The Impact of AI on Research and Innovation

On December 29, the WSJ published “Will AI Help or Hurt Workers?,” an article based on a research paper by Aidan Toner-Rodgers, a second year PhD student in MIT’s Economics Department. One of the reasons the WSJ article caught my attention is that it featured a photo of the MIT graduate student in between two of the world’s top economists whose research I’ve closely followed for years: Daron Acemoglu, — who in October was named a co-receipient of the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, and David Autor (along with his dog Shelby) — who was a co-chair of a multi-year, MIT-wide Taskforce on the impact of AI on “The Work of the Future.”

Irving Wladawsky-BergerIrving Wladawsky-BergerMarch 2, 2025Artificial Intelligence, Complex Systems, Data Science and Big Data, Economic Issues, Future of Work, Innovation, Society and Culture, Technology and Strategy | Permalink

Will the Metaverse and AR/VR Headsets Be IT’s Next Big Thing?

There is little question that the metaverse and AR/VR headsets are important trends to watch out for in the coming years. As The Economist wrote in a November 2021 article, “as computers have become more capable, the experiences which they generate have become richer. The internet began its life displaying nothing more exciting than white text on a black background.” The last major advance in user interfaces took place in the 1980s when text interfaces gave way to graphical user Interfaces (GUIS). GUIs were first developed at Xerox PARC in the late 1970s and later popularized by the Apple Macintosh in the ’80s. In the 1990s, GUIs were embraced by just about every PC and user device, and GUI-based Web browsers played a major role in the explosive growth of the internet.

Irving Wladawsky-BergerIrving Wladawsky-BergerDecember 29, 2022metaverse, AR/VR, augmented reality, virtual reality, Complex Systems, Data Science and Big Data, Economic Issues, Education and Talent, Innovation, Management and Leadership, Political Issues, Services Innovation, Smart Systems, Society and Culture, Supercomputing, Technology and Strategy

Editorial