it in a nonpoliticized way, and having the best people come from other countries to America to study with us, and to learn with us,” says Reif. “All of that ecosystem is being affected, and that makes it very uncomfortable for the experts who came here, to be here, to study here, and to stay here.” 

Prof. Max Tegmark joins David Gura and Christina Ruffini, hosts of “Bloomberg This Weekend,” to discuss briefing the U.S Senate on regulating AI, in wake of recent reports of rogue agents. “I want to emphasize for anyone who gets stressed by this, that this dystopian future where we build smarter than human AIs and robots, super intelligence, and then they take over Earth, is not at all inevitable,” says Tegmark.  

MIT researchers are leading a new project documenting what major AI systems say about elections in an effort to understand how the technology influences the democratic process, writes Tiffany Hsu for The New York Times. “AI is becoming part of the way people encounter and make sense of political information, and yet we know relatively little about what that information environment actually looks like, how it differs for different user demographics, political identities and geographies,” says Prof. Chara Podimata, a leader of the project.  

Timothy Carney ‘66, “a diplomat who relished difficult assignments in war-torn countries and pushed against bureaucratic restrictions,” died on Aug. 10 at age 82, reports The New York Times’ Adam Nossiter. “Tim was very deeply committed everywhere he served,” says his wife, Victoria Butler. “Everywhere we went he got to know the people where we lived. He believed very strongly in soft power versus hard power. He was an old school kind of diplomat.” 

Prof. Gary Gensler joins Bloomberg’s “Sustainability Currents and Votes and Verdicts” to discuss how the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can manage investor protection, capital formation and fair, orderly and efficient markets. “I would say [to the SEC], make sure that the US treasury market is functioning really well,” says Gensler. “Move forward with the treasury market reforms that were bipartisan. Keep making sure that the equity market is efficient. Keep making sure that we’re the world’s leading equity market.” 

Prof. John Fernández joins Edgar B. Herwick, host of GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk,” to discuss Singapore’s success creating sustainable infrastructure, from having two thirds of buildings in Singapore certified green to constructing covered walkways for public spaces, and enhancing biodiversity in the city. “They have been, for many decades, very intent on being a resource efficient country,” says Fernández. “These incremental improvements go a long way towards reducing energy consumption and emissions.”  

Prof. David Kaiser writes for Undark about how the new regulations placed on student visas are a detriment to our national competitiveness. "For decades, the U.S. has prospered from a 'brain gain,' attracting talented students from around the world. Graduate students who entered the U.S. on student visas,” writes Kaiser, "have bolstered the American economy.” He adds: "the research phase of a Ph.D. requires students to move beyond known material and to produce something new — to push past what today’s textbooks already include. That sort of innovation rarely happens overnight. The benefits, however, can shape generations.” 

In conversation with The Boston Globe’s Hilary Burns, MIT President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif discusses his views on the value of US research universities and why saying so publicly matters. It's “tough times for universities, and that means a non-ending decline for the US,” warns Reif. “There is something unique about a university that companies do not have and national labs do not have, which is students. If we believe that science is important, we have to have a place where we create the scientists of the future.” 

Writing for WBUR, Prof. Christopher Knittel and Visiting Prof. Gilbert Metcalf discuss implementing a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax for electric vehicles, instead of the flat annual fee of $130 recently proposed by Congress. “A flat EV tax does not differentiate between high-mileage and low-mileage drivers — a VMT tax does,” write Knittel and Metcalf. “It links payments to actual road use, which is precisely what proponents of EV fees, including the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, say they want.” 

Prof. Max Tegmark joins Steve Clemons, host of Al Jazeerah’s, “The Bottom Line,” to discuss regulating AI. “Normally with technology we have a problem we want to solve: cure cancer, be able to get faster from point A to point B, and then we develop technology to meet those needs, to solve those problems—and that’s how we should deal with AI also,” says Tegmark. “We should look at what we would like to have accomplished in our society and then companies can sell products that solve those problems without causing a bunch of harm.” 

Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks to Bloomberg’s Daniel Moss about how governments can prepare to restore inflation targets in the event of a prolonged miss and highlights the value of providing a clear timeline. “You don’t want to be responsible for hitting a target each month when a global shock will veer you off course,” says Forbes. “It’s about the direction of inflation, the path.”  

Prof. Daron Acemoglu discusses how issues with AI and social media inform his new book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?” in an article by Fortune’s Nick Lichtenberg. “We live in an environment that’s been partly shaped by social media, and there is a tendency to escalate everything, because that gets attention,” says Acemoglu. “Politics is like that. The other topic like that, unfortunately, is AI.” 

Financial Times reporter Martin Wolf spotlights Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s latest book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?”, which he notes is "timely and thought-provoking,” and "an important call to arms.” In the book, Acemoglu explores his "grand idea of ‘working-class liberalism,’” writes Wolf. “This concept, he states, is built on experimentation and the freedoms of association and expression, is suspicious of excessive power, uses redistribution, allows the less fortunate to participate more fully, values growth, attempts to provide good jobs for everybody and values community, trust and the sharing of useful knowledge.”