Without corporate support for curiosity-driven research, the pipeline of innovation and talent that has helped ensure our nation’s prosperity and security could end, warned President Sally Kornbluth during the meeting. Washington Post Live event.
During “The Next Generation,” a panel discussion was hosted by Washington Post reporter Zachary Goldfarb at The Washington Post’At the “Building America Summit,” Kornbluth and Arizona State University (ASU) President Michael Crow engaged in a spirited discussion on the importance of curiosity-driven research, exploring how universities are preparing the next generation of scientists to lead America’s rapidly changing technological landscape.
“A lot of the things we have in our daily lives, whether it’s medical advances, technological advances, a lot of these things come from 30, 40, 50 years of scientists just trying to figure out how things work,” Kornbluth emphasized.
Kornbluth pointed to MIT’s curriculum that focuses on teaching basic skills that can be used in the development of many technologies, skills that will be critical to leadership in an AI-enabled world.
“I don’t think our humanities lessons are out of date [by AI]. The way you approach them,” said Kornbluth.” “In our new curriculum, we don’t just rely on the basic STEM fields. We really feel that we have to revive some of the old moral and social and moral education principles very strongly because we want all these children who are learning to be advanced professionals, to come out of them with a moral, social and moral perspective.”
Artificial intelligence
Key to Kornbluth’s mission is to maintain a human-centered approach to AI. Inspired by MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” (mind and hand), he shared: “We really want students to be able to use physical AI. We want our students to still be able to build things, but use AI as an extension tool.”
Kornbluth expressed the importance of teaching interested faculty and students how to best use AI as a tool and his commitment to improving student engagement.
“We put a lot of emphasis on things like collaboration. [students] you need to be able to use these tools and come together to achieve goals, because you can imagine a situation where AI becomes your friend instead of your study group. We really don’t want that to happen,” said Kornbluth.
Using AI effectively requires writing strong commands. Kornbluth discussed how basic knowledge in fields such as mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry, as well as teaching students how to write and communicate clearly and effectively, enables students to use AI responsibly when it comes to using this new technology in scientific research.
Students need to be able to “take that knowledge and think about how to use AI in the most beneficial way and learn how to write the right information,” Kornbluth said.
Kornbluth noted the unique role of the MIT Sloan School of Management in exploring AI. “It’s because the students all come with business knowledge and the need in the field for them to have a strong knowledge of AI is very high,” he said.
The impact of frozen funds
Government funding fuels curiosity-driven research—the foundation of countless medical, technological and scientific breakthroughs.
“It’s very difficult to find a foundation that will change a person’s life because you want to do that. You have to check how things work and usually this type of research in this country is funded by the government because it is not immediately profitable,” said Kornbluth.
Discussing issues related to government funding, Kornbluth said that although money has been set aside for universities, not much has been released to them.
“We’re really trying to figure out what funding will continue,” Kornbluth said.
When asked about the effects of the frozen funds, Kornbluth pointed to the long timeline needed to develop life-saving treatments.
As one example, Kornbluth pointed to the treatment of diabetes.
“[Treatments] it started with life-saving insulin injections and now automated pumps and CGMs [Continuous Glucose Monitors],” Kornbluth said. But it takes a lot of groundwork to get there.”
“That [diabetes] just one place. You can add that to cancer treatment,” Kornbluth said.
Investing in basic research can advance treatments like immunotherapy.
“Immunotherapy has just started – it doesn’t work for every type of cancer yet. But all the changes that are being made now in basic science laboratories to pharmaceutical and biotech companies are making it more effective so that pancreatic cancer is not at all a death sentence now,” emphasized Kornbluth.
National impact
Beyond research and AI, the president concluded by highlighting the strengths of MIT’s student body, programs, and spinouts.
Kornbluth emphasized the importance of MIT’s education for students and the wider economy.
Twenty percent of MIT’s class of 2029 were first-generation students. Education is “the best way to travel economically,” Kornbluth said.
He continued: “MIT has created north of 30,000 companies. The economic impact of MIT in this country is equal to 14.th The largest GDP in the world. We are having a huge impact on the economy and producing the next generation of talent.”
Although MIT is very selective, Kornbluth noted that it is financially accessible with its tuition-free program for students whose parents make less than $200,000. He also highlighted MIT for America, an initiative to increase access to mathematics, a required course at institutions like MIT, in underserved high schools across the country.
Kornbluth and Crow moderated the panel by highlighting how their universities are learning from each other.
“What is it, sister?” [ASU] learn from MIT that, where is the limit of technology,” Qwabe said. “We learn how technologists, and great scientists work in small groups.” At ASU, which has more than 150,000 students, “it’s educational to learn and work at a different level and in a different way. There’s a lot of back and forth,” he said.
Kornbluth expressed his hope that MIT will continue its long tradition of research and education in serving the nation for the next 250 years.
“As a small private institution, we’re putting a very strong foothold in how we can impact people beyond the walls of MIT,” Kornbluth said, “as well as having a scientific impact on society through our findings.”
