MIT President, Sally Kornbluth

One of my favorite things about MIT is its spirit of intellectual openness and generosity. MIT faculty are driven to engage with the most complex research questions, and to engage with each other – often in surprising collaborations and with a distinctive focus on impact.

As generative AI evolves at an exceptionally rapid pace, MIT has a responsibility to help humanity pursue a future of AI innovation that is broadly beneficial and mitigates potential harm. A deep understanding of the societal impact of AI is a vital part of this effort, and MIT faculty have an extraordinary breadth of knowledge and insight to contribute.

Recognizing that keeping up with the pace of AI development requires our faculty to accelerate their research, in the fall of 2023 we funded seed grants for 27 faculty members to explore how generative AI will transform people’s lives and work. The resulting papers, 25 of which are published here, delve into questions and problems across an enormous range of disciplines, from healthcare to finance, climate to education, manufacturing to music.

This collection offers a glimpse into some of MIT’s most brilliant minds at work, weaving new ideas across fields, departments and schools. We share their work in the hope it will serve as a springboard for further research, study and conversation about how we as a society can build a successful AI future.

—Sally Kornbluth

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The authors of the papers in this collection received seed funding from MIT to further develop their ideas in response to a call for abstracts about generative AI’s broader impact. These papers should be considered preprints. The authors may develop their ideas further and a revised paper may be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals in the future.