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Hey, ChatGPT: What should I get my mom for Christmas?
Without a retail website as an "intermediary," shoppers can find their desired products more efficiently, since an AI algorithm finds results from across the internet and compiles them in one location, said principal research scientist George Westerman. He questioned the reliability and trustworthiness of the results and who might benefit from them. "Who's influencing the recommendations it gives you?" he said. "It's unclear how neutral AI results are because they've got to make money somehow."
Want to get the most out of AI? Put people first.
Professor of the practice Zeynep Ton said: "The status quo mindset in leaders is to see labor as a cost to be minimized. Exemplary companies think of employees as drivers of customer satisfaction, profitability and growth."
Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots
"Nobody else has the same incentive as Amazon to find the way to automate," said Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu. "Once they work out how to do this profitably, it will spread to others, too." If the plans pan out, "one of the biggest employers in the United States will become a net job destroyer, not a net job creator," Mr. Acemoglu said.
'When the dogs won't eat the dog food'
To drive up AI adoption, associate professor Jackson G. Lu recommends that leaders start by steering workers toward tasks that AI clearly handles better than humans and where personalization is unnecessary. Then, he advises gradually incorporating AI into tasks that involve taste, fairness, or empathy — while preserving human oversight and allowing people to customize the results. "Get the fit right," says Lu, "and even AI skeptics become power users."
An MIT professor criticized COVID-19 shots. His new role allows him to make recommendations about the vaccine.
Professor Retsef Levi said: "There is one religion that says no vaccine is good for anybody, and there is another religion that says every vaccine is good for everybody, every time. My take is that I’m going to think about every vaccine — and the risk and benefits of these vaccines — with respect to different people with different risk profiles."
The Hollywood CEO and the unbearable meetings
Five principles make up "dynamic work design," described in the book "There's Got to Be a Better Way," by professor Nelson P. Repenning and senior lecturer Donald Kieffer.
RFK Jr.'s vaccine panel makes few policy changes
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices member, professor Retsef Levi, presented conclusions from the committee's COVID-19 vaccine working group.
Here's why auto loan delinquencies are on the rise
Associate professor Christopher Palmer said defaulting on a car payment is usually a borrower's last resort. Since people often need cars to get to work they're more likely to not pay other bills first. "That could include not paying their mortgages or their rent, in part because it takes a long time to evict someone or to foreclose on a house," he said. That's why he said auto delinquencies are like a canary in the coal mine; another indicator of how squeezed consumers are.
The power of deep leadership inquiry
Research by senior lecturer Hal Gregersen suggests that leaders who prioritise questions over immediate answers tend to navigate uncertainty more effectively. This shift fundamentally changes how problems are approached and solutions are developed.
For AI productivity gains, let team leaders write the rules
Senior lecturer Robert C. Pozen and co-author wrote: "Corporations are rushing to invest in artificial intelligence. But corporate-wide AI policies alone can't transform work, according to our recent research. For AI efforts to pay off, executives must set clear guardrails while enabling teams to write the rules that make tool adoption real. Only then will AI deliver the meaningful returns that organizational leaders are pursuing."