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https://www.bangkokpost.com/v3/assets/images/img-default.jpgPrincess Charlotte looks on in awe at surprise performance after Kate Middleton said Prince Louis, six, was 'bursting' to spill the beansNoneCARSON, Calif. (AP) — The LA Galaxy and the New York Red Bulls have been Major League Soccer mainstays since the league's inaugural season in 1996, signing glamorous players and regularly competing for championships through years of success and setbacks in a league that's perpetually improving and expanding. Yet just a year ago, both of these clubs appeared to be a very long way from the stage they'll share Saturday in the MLS Cup Final . The Galaxy were one of MLS’ worst teams after a season of internal turmoil and public fan dissent, while the Red Bulls were merely a steady mediocrity seeking yet another coach to chart a new direction. A year later, these MLS founders are meeting in the league's first Cup final between teams from North America's two biggest markets. “Two original clubs being able to put themselves in this situation, I think it’s great,” Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said. “To see two clubs that have been at it as long as this league has been around be here, I think it’s a special moment. Couldn’t be two more different and contrasting styles as well, which could make for an interesting game, and I would imagine a high-intensity game.” Everything changed in 2024 after a dismal decade for the Galaxy , who are favored to cap their transformation by winning their team's record sixth MLS championship with a roster that's dramatically different from its past few groups — albeit with one massive injury absence in the final. The transformation of the Red Bulls happened only in the postseason, when a team that hadn't won a playoff game since 2017 suddenly turned into world-beaters under rookie coach Sandro Schwarz. New York struggled through the final three months of league play with only two wins before posting road playoff victories over defending champ Columbus , archrival New York City FC and conference finalist Orlando to storm into the Cup final. “We know about the history (of our club), and we know tomorrow will define what that could mean,” Schwarz said Friday. “To feel the pressure for tomorrow, it’s necessary, because it’s a final, and without pressure it’s not possible to bring the best quality on the field.” The Red Bulls have never won an MLS Cup, only reaching the championship match once before. What's more, they've somehow never won a Cup in any tournament, although they’ve collected three Supporters’ Shields for MLS' best regular-season record. The Galaxy’s trophy case is large and loaded, and those five MLS Cups are on the top shelf. But not much of that team success happened in the past decade for the club that famously brought David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robbie Keane, Steven Gerrard and many other international stars to Hollywood. In fact, this season has ended a grim era for the Galaxy, who haven't lost all year at their frequently renamed home stadium — which was the site of protests and boycotts just a year ago. The club's fans were tired of LA's steady underachievement and ineptitude in the front office run by team president Chris Klein, who was fired in May 2023. One year ago Thursday, the Galaxy hired Will Kuntz, a longtime Los Angeles FC executive who engineered his new club's roster transformation, most dramatically by landing new designated players Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil — two international talents that LAFC also had in its sights. “I give Will and the group up there a ton of credit,” Vanney said. “It’s one thing to have players you like, and it’s a whole other thing to get them here and get them to connect with your group.” Pec and Paintsil combined for 32 goals and 27 assists while boosting the incumbent talents of striker Dejan Joveljic and Riqui Puig, the gifted Barcelona product who runs the offense from the midfield. The Galaxy clicked in the postseason, scoring a jaw-dropping 16 goals in four matches. Puig has been the Galaxy's most important player all season, but he won't be in the MLS Cup Final after tearing a knee ligament late in last week's conference final victory over Seattle . The loss of Puig — who somehow kept playing on his injured knee, and even delivered the game-winning pass to Joveljic — makes the Galaxy even more difficult to anticipate. “He played a lot in the regular season, so it was not so easy to analyze all these games now without him,” Schwarz said. “But the main focus is to analyze what we need to do, because it’s not clear now how they’re playing without him.” The Galaxy could give some of Puig's responsibilities to Marco Reus, the longtime Dortmund standout who joined LA in August. Reus is nursing a hamstring injury, but Vanney expects him to play. AP soccer: https://apnews.com/soccer
NEW YORK — US federal prosecutors have indicted a suspect for sending death threats to a Jewish family in New York after their son, an IDF soldier, posted videos from Gaza that sparked anti-Israel protests against the family’s hotel. The owner of the Historic Blue Moon Hotel, Randy Settenbrino, said the family had received hundreds of threats and been targeted by street protests and online harassment. “They’ve done untold damage with bad reviews and with tying up our front desk, frightening our staff,” Settenbrino told The Times of Israel in a Tuesday interview. The hotel is a family-owned business in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a neighborhood with a long Jewish history, and has 22 rooms. The family has been operating the hotel since 2006 and painstakingly restored the building, which was constructed in 1879. The hotel leans into the area’s Jewish heritage, and has a kosher Italian cafe on the ground floor called the Sweet Dreams Cafe that features art by Settenbrino, including a colorful mural that depicts historical Jewish tragedies. Donovan Hall, 34, sent hundreds of threats to the family and hotel, including antisemitic statements and threats of violence, according to the indictment filed in the federal Southern District of New York last week. Hall, from Arizona, was charged with two counts of threatening interstate communications, and one count of cyberstalking, both felonies. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. “Donovan Hall allegedly unleashed a campaign of terror against several Jewish New Yorkers, allegedly sending scores of hateful, violent and antisemitic death threats,” Acting US Attorney Edward Y. Kim said in a statement. “No individual deserves to be at the receiving end of these types of threats or to be targeted because of their religion.” Hall was arrested after an investigation by the FBI and NYPD. Hall began making dozens of threatening, antisemitic phone calls to the family over the summer, when videos posted by Settenbrino’s son, Bram, drew attention from anti-Israel activists online and in international media . One of the clips showed a first-person view of a soldier firing a light machine gun at a group of distant buildings, and the second showed a building exploding. An account called Stop Arab Hate posted the videos, accusing the soldier of “indiscriminately shooting a gun,” and shared contact information for the hotel in a post that was viewed millions of times. Settenbrino said his son served as a lone soldier in the Combat Engineering corps and had been in a firefight in the footage. The criminal complaint references the videos and does not name the family, but Settenbrino confirmed his family and the hotel employees were the targets. On August 8-9, Hall made 54 calls to the victims, the complaint said. In one of the calls, he told a hotel employee that he was going to travel to the hotel on his motorcycle and shoot the victim in the head. In another, he stated the victim’s home address and said he was going to shoot him and his family, calling the victim a “fucking Jew bag,” a “child-murdering Jew” and making other explicit and violent threats. Between early August and late November, Hall called the victims at least 971 times, the complaint said. In October, Hall allegedly started sending photographs of deadly weapons and threats to the victims. In one message, he sent a photo of a gun with the text, “I’ve got something for you and your inbred children.” In another, he sent an image of a knife and wrote, “This knife is for child molesters such as your son.” Another showed a hand on a pistol overlaid with the text, “For the Zionist cowards.” Law enforcement recovered the two firearms from the photos during a search of Hall’s residence at the time of his arrest. Neither weapon was registered in his name; one was loaded. The threats were part of a larger campaign of death threats Hall sent to people around the US, often targeting Jews, prosecutors said. Hall also allegedly sent two voicemails to an organization that supports IDF troops, threatening the groups and telling them to leave the US. Settenbrino said the calls were part of a harassment campaign aimed at the family and its hotel after their son posted the videos on social media. In addition to harassing the front desk with calls and posting negative reviews online, street protests prompted some guests to cancel their stays at the hotel and activists repeatedly attempted to hack into the hotel’s email system, Settenbrino said. An anti-Israel group called Unity of Fields that encourages vandalizing targets it deems supportive of Israel posted photos in September of graffiti on the hotel. The graffiti said “Baby killer” and included inverted red triangles, a symbol the Hamas terror group uses to mark its targets in propaganda videos that has been adopted by anti-Israel activists in the US. Settenbrino said police had been unable to locate the vandals. Hall was arrested last month but the case was initially sealed. Prosecutors announced the arrest last week. The hotel has received plaudits from media including National Geographic and New York Magazine, but was struggling before the activist campaign. It was forced to close during the pandemic, leading to debts and a bankruptcy filing . Settenbrino said the business had started to recover before taking another hit from the anti-Israel activists. The street protests have dwindled but the online harassment continues, he said. Settenbrino said the family feels abandoned by local Jewish leaders, despite his longstanding community activism. “We’ve had not one New York City Jewish politician otherwise come down and visit,” despite the family’s appeals for support, he said. Antisemitism has surged in New York and across the US since the October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel. In New York City, Jews are consistently targeted in hate crimes far more than any other group.
Nvidia is preparing for a game-changing 2025, with its new Blackwell GPU set to dominate the market and significantly increase the company’s revenue. Following a strong Q3 earnings report, it is evident that Nvidia is on the brink of breaking its previous sales records due to this powerful new technology. Massive Growth Predictions: Analysts have increased their shipment forecasts dramatically for the Blackwell GPU. Predictions for Q4 forecast 250,000 to 300,000 shipments; however, these numbers are expected to soar to between 750,000 and 800,000 in Q1 of next year, surpassing initial expectations. As a result, Nvidia could see its data center revenue skyrocket to $200 billion. Rising Demand and Competition: The upcoming Blackwell GPU is expected to transform Nvidia’s pricing and output. Despite competition from AMD and Broadcom, Nvidia’s enhancements in GPU technology, particularly in AI, give it a strong edge. With clusters starting at a range where previous models maxed out, there is significant potential for Nvidia to maintain growth. Market Performance: Nvidia is currently trading at its lowest valuation in years, with 2026 earnings estimated to be conservative. As the company heads into 2025, this positioning indicates potential revenue beats reminiscent of past successes. In summary, Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU could redefine the company’s financial landscape, continuing to position it as a dominant force in the tech industry. The key for investors will be to navigate potential volatility as efficiencies and increased demand play out over the coming quarters. Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU: Poised for Dominance and Record Growth Nvidia’s forthcoming Blackwell GPU is poised to significantly reshape the tech landscape by 2025, aligning with burgeoning technology trends and innovations in AI and machine learning. As analysts adjust their forecasts, Nvidia’s anticipated market performance over the next couple of years draws remarkable attention from investors and industry watchers. Key Features and Innovations: Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU is set to introduce cutting-edge enhancements that leverage AI capabilities, markedly outperforming its predecessors and competition in the form of AMD and Broadcom. These advancements not only position Nvidia as a leader in high-performance computing but also signal broader implications for sectors relying heavily on AI-driven processes. Additionally, the introduction of more efficient power consumption technology marries both performance and sustainability concerns. Market Predictions and Analysis: Analysts forecast an exponential leap in GPU shipments, anticipating a rise from 250,000 to 300,000 units expected in Q4 to 750,000 to 800,000 units in Q1 of the following year. This uptick signals a possible revenue expansion within Nvidia’s data center segment, reaching a projected $200 billion. Such growth trajectory outlines not only immediate revenue potential but also positions Nvidia for longer-term prosperity as AI becomes increasingly central to various industries. Competitive Landscape and Strategy: Despite formidable competition from AMD and Broadcom, Nvidia’s strategic focus on AI capabilities within its GPUs affords it a distinct competitive edge. This focus could allow Nvidia to offer superior solutions at lower price points compared to competitors, effectively capturing market share and enhancing profitability. Financial Outlook and Market Positioning: Nvidia’s stock currently trades at its lowest valuation in several years, providing opportunities for strategic investments. Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, predicted earnings suggest a potential for outperforming expectations, paralleling previous successful cycles. Industry Insights and Sustainability: In focusing on energy-efficient designs and integrating sustainability into its architecture, Nvidia addresses growing environmental concerns within the technology sector. These efforts elevate its market appeal and cater to increasingly eco-conscious consumers. Conclusion: The imminent release of Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU heralds a transformative phase for the company, with projected growth and innovations potentially establishing it as a tech juggernaut. While navigating market volatility may present challenges, the anticipated advancements promise to redefine Nvidia’s financial landscape. For more information about Nvidia and its innovations, visit the official Nvidia website.
Ravens WR Zay Flowers (shoulder) questionable vs. TexansWASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is expected to announce that it will send $1.25 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Friday, as the Biden administration pushes to get before leaving office on Jan. 20. The large package of aid includes a significant amount of munitions, including for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and the HAWK air defense system. It also will provide Stinger missiles and 155 mm- and 105 mm artillery rounds, officials said. The officials, who said they expect the announcement to be made on Monday, spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public. The new aid comes as Russia has launched a barrage of attacks against Ukraine’s power facilities in recent days, although Ukraine has said it intercepted a significant number of the missiles and drones. Russian and Ukrainian forces are also still in a bitter battle around the Russian border region of Kursk, where Moscow has to help reclaim territory taken by Ukraine. Earlier this month, senior defense officials acknowledged that that the all of the remaining $5.6 billion in Pentagon weapons and equipment stocks passed by Congress for Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. Trump has talked about getting some type of negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, and spoken about . Many U.S. and European leaders are concerned that it might result in a poor deal for Ukraine and they worry that he won't provide Ukraine with all the weapons funding approved by Congress. The aid in the new package is in presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons off the shelves and send them quickly to Ukraine. This latest assistance would reduce the remaining amount to about $4.35 billion. Officials have said they hope that an influx of aid will help strengthen Ukraine’s hand, should Zelenskyy decide it’s time to negotiate. One senior defense official said that while the U.S. will continue to provide weapons to Ukraine until Jan. 20, there may well be funds remaining that will be available for the incoming Trump administration to spend. According to the Pentagon, there is also about $1.2 billion remaining in longer-term funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is used to pay for weapons contracts that would not be delivered for a year or more. Officials have said the administration anticipates releasing all of that money before the end of the calendar year. If the new package is included, the U.S. has provided more than $64 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.AP Trending SummaryBrief at 6:04 p.m. ESTDan Huttenlocher, SM ’84, PhD ’88, leads the way up to the eighth floor of Building 45, the recently completed headquarters of the . “There’s an amazing view of the Great Dome here,” he says, pointing out a panoramic view of campus and the Boston skyline beyond. The floor features a high-end event space with an outdoor terrace and room for nearly 350 people. But it also serves an additional purpose—luring people into the building, which opened last January. The event space “wasn’t in the original building plan,” says Huttenlocher, Schwarzman’s inaugural dean, “but the point of the building is to be a nexus, bringing people across campus together.” Launched in 2019–’20, Schwarzman is MIT’s only college, so called because it cuts across the Institute’s five schools in a new effort to integrate advanced computing and artificial intelligence into all areas of study. “We want to do two things: ensure that MIT stays at the forefront of computer science, AI research, and education,” Huttenlocher says, “and infuse the forefront of computing into disciplines across MIT.” He adds that safety and ethical considerations are also critical. To that end, the college now encompasses multiple existing , including the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and multiple , including the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. (EECS—which was reorganized into the overlapping subunits of electrical engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence and decision-making—is now part of both the college and the School of Engineering.) At the same time, the college has embarked on a plan to hire 50 new faculty members, half of whom will have shared appointments in other departments across all five schools to create a true Institute-wide entity. Those faculty members—two-thirds of whom have already been hired—will conduct research at the boundaries of advanced computing and AI. The new faculty members have already begun helping the college respond to an undeniable reality facing many students: They’ve been overwhelmingly drawn to advanced computing tools, yet computer science classes are often too technical for nonmajors who want to apply those tools in other disciplines. And for students in other majors, it can be tricky to fit computer science classes into their schedules. Meanwhile, the appetite for computer science education is so great that nearly half of MIT’s undergraduates major in EECS, voting with their feet about the importance of computing. Graduate-level classes on deep learning and machine vision are among the largest on campus, with over 500 students each. And a blended major in cognition and computing has almost four times as many enrollees as brain and cognitive sciences. “We’ve been calling these students ‘computing bilinguals,’” Huttenlocher says, and the college aims to make sure that MIT students, whatever their field, are fluent in the language of computing. “As we change the landscape,” he says, “it’s not about seeing computing as a tool in service of a particular discipline, or a discipline in the service of computing, but asking: How can we bring these things together to forge something new?” The college has been the hub of this experiment, sponsoring over a dozen new courses that integrate computing with other disciplines, and it provides a variety of spaces that bring people together for conversations about the future of computing at MIT. More than just a nexus for computing on campus, the college has also positioned itself as a broad-based leader on AI, presenting policy briefs to Congress and the White House about how to manage the pressing ethical and political concerns raised by the rapidly evolving technology. “Right now, digital technologies are changing every aspect of our lives with breakneck speed,” says Asu Ozdaglar, SM ’98, PhD ’03, EECS department head and Schwarzman’s deputy dean of academics. “The college is MIT’s response to the ongoing digital transformation of our society.” Huttenlocher, who also holds the title of Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and coauthored the book with Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt, has long been exploring such issues. He started programming computers back in middle school in Connecticut in the 1970s on an ASR 33 teletype machine, and eventually he studied at the University of Michigan as a double major in cognitive psychology and computer science, exploring speech recognition and visual perception. “AI work back then was relatively disconnected from the physical world,” he says. “Being interested in the perceptual side of things was kind of an outlier for what was going on in AI then.” When he looked at grad schools in the 1980s, only MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford were doing significant work in AI, he says: “I applied to those three schools and figured if it didn’t work out, I’d get a job.” It worked out, of course. He headed to Cambridge and gravitated to MIT’s AI Lab in Technology Square, where he first worked on speech recognition and then transitioned into computer vision, at the time still in its infancy. After earning his PhD, he served simultaneously as a computer science professor at Cornell and a researcher at Xerox PARC, flying between New York and the burgeoning Silicon Valley, where he worked on computer vision for the digital transformation of copiers and scanners. “In academia, you have more curiosity-driven research projects, where in the corporate world you have the opportunity to build things people will actually use,” he says. “I’ve spent my career moving back and forth between them.” Along the way, Huttenlocher gained administrative experience as well. He was a longtime board member and eventual chair of the MacArthur Foundation, and he also helped launch Cornell Tech, the university’s New York City–based graduate school for business, law, and technology, serving as its first dean and vice provost. When Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the investment firm Blackstone Group, gave $350 million to MIT to establish a college of computing in 2018, he was eager to return to the Institute to lead it. “The fact that MIT was making a bold commitment to become a broad-based leader in the AI-driven age—and that it was cutting across all of its schools—was exciting,” he says. Schwarzman College took shape through task forces involving more than 100 MIT faculty members. By the fall of 2019 a plan had been nailed down, and Huttenlocher was in place as director with EECS head Ozdaglar named deputy dean of academics. “I never believed that everybody wants to do computer science at MIT,” she says. “Students come in with a lot of passions, and it’s our responsibility to educate these bilinguals, so they are fluent in their own discipline but also able to use these advanced frontiers of computing.” Ozdaglar’s background is in using machine learning to optimize communications, transportation, and control systems. Recently she has become interested in applying machine-learning algorithms to social media, examining how the choices people make when sharing content affect the information—and misinformation—recommended to them. This work builds on her longstanding interdisciplinary collaborations in the social sciences, including collaborations with her husband, economics professor (and recent Nobel laureate) Daron Acemoglu. “I strongly feel that to really address the important questions in society, these old department or disciplinary silos aren’t adequate anymore,” she says. “The college has enabled me to work much more broadly across MIT and share all that I’ve learned.” Ozdaglar has been a driving force behind faculty hiring for the college, working with 18 departments to bring on dozens of scholars at the forefront of computing. In some ways, she says, it’s been a challenge to integrate the new hires into existing disciplines. “We have to keep teaching what we’ve been teaching for tens or hundreds of years, so change is hard and slow,” she says. But she has also noticed a palpable excitement about the new tools. Already, the college has brought in more than 30 new faculty members in four broad areas: climate and computing; human and natural intelligence; humanistic and social sciences; and AI for scientific discovery. In each case, they receive an academic home in another department, as well as an appointment, and often lab space, within the college. That commitment to interdisciplinary work has been built into every aspect of the new headquarters. “Most buildings at MIT come across as feeling pretty monolithic,” Huttenlocher says as he leads the way along brightly lit hallways and common spaces with large walls of glass looking out onto Vassar Street. “We wanted to make this feel as open and accessible as possible.” While the Institute’s high-end computing takes place mostly at a massive computing center in Holyoke, about 90 miles away in Western Massachusetts, the building is honeycombed with labs and communal workspaces, all made light and airy with glass and natural blond wood. Along the halls, open doorways offer enticing glimpses of such things as a giant robot hanging from a ceiling amid a tangle of wires. Lab and office space for faculty research groups working on related problems—who might be from, say, CSAIL and LIDS—is interspersed on the same floor to encourage interaction and collaboration. “It’s great because it builds connections across labs,” Huttenlocher says. “Even the conference room does not belong to either the lab or the college, so people actually have to collaborate to use it.” Another dedicated space is available six months at a time, by application, for special collaborative projects. The first group to use it, last spring, focused on bringing computation to the climate challenge. To make sure undergrads use the building too, there’s a classroom and a 250-seat lecture hall, which now hosts classic Course 6 classes (such as Intro to Machine Learning) as well as new multidiscipline classes. A soaring central lobby lined with comfortable booths and modular furniture is ready-made for study sessions. For some of the new faculty, working at the college is a welcome change from previous academic experiences in which they often felt caught between disciplines. “The intersection of climate sustainability and AI was nascent when I started my PhD in 2015,” says Sherrie Wang, an assistant professor with a shared appointment in mechanical engineering and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, who is principal investigator of the Earth Intelligence Lab. When she hit the job market in 2022, it still wasn’t clear which department she’d be in. Now a part of Schwarzman’s climate cluster, she says her work uses machine learning to analyze satellite data, examining crop distribution and agricultural practices across the world. “It’s great to have a cohort of people who have similar philosophical motivations in applying these tools to real-world problems,” she says. “At the same time, we’re pushing the tools forward as well.” AI impact papers Among other researchers, she plans to collaborate with Sara Beery, a CSAIL professor who analyzes vast troves of visual, auditory, and other data from a diverse range of sensors around the world to better understand how climate change is affecting distribution of species. “AI can be successful in helping human experts efficiently process terabytes and petabytes of data so they can make informed management decisions in real time rather than five years later,” says Beery, who was drawn to the college’s unique hybrid nature. “We need a new generation of researchers that frame their work by bringing different types of knowledge together. At Schwarzman, there is a clear vision that this type of work is going to be necessary to solve these big, essential problems.” Beery is now working to develop a class in machine learning and sustainability with two other new faculty members in the climate cluster: Abigail Bodner, an assistant professor in EECS and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (whose work uses AI to analyze fluid dynamics), and Priya Donti, assistant professor in EECS and LIDS (who uses AI and computing to optimize integration of renewable energy into power grids). “There’s already a core course on AI and machine learning—an on-ramp for people without prior exposure who want to gain those fundamentals,” says Donti. “The new class would be for those who want to study advanced AI/ML topics within the context of sustainability-related disciplines, including power systems, biodiversity, and climate science.” The class on machine learning and sustainability would be part of , an initiative cochaired by Ozdaglar and involving several dozen faculty members across MIT to develop new classes integrating advanced computing with other disciplines. So far, says Ozdaglar, it has generated more than a dozen new courses. One machine-learning class developed with input from nine departments provides exposure to a variety of practical applications for AI algorithms. Another collaboration, between computer science and urban studies, uses data visualization to address housing issues and other societal challenges. Julia Schneider ’26, a double major in AI and mathematics, took the Common Ground class on optimization methods, which she says demonstrated how computer science concepts like shortest-path algorithms and reinforcement learning could be applied in other areas, such as economics and business analytics. She adds that she values such classes because they blend her two areas of study and highlight multidisciplinary opportunities. Natasha Hirt ’23, MEng ’23, came to MIT thinking that computer science was peripheral to her major in architecture and urban planning. Then she took a course with building technology professor Caitlin Mueller on structural optimization and design—and it changed the trajectory of her MIT career. That led her to Interactive Data Visualization and Society, a Common Ground class, and several interdisciplinary classes combining computer science and field-specific knowledge. She says these provided the perfect introduction to algorithms without delving too much into math or coding,giving her enough working knowledge to set up models correctly and understand how things can go wrong. “They are teaching you what an engine is, what it looks like, and how it works without actually requiring you to know how to build an engine from scratch,” she says, though she adds that the classes also gave her the opportunity to tinker with the engine. She’s now working on master’s degrees in both building technology and computation science and engineering, focusing on making buildings more sustainable by using computational tools to design novel, less material-intensive structures. She says that Common Ground facilitates an environment where students don’t have to be computer science majors to learn the computational skills they need to succeed in their fields. And that’s the intent. “My hope is that this new way of thinking and these educational innovations will have an impact both nationally and globally,” Ozdaglar says. The same goes for recent papers MIT has commissioned, both on AI and public policy and on applications of generative AI. As generative AI has spread through many realms of society, it has become an ethical minefield, giving rise to problems from intellectual-property theft to deepfakes. “The likely consequence has been to both over- and under-regulate AI, because the understanding isn’t there,” Huttenlocher says. But the technology has developed so rapidly it’s been nearly impossible for policymakers to keep up. “Even faculty who are leading researchers in this area say ‘I can’t read fast enough to keep up with what’s going on,’” Huttenlocher says, “so that heightens the challenge—and the need.” The college has responded by engaging faculty at the cutting edge of their disciplines to issue for government leaders. First was a written in the fall of 2023 by Huttenlocher, Ozdaglar, and the head of MIT’s DC office, David Goldston, with input from more than a dozen MIT faculty members. The brief spells out essential tasks for helping the US maintain its AI leadership, as well as crucial considerations for regulation. The college followed that up with a policy brief by EECS faculty specifically focusing on large language models such as ChatGPT. Others dealt with AI’s impact on the workforce, the effectiveness of labeling AI content, and AI in education. Along with the written documents, faculty have briefed congressional committees and federal agencies in person to get the information directly into the hands of policymakers. “The question has been ‘How do we take MIT’s specific academic knowledge and put it into a form that’s accessible?’” Huttenlocher says. On a parallel track, in July of 2023 President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Cynthia Barnhart, SM ’86, PhD ’88, issued a call for papers by MIT faculty and researchers to “articulate effective road maps, policy recommendations, and calls for action across the broad domain of generative AI.” Huttenlocher and Ozdaglar played a key role in evaluating the 75 proposals that came in. Ultimately, from interdisciplinary teams of authors representing all five schools. Each of the 27 teams received between $50,000 and $70,000 in seed funds to research and write 10-page impact papers, which were due by December 2023. Given the enthusiastic response, MIT sent out another call in the fall of 2023, resulting in an additional 53 proposals, with in March, on topics including visual art, drug discovery, and privacy. As with the policy briefs, Huttenlocher says, “we are trying to provide the fresher information an active researcher in the field would have, presented in a way that a broader audience can understand.” Even in the short time the college has been active, Huttenlocher and Ozdaglar have begun to see its effects. “We’re seeing departments starting to change some of the ways they are hiring around degree programs because of interactions with the college,” Huttenlocher says. “There is such a huge acceleration of AI in the world—it’s getting them to think with some urgency in doing this.” Whether through faculty hiring, new courses, policy papers, or just the existence of a space for high-level discussions about computing that had no natural home before, Huttenlocher says, the college hopes to invite the MIT community into a deeper discussion of how AI and other advanced computing tools can augment academic activities around campus. MIT has long been a leader in the development of AI, and for many years it has continued to innovate at the cutting edge of the field. With the college’s leadership, the Institute is in a position to continue innovating and to guide the future of the technology more broadly. “The next step,” says Ozdaglar, “is to take that impact out into the world.”