Politics

Prof. Gary Gensler joins Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney, hosts of the “Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast” to discuss the impact of AI on the US fiscal market. “The AI trade that our capital market is hovering on top of is an investment boom that’s about twice what the internet was,” says Gensler. AI is “now about 2.5% of our economy—all of the data centers and so forth. [Major AI companies] are spending so much, but will it lead to the revenues to justify that spending?” 

Prof. Gary Gensler joins Bloomberg’s “Open Interest” to discuss the risks AI poses to the financial system,. “We’re spending about 2.5% of our gross domestic product on this AI build,” says Gensler. “When we have these booms, they plateau at some point; firms lose some of their pricing power, some of their growth, and you expose where the debt in the system is. Right now, there’s a lot of risk in this capital market.”  

Prof. Jonathan Gruber joins Edgar B. Herwick III, host of GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk” to discuss what factors into the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates for the first time since 2023. Federal Reserve members “are looking at things like tariffs, the tax on goods coming into this country. They’re looking at the war,” says Gruber. “We have, basically, these underlying forces driving inflation. In that case, the Fed has a mandate. The Fed’s job is to balance two forces: economic growth and inflation, and the way they balance them is by trying to keep inflation near a target of two percent.”  

A recent study by MIT researchers found that AI chatbots easily generated misleading election-related answers, images and videos, writes Emily Condon for USA Today. “This, along with other findings from our study, suggests that in an ongoing election with little authoritative information for models to rely on, AI may not be as helpful in pushing back against unsubstantiated rumors and misinformation,” the researchers explain.  

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.  

Prof. Charles Stewart III speaks to NPR’s Bobby Allyn about concerns that election betting encourages those connected to campaigns or election administrators to manipulate votes. “If you are looking for a reason to be skeptical about election results, election officials trying to manipulate them for financial gain becomes another straw to grasp at,” says Stewart. "However, these people don't need prediction markets to concoct some conspiracy theory to explain away why their candidate lost.” 

Research Associate James Walsh joins Scott Tong, host of WBUR’s “Here & Now,” to discuss the escalation of the U.S.-Iran war. “Geographically it [the conflict] is spreading because it also includes U.S. attacks on cities in Iran it has not previously attacked,” says Walsh. “It [the war] has also expanded or escalated in the type of targets that are being hit.” 

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti makes the case that “the answer to imperfect peer review is better peer review, not political supervision.” Ratti shares: “Replacing scientific judgment with political alignment risks undermining the very engine of discovery. Faced with the risk that a project could be cancelled when the political weather turns, the rational researcher abandons the ambitious idea for the safe one.” 

Senior Research Associate Jim Walsh discusses the aftermath of recent airstrikes between the U.S. and Iran with Robin Young, host of WBUR’s “Here & Now.” “Neither side can force the other to do its bidding. So, we’re caught in this sort of stalemate,” says Walsh. “How can you cut a deal with another leader, or another country if you don’t believe a word they say, and you think they’re going to turn around and do the opposite thing tomorrow?” 

Prof. Thomas Levenson speaks with Financial Times’ “The Story of Money” podcast hosts, Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth, about his book, Money for Nothing: The South Sea Bubble and the Invention of Modern Capitalism and how the South Sea Bubble, the 1720 stock market crash surrounding the British South Sea Company, compares to the current political climate. “One of the things about the South Sea Bubble itself is it’s almost always told as a morality tale: look at what greed does for you. It drives you mad, it ruins nations,” says Levenson. 

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Associated Press reporter Paul Wiseman about the economic impact of the U.S. conflict with Iran. “A week ago or certainly two weeks ago, I would have said: If the war stopped that day, the long-term implications would be pretty small,’’ says Knittel. “But what we’re seeing is infrastructure actually being destroyed, which means the ramifications of this war are going to be long-lived.’’

Senior Research Associate Jim Walsh speaks with WBUR Here & Now host Indira Lakshmanan about where things stand one month into the U.S. conflict with Iran. 

Prof. Catherine Wolfram speaks with Boston Globe reporter Joshua Miller about the impact of the conflict in Iran on oil and gas prices. “There’s something that economists call the rockets and feathers phenomenon: When oil prices go up, gasoline prices go up like a rocket,” explains Wolfram. “They kind of match. But then when oil prices come back down, gasoline prices float down like a feather. They don’t go down as fast.” 

Senior Research Associate Jim Walsh speaks with WBUR Here & Now host Indira Lakshmanan about the global impact of the United States’ conflict with Iran.