 My name is Seth Manukin. I'm the director of the communications forum. Thank you all so much for coming out A couple of announcements before we begin If you ask questions, and we hope that you do ask questions, please come up to one of the microphones We would really appreciate it if you would identify yourself We do Record these and we also keep transcripts of them for the record And so it's always nice to have your name We also have a mailing list up here So if you enjoy this and events like this, please sign up for our mailing list We only have six events a year and we do not send emails out for anything other than our six events So this will not be a mailing list that you will get a lot of spam with We'd also like to thank Radius Who is a co-sponsor of tonight's forum? And has been a sponsor of a lot of our forums over the last couple of years a co-sponsor Without their support, we would not be able to do this And without any further ado Let me introduce tonight's panel Dr. Eric Lander is the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard a Professor of biology at MIT and a professor of systems biology at the Harvard Medical School Dr. Lander was a principal leader of the human genome project and from 2009 to 2017 He served as co-chair of PCAST The president's council of advisors on science and technology under Barack Obama Dr. Landers won the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship at the MacArthur Foundation won the whole Foundation The breakthrough prize in life sciences the Albany Prize in medicine and biological research the Mendel Medal of the Genetic Society in The UK the award for public understanding of science and technology from triple as and the Woodrow Wilson Prize for public service from Princeton University among many many other awards Dr. Maria Zuber is the MIT vice president for research and the EA Griswold professor of geophysics Dr. Zuber has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions And as the principal investigator for the gravity recovery and interior laboratory or Grail became the first woman to lead a NASA spacecraft mission in 2016 Zuber was elected to a two-year term as the chair of the National Science Board the governing body of the National Science Foundation and Earlier this week. She was appointed to another six-year term on the board at MIT Dr. Zuber overseas research administration and policy for more than a dozen interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers and her many accolades include multiple NASA group achievement awards the Harry a Harry H Hess medal up from the American Geophysical Union and the Carl Sagan Memorial Award So thank you both for joining us tonight. I wanted to start Just sort of generally and ask you What point to both of you realize that you wanted to be a scientist or go into science? So science chose me I didn't so there there are Legends in my family about Me jumping up and down in my playpen pointing at the television when the rockets were launching Ah, wow and and I I wanted to be a scientist Forever and I started Building telescopes when I was about six I taught myself optics. I ground my own lenses and and all I ever wanted to do was study space and I'm still doing it right wow it's working and so you really knew it at age six or seven if that's what you wanted to do That's incredible. How about you, Eric? Can't get over the grinding her own lenses Wow, I'm not sure let my kids grind So nothing like that. Okay, so I I wasn't interested in science when I was growing up. I was interested in math, right? so I did my Undergraduate degree in my PhD in pure mathematics, and I fell in love with math in high school. I was in New York kid. I was lucky enough to go to Stuyvesant high school and Found the math team and so I fell in love with mathematics Was lucky enough that Columbia University had a New York City-wide science honors program and I could take the train up to Columbia on weekends and learn about Galois theory and other things and then went to You know onward to math until after getting my PhD in math. I realized I didn't want to do math as a career I just loved it because math was very monastic and it really wasn't it wasn't as in the world And so I cast about for a number of years and through a long series of accidents Fell in love with biology and in particular genetics So the last genetics course I took for the last biology course I took for a grade with sophomore year of high school So how'd you do I have no idea but in any case it means that I'm actually unqualified for your But I have tenure, so it's too late, right Can you do right so you know, but I did The one thing I have in common with Maria was my my mom let me stay home whenever they launched the rocket So I watched all the NASA launches and this was like really Inspiring and transformative to feel like that was going on that change was happened though you know, I've never thought about working in space or Leading a space mission in the 60s. That was really it was amazing and and now that both of you are You're in charge of research here. You're running a big Institute How do you miss the sort of day-to-day doing doing bench work overseeing your own Experiments not needing to oversee big teams of people. So I don't think we've given up doing research Your labs, of course, but but but I assume your other responsibilities also take up it. Oh, they take up time. Yeah Well, um, yeah, so I've obviously Shrunk my research group a fair amount and I have more postdocs now than Graduate students, but I share I share my graduate students with another professor Make sure and then then we always have a bunch of undergrads kind of running around Doing really useful things that we team up with with the graduate students in the postdoc. So so I I You know, there are some days that are better than others when when I prefer that I would would be in the lab, but but you know for me right now at this stage of my career, it's all about impact and and You know after running big space missions I want to have more impact than I had before so helping And that's hard when you've run a hole, right? so so Helping other people Create things and make things happen. So every you know every faculty member we hire here They have a dream right and and just like we all have a dream and And usually there's something holding people back from achieving that dream. Okay, it could be that they need A lab renovation or they need a piece of equipment or maybe they just need to meet the right collaborator and and so I actually get a lot of satisfaction out of Removing barriers or creating opportunities to allow others to achieve their dreams because then great things inevitably happen at some point and And I you know, I feel like I played a really small part in that but it's a it's a rush. Yeah Same thing. Yes, you know, just just you know, because you know your experience running space missions You know mind working on the human genome project You want to have impact comparable to the impact you've had and at a place like MIT or Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. They're just all of these amazing people all these amazing projects and so While you have less time for your own research, right? You're still mentoring. I mean, I think I feel like I know Maria feels like we're mentoring colleagues We're mentoring faculty right during projects and there's there's a satisfaction and joy in that right at the same time We still do research. Yeah, of course got a paper accepted to sell on Monday and now we got a we got yeah We got a cut 40,000 characters out of the damn thing now So, you know, you can run an institution or whatever But you also have to worry about, you know Red penciling this thing down to the word length and it's it's I think really great around MIT that the people who Played leadership roles still continue to science, right because it keeps you actually it's it's it's acceptable here So I mean, you know, it's um, you know, what I what I lose in administrative Effectiveness or efficiency Because I'm still carrying on, you know a research program granted a smaller one You know, I I feel like I'm more than make up for in having the continued respect of my colleagues That that I haven't Given up right just go on to the dark side. Right, right All right, I wanted to Sort of broadly define this term that miracle machine Which we're using to to connote that the u.s. Is technological and scientific dominance and in the 20th century What do you see as the ingredients that sort of led to that? Why was the u.s. Such a leader in the 20th century? Why don't you start with that? Sure? You know Let's start with what what is this this miracle machine right the idea of that Basic research Is so powerful at producing useful things is not obvious, right? I mean even to this day Many institutions many countries think if you want something useful, you should try to make something useful applied research applied research and the idea that really in this country comes in many ways out of Vannevar Bush after World War II that Research should not be done in government laboratories exclusively or even primarily but should be done in universities and Distributed research centers and funded by the government funded by the government that you know in this this famous report science the infinite frontier You know when even Bush to President Roosevelt lays out a post-war strategy, right that Frankly isn't obvious Even coming out of World War II when you have Los Alamos and other things and he says you know all that's good, but after World War II This is the way to have the greatest impact is to place funds around the country and To have people compete based on proposals and ideas and grants. It's not central planning It's not central laboratories. Well, so that's the first real ingredient to this miracle machine is you engage ideas all around the country And you do it with students, which is another part of the amazing thing. Why should you do research with people? Who aren't like yet trained and qualified? Right and nutty if you were you know most businesses wouldn't run their business with people who don't like aren't fully qualified Right, and yet the magic of doing research with with students who are still learning is brilliant because you get freshness of ideas Right the staleness that sets in if you have just hermetically sealed yourself into something rather than having this flow of young people and ideas And you're training your bench and you're training the bench because of course those people were going off to populate companies all That's another brilliant part that wasn't obvious Then of course the the interaction between the Academy and industry and government this This threefold this this triangle here the connection to industry flow these students flowing out ideas Flowing out IP flowing out to be able to provide benefit to a society and this virtuous cycle Right that comes from the government gets money from the prosperity The prosperity is used to fund back basic research and then of course you have had Brilliant investment in the government sector, you know most famously a DARPA right folks who are willing to say I'm not just interested in building tomorrow's missile or plane But that you know we too have to be asking long-term questions and being willing to fund that so You know it's it seems obvious we take for granted the system that we have But it's a very odd system almost all of its assumptions would not have seemed obvious to people And it was not what most countries in the world were doing and eventually when we've seen everything that's come from this virtuous system Other countries have said yes, we should be doing it, but it's kind of wacky But and we and we were they we were like and in many cases still are the best attractor of talent in the world Oh, yeah, the most the most talented people in the world wanted to come and be a part of this, right? And and so it it spoke for itself It helped a great deal that that when there were a lot of people who were refugees we took them in right as America has Always been that magnet to draw people from anywhere, right? and NASA How did you see that interplay between? basic research on a decentralized level then Funnel into actual applied science projects sending people up in space Well, I I mean I can Give you just an example or please from my from my own research. Yeah, so I I came out of I got my PhD at the time when Ronald Reagan was president and and so at that time there was a great investment in space-based lasers for Star Wars or Star Wars for ballistic missile defense and And and and I said to myself You know, I mean it was brand new technologies, but it was based on fundamental physics of how laser systems work, okay, and They were moving to solid-state lasers as opposed to older older designs that use flash lamps Which some of you in here may be familiar with and flash laps didn't last too long And and they were a high power and and so so I said to myself, you know, if we're investing Hundreds of millions of dollars Into a laser tech. I betcha. There's something I can do science with okay, and so I I was at NASA, so I was able to get my clearance and look at The technology that these lasers were being used and you know, it was all classified but in Laser work, you know the classification is the energy of the laser and Pointing of the how well you can point it and the stability so So, you know myself and a handful of other people that were kind of my age just out of school We just took all those specs and just dialed them down until they were unclassified and then Turn up NASA was Was planning on sending a mission to Mars and it was supposed to launch on the space shuttle, but the space shuttle blew up so they had to Find another launch vehicle for the spacecraft it delayed they two several instruments out so they opened up a competition for a new altimeter and and so Myself and my buddies we proposed this laser system and With with saying well, we will never ever be selected on this But we're gonna go in there and we are gonna just kill this competition so that when we grow up They will remember us so Our performance beat the pants off of everything else We got and you know, we're competitively selected to send an instrument to Mars Wow, and it was my second year out of grad school Wow, so and and it was because I was using technology that was based of That was advanced because of fundamental science about solid-state lasers, right and and so I mean that's Obviously that wasn't my plan, right, right, and it wasn't the DoD's plan It wasn't a DoD's plan to give you the no Right, yeah, we're just hanging around right yeah turning the dials right right right Well, so we see the the fruits of the miracle machine every day I just wanted to sort of for a frame of reference talk about some of what we mean by that So what are some of the What are some of the inventions that we use every day that came out of this Basic research to applied research sort of engine in the 20th century. I mean, you know, they go all the way from GPS right for example, do we take for granted on cell phones? Out of DARPA, is that right? Well, you know, it comes in a lot of different ways But yes in some ways it comes out of DARPA in some ways it comes out of I think GPS tracks back to when Sputnik was launched and two folks at the University of Maryland or Johns Hopkins or somewhere were trying to figure out how to locate it and They were sort of You know ad hoc right came up with the idea of Positioning in the way of having multiple signals right in a week They sort of figured this out But then of course you needed Relativity to get an accurate signal because it's time dilation up there And then eventually it gets turned into a system So it's it's this melange of different things. You know the Internet, right? You know this crazy mix of computer science at places like here in Cambridge and Carnegie Mellon and on the West Coast Meeting with well again the stories, you know intertwine But some threads say the survivability of computer networks wanting to have to have things that were survivable Right therefore very distributed But but then a government saying we're going to invest in this thing that isn't obviously very useful yet, right? You know passing messages back and short emails back But you know that explodes or an awful lot of biotechnology when you think about Salvador Luria here at MIT You know and his work on this wacky phenomena about how certain Bacteria can restrict certain viruses anyway gives rise to restriction enzymes eventually which are one of the key tools of Recombitent DNA and you know nobody set out to say oh, we're gonna have a biomedical revolution recombinant DNA They set out to say how to how did bacteria manage to copy their DNA and how do they manage to fix it? They collected just all the tools nature uses and then at some point they said oh, we could start putting this together Right, so if anybody had said Please build the following for us, you know in some top-down fashion. We would have never gotten Any of these these things right fashion we got them right right? So that's to me the the heart of the Miracle Machine is most of these remarkable things we count on was not somebody's You know central five-year plan right something that emerged from by accident or through I don't want to call it accident because but it didn't emerge from a direct path that emerged from funding Fundamental curiosity and then being willing to run with it. I think the applied is important But it was that combination. It was not trying to force something into a fully working mode It was to let each stage begin to tell you what it was good for right right Yeah, and I you know just to add to that I'll get into the the people part of it a little bit You know a lot of the precision Machining and the measurements that were made to send things into space You know spaces spaces very unforgiving and and so you know, so you've you've got to have everything Perfectly correct, right? I mean you have an actuator. You can't have any play in it, right? I mean and You know not all the people that go through this training to do this wind up staying in the field and Doing that for a living because what they work their thesis on right, but you would want to you know If you had a company You would want to hire a person that could machine something to that tolerance right and create something or do the corrections On something to get down to nano levels. Yeah, right, right So you had you had the the interplay between research and industry in this sort of diffuse sense That when you have people working to that degree of expertise and and specificity Even if that's not precisely what they're going to be working on an industry, you're going to want those people right and When I think back over sort of our society's relationship with science in the 20th century my my sort of vision of it in my head is that Obviously we had that the detonation of the a-bomb at the end of World War two But for a lot of the 20th century the sort of our general view is that science was a Force for sort of an unalloyed force for progress and good and was going to lead us into the Into the future. Would you say that that's my impression of that is correct? Well, it's not whether it is true But whether that was the that was the sort of zeitgeist well Like I would I would agree with that, right? Okay? Yeah, Star Trek I was brought up on an original Star Trek and you know, you had this amazingly diverse crew, right? You know the Russians and the Americans were you know Jensen Chekov was working with everybody else. It's great Even even had you know Spock from another planet species interspecies, right? It was you know That was the optimistic view of the future, right? It was going to bring us all closer together accept each other Cetera yeah, that was what I was brought up on in the 60s, right, right, and that we were gonna Explore discover right and certainly that you know NASA sort of embodies that that sense of there's this endless mystery and we're gonna go and and learn about it and and so We've talked about this a little bit now we're a couple of decades into the 21st century and I think that there's more concern about whether these These inventions and whether all of this progress is Necessarily gonna be used for good We've talked about you know, you have autonomous cars in the one hand and the specter of autonomous weapons on the other You know social media is something that can connect us and bring us together It's also something that can disseminate hate speech or misinformation Is that sense that We need to pay attention to the implications of science and the implications of research Is that something that has cropped up sort of in in a forward way more recently or is that science? It's just gotten so incredibly useful All right, we didn't worry about spreading misinformation on the internet before we had an internet right internet is Pervasive and now we can also see the ways it can be misused. It's not a question of you know Will technology be used for good or for bad? I think we now have a sophisticated understanding that all of these technologies are gonna require Responsible behavior, it's gonna require responsible management biotechnologies genome editing gene drives To change nature. Well, you know gene drives Maybe it's a way to get rid of malaria, right gene drives. Maybe it's a way to screw up our environments completely, right? You know and both can be true and so and I can go down and maybe we will go down a list of all of these things There are enormous positive returns that could be had But if we can't this responsible scientists also say there are a lot of potential misuses Biotechnologies that allow you to pen potentially designed cancer-killing Alcoholic viruses. That's the same biotechnologies that could let you design a bio weapon someday. So It's it's more the question of the governance that's needed the norms that are needed how we run a world that's gonna get the benefits While knowing full well that if we don't do this responsibly we're gonna get Potential dystopias associated with it, right? So it's just I think a grown-up technology. We better take seriously And yeah, we we think about this a lot, you know, I mean so I mean at MIT our ethos is You know, we want to make a better world. So we want to help people and you know, so the idea out there that We're creating AI right that that's gonna put people out of work, and they're not gonna have jobs This is let me tell you this is very worrisome to our researchers who say no I we you know we we have to create the future where How do we figure out how? People can work with robots. You know, how do we how do we create the new jobs and and so there's there's actually a huge amount of effort going on on campus now trying to trying to think these issues through in many sectors about you know Trying to consider the the ethical Considerations in parallel right as we're making these discoveries. I think you know not waiting until You know, we get to a certain point, but you know thinking about it at the same time, right? Yeah, I think Maybe a little bit of a cultural difference in East Coast and West Coast everything is a generalization But on the West Coast, there's maybe a little more of the techno optimism, right? Whatever problem you have technology will solve that problem and I think I'm not Sure that that's enough of an answer Problems will arise that aren't necessarily solved by technology. They are gonna take us Understanding that technology can go wrong. What I frankly love about the community is that people feel like community here Community here is that people feel that it's their responsibility to make sure the technology doesn't get used wrong, right? I guess my question is whether that notion of there being a parallel ethical responsibility is something that has been Sort of more developed and more pronounced recently and I think of a parallel in journalism in that Kind of in American journalism the history of American journalism the sense always was our job is to put out Information and we'll let people decide. We're not supposed to come down on one side or another and The journalists the community has realized over the last several decades That actually when you're dealing with things that are true and not true It's not acceptable to just put it out there and there's been a sort of grappling with this need to have ethical guidelines as well my my Sense is that there has been a similar thing that has happened in science, but maybe it's been there No, well, I you know, there's certainly a lot more discussion of it lately and I I mean ethical considerations and then I would also say What's been going on for for kind of a longer time has been the The idea of the students coming in Whatever they work on they're really committed to Leaving this world the better place than the world that they came into okay and and what up what I Attributed this to in part is you know the kids come in and you know starting in first or second grade they all do community service right and we're and The the ones that are really motivated they stick with it and they they find Something passionate in that and they carry it with them. So even if they're you know, they could be a mathematician, right? We're you know, you would go to a Grad school because I want to solve this problem, right? But now they want to solve this problem so that they can help somebody or you know, I want to open up you know the You know reduce darkness in the universe by you know understanding how this works and you know There's much more of a of a commitment to to really improving the human condition So I'll give you you know actually an interesting example. We have You might be familiar with that. We have a fusion startup that came out of MIT the plasma science and fusion lab and And these these folks they're using high-field superconducting magnets and and actually hope to make a fusion Power plant that's about the size of this room. Okay, cool. And and As opposed to a big experiment that's being done in Europe. That's the size of a football field. So And the the motivation for for these folks they they they don't want to be billionaires They don't want to win a Nobel Prize They started doing this because they're really really concerned about climate change and there there is just There is just an absolute sense among them that they have to get on with this and this has to be done And we have to do it now and that's why they want to do it mission I think there's a strong sense in this generation particularly the students now of mission As the driving force and and that's different from earlier generations About look, I mean, there's always elements of it. We're talking about the proportion of it Right. I think I think you hear much more concerned about mission as a driving force in life then Say a generation or two earlier and do you think that's because there's greater sense of the precariousness of our situation now or Is there another is it because now you have community service sort of being built into curriculum starting in elementary school I don't know. Maybe maybe it's because the world is able to communicate such You know so much better, you know from from the time we I'm sorry the world that they well the world that they grow up in I mean they see parts of the world. I mean, you know, if you grew up and you were in a privileged existence You wouldn't have seen the whole you know people in other parts of the world that that Didn't you know have the same? You know all the things that you had right, but I think from you know, certainly from the time that You know in Apollo 8 when we first got the view of you know earth rise over the moon and we saw the earth as a You know fragile place, right? It you know, it got a lot of people thinking and and now You know kids growing up can see others in poverty or they see things I mean I grew up in a coal mining town Eastern Pennsylvania and Anthracite country and where my father was a policeman and He had one of the highest paying jobs in town, right? And so But I I didn't think I was poor Because I you know in the area where I grew up in you know, everybody was kind of the same but you know, then you go other places and you see what other people grew up with and their situations and You know it really affects you So I just think that the the the way that we see so much of the world now, you know really Does impact people right right and I'm curious you mentioned this Sort of east coast west coast divide and that I think it was divided. It's a little bit of balance. Okay Why do you think that is because clearly It's not like people are raised in the west coast go to school in the west coast then go and work in Silicon Valley You have MIT as a large community over working in the tech industry Is that just because of the accumulation of wealth in the tech sector over the last couple of decades or I don't know. I think it's a Many many different things that I'm not sure I'm enough of a cultural anthropologist Really diagnose it. It's more just when I have dinners of people on the west coast versus on the east coast proportion of people who feel like Technology will work it all out Is just much higher that they're really that that it couldn't go wrong, right? I think I think the west coast is still grappling with the idea that Social media doesn't necessarily just unite everybody happily that there are some downsides to it So It may also be the fact that in some ways the institutions on the east coast are a little older a little more rooted in The humanities and humanism and things that balance it in a certain way it takes some historical perspective right recognize that You know most things run into problems at some point in their life cycle And you might as well plan on the fact that it's going to run into problems At some point. So it's you know, this isn't the black and white sort of thing. It's just it's just that I detect more folks and conversations around here recognizing that to fulfill the dreams for technology Creating startups is a great thing and it's not going to be enough Right because there are things that can't be done by the company There are things that have to be done by a society because it's not in the interest of the company Appropriately and we've got to have multiple You know loci of responsibility, right? So I think there's more discussion about roles of government roles of responsibility I think there's you know that kind of idealism to be willing to start Things that won't maximize profit but will maximize mission But again, I don't want to oversell this as you know, this is the distinction between the two But I think I think it's very important that these communities Have slightly different sets of experiences and and I'm just struck that You know, it's great. We have a diverse country and the approaches and then of course There's a lot of the country That is left out of the tech revolutions entirely Right, we have we have spots like Pittsburgh with Carnegie Mellon where you really have a tech center with jobs growing around it and industries going around it But we should be as worried about the fact that the the fruits of technology and the sense of Of agency that you can change things It's not uniformly distributed around the country and are we at least yeah, it's very non Understate for exaggeration This can't be a good thing for the country in the long run, right? We have simply concentrations on the coast On the coasts, you know, plus Carnegie Mellon plus one or two other places or something, right, right Yeah, I mean new jobs new jobs are going to be created by the the tech industry I mean, you know technology and scientific advances are going to provide a basis for new knowledge That smart people are going to come in and figure out really interesting and in some cases lucrative things that could be done But you know unless we think about how those being displaced From the jobs that they have, you know can benefit from the new economy We're we're just not going to have a stable society. It's not to anybody's benefit Yeah, there is I think a period in the 90s and early 2000s when we said average income is going up, right But maybe it's not it's not enough to look at the average. Right. It might be the distribution is also really important, right, right Yeah, you say maybe maybe we won't have a stable society It sort of feels like over the last couple of years that we might Already be inching towards that place where there's such a divide that There are really deep divisions and It's unclear how we move past that and and whether Technology and the technology sector is engaged in ways that can help us move past that well, we're you know, we're So in the I received the climate action plan one of one of the things that That we've done is We're thinking a lot about Let's not just preach to the choir. Okay, so people people who understand You know that climate change is a real problem It's great that they understand that but if we're only speaking to them You know, we're not we're not doing anything the problem, right, so let's um, let's let's figure out Who the messenger ought to be right, okay, so So we've uh, you know, we actually got some of our social scientists and political scientists involved In doing some polling and and understanding what you know, what what kind of messages would people accept and and who should the messenger be so So, you know the word climate change sometimes is uh, you know, it's it's a third rail and you can't use that but But you know people are feeling the impacts of of changes that are going on so so you can talk about extreme weather and you can't talk about change and and And the messenger shouldn't necessarily be some smart person from mit saying come on guys I probably shouldn't But but it you know, it it it could be their children, right, you know who um Who who understand, you know better of what's going on? Community leaders are great messengers Those in religious life are grounded in the you know respected in the community So the these are the kinds of people that need to get Engaged in this kind of messaging It makes me think of pittsburgh When pittsburgh air Was so thick and dirty There was a period. I don't remember exactly when What they invented the air quality index And then air pollution became less abstract It became the air quality index in this city today is Oh or terrible or whatever and it made it it made it real and kind of measurable and you started hearing it on the radio And it led to cleanup of air because there were ways to describe it And so it may be that these communications things are ways ways to encapsulate things In ways that connect for people the extreme events. I think are some of the best. Yeah, and you know, this is a communications forum Yeah, communicating in a simple straightforward way, you know that You know instead of us being like twins and only talking to each other and no one can understand us we have to figure out Ways to communicate, right? Yeah, and usually talking about what's going to happen 200 years from now is not that compelling, right, right? Um, uh, so so you both have been in In advisory roles scientific advisory roles on on a federal level have gotten to look at a wide variety of issues What keeps you up at night? in terms of the areas of science that where We are not fully grappling with the potential implications or need to very quickly grapple with them well, I You know the the federal budget for the last couple of years has um has actually been Better in terms of funding of science, uh, correct. Right. Yeah, and um, so it's No, but nobody in really in either party Really liked sequestration and they never thought That sequestration was going to happen and then when it did happen they they didn't really like it and um, so the the budgets have been okay but but in terms of buying power They're they're down and I I worry about um, I worry about the level of investment That the us is making relative to the level of investment that other parts of the Country are making and other parts of the country other parts of the world the other parts of the world are making and um, and so um, you know other now, of course Other countries they have read our playbook and um, and they realize that Investing in science, you know means that you're going to get higher educated, you know educated people who can start companies and You know innovation is starting to grow in other places So the the the share of the pie so to speak in in terms of discovery is going to be more distributed So it's it's not going to be fully us dominated but of course The United States can benefit from discoveries in other places You know just like others have benefited from things that we have discovered but But I do think it's important for us to stay In the forefront on things. I've one area where I actually have particular concern Is um, is the the biotech industry actually and and um, so You know, so that's how many billions per year does the the biotech industry contribute to the the u.s. Economy and um And because of privacy considerations Um, we have limits in terms of the kind of data that we can collect on people and how we use that data um, where As in some other countries notably china The government takes all that data and you know, so if if we're thinking about personalized medicine and personalized treatments and You've got a really big database of Personal data and over here you have a smaller database, you know that leads to uh to a mismatch So that's uh that to me is one concern. I have it's interesting. I mean, it's the the biotech so topic I of course think a bunch about um it's Possibly the case that in biotech and in medicine we're it's not a question of privacy it's It's our inability to share data is as much technical right now That we haven't forced the healthcare system to be a learning system So one of I feel are great failures in the president's council advisors in science and technology in 2009 Was when the american recovery and reinvestment act assigned 40 billion dollars to electronic medical records We wrote a report that said The federal standards for receiving those monies called the meaningful use standards should require that the system be interoperable in order to get the reimbursement That never happened, but it never happened because Industry managed to say if that were required planes would fall out of the sky patients would die In fact patients are dying because it wasn't and in many ways it has been the reverse So we we backed ourselves into a system that is more Balkanized than ever and don't require universal exchange languages Because what I do know from other projects we've started around here in boston that when you ask patients They want to share their data. Yeah, so the reason I say I'm not I would not even say privacy is the biggest problem Most patients 90 plus percent of the patients think we are sharing the data and learning from it. They actually Want us to have this medical system and we don't I think we got to really move to a world where our Healthcare system is a learning system powered by all the patients who check the box and say I wish my anonymous data to be used Now the place where I think your your argument applies You know with with much more force Is in in a bunch of other areas Where I think the broad points you're making which is very large ai databases are going to beat very small ai databases Applies all over the place. This is certainly true in facial recognition technologies many other technologies So I actually broadly agree with the place recognition waste recognition Almost any of those sort of things I wanted to put in this special You know argument for our failure to get this other technologist technological barrier that that is blocking us But I think your point is absolutely right the the scale of investment going on in china right now Is going to allow ai to simply be better and more robust And then there's another scale of investment which I think is as consequential which is in stem education I worry greatly that The investments that as a country I mean at the at the high end of distribution mit Wow, the opportunities are better than anywhere in the world But if you take the medium students in the united states and their opportunity in stem education I worry about that investment too. So I mean there's a lot of choices. Yeah, I'd say, you know, I mean you look at You know first robotics competitions, you know, we yeah, we fill High school gyms. Yeah, and you know in china, they're filling stadiums right and um, and so um Actually, the only way for us to continue to compete with that is is to continue immigration and bringing in As much talent as we can. So now we see more frequently that that talent is coming and then leaving Well Yeah, maybe they don't always feel welcome. Right. Yeah um, so so those those are concerns about How the us the us's role on a sort of world stage What about kind of more meta concerns that the areas where Um, we might not be fully considering that the ethical implications of research Are there air like, you know, ilan musk has has talked at great length about how ai keeps him up at night Because he's convinced that we're gonna kill our ai's That seems a little bit farfetched to me, but are there areas where you're concerned that we're not fully Grappling with and considering the ethical implications of the research that we're doing Who's we We the scientific community you the scientific We is The scientific community in a you know scientists and on a larger scale, so let me say Let's not worry about whether we are considering it or not. Let's worry about when we consider it It's still hard. Right. So they climate change I got friends who say We've got to do geoengineering Because we got a real problem if we don't geoengineer the planet to change the albedo and bounce We're screwed. Yeah, we may have some events that occur that we can't recover from Other people good friends of mine here also I'm I'm kind of ignorant, but I like engaging this conversation and say are you out of your mind Do you have any idea what might happen with a geoengineering gone wrong? So they view that as unethical to to do to consider it No, nobody will go so far if you put it in the form of is it unethical to think about it That would be an unethical outcome, but it would be irresponsible to go do that with anything like what we've got I think the point is these are hard things almost always there are hard trade-offs When I talk about you know all of the bioengineering that can be applied to human health And that there's no bright line that separates it from the bioengineering that could make bio weapons When I look at the AI that can be used to Oh, I don't know to predict suicide risk and help do suicide prevention Right. It's also AI that can be misused to go decide Who should be sentenced to longer terms in jail? But it ends up, you know engaging lots of discriminatory information The problem is these aren't simple lines to draw all of these Are hard things to struggle with and now your question can be are we struggling with it? Right, exactly And but that's enough and of course we're not struggling with it enough. They're daunting problems We need to we need to teach hard about it. We need to think hard. We need to make it exciting for Students to be able to engage in it and think about solutions We haven't thought of and they can't just be students of science engineering They're going to be students who bring in the whole range of human disciplines If we're not struggling with those questions enough, what can we do to incentivize both Scientists who are now at the pinnacle of their careers and also scientists who are coming up through their careers How how can we change that culture? We could have MIT communications forms that discusses, right? This this will in fact change the culture of science Well, it will help would we would we have had a discussion like this Even five years ago. Yeah Is that true that you think that this discussion wouldn't know if this wasn't as much of a topic of conversation? It's certainly well. I I certainly wasn't asked to talk about it It's come up much more. You know, we we did a panel together with ash carter You know, I was moderating rather than on the panel, but ria and ash for the panel is on on similar topics I think it is something we're feeling It's just the responsibility of this age and it's becoming clearer and clearer that and I mean the the faculty institute They're asking for it. Right. They're they're asking for these discussions to take place and and so because what we what I think what we Don't want to have happen is to have some pronouncement come down that All right. No, you don't work on this kind of AI, right? Right. And um, and You know our our faculty and our researchers they want to Be aware of what the issues are and and have conversations with their colleagues and decide For themselves. What's the right thing to do and they and and then When asked about it They they want to say I've thought about it and have a good answer I mean it's sort of everything we do around here So I I assume that any decision that I make here at mit That I'm going to get hauled before congress and have to explain it. Okay And um, and it's happened. So don't think that this is uh, I'm just making this up But I mean it doesn't mean that that uh, that we necessarily take the safest path Just because I don't want to get skewered. Right. Um, but uh, um But it means that you want to think it through and get asked the question And say no, we've we've thought about it and and here's where we're coming down on it. So Obviously, you don't want a pronouncement saying do this research. Don't do that research. What about a pronouncement saying? Uh, um, to do research there has to be you there has to be in proposals an ethical component Um, uh, a discussion of the ethics of how this research is going to play out about integrating that into I I'm I'm only laughing. Oh, no, please laugh away. It's not Once you are to embarrass me. No, no once you make it the requirement that the grand proposal Contain a section on that I'm granting agencies want to do that. But but they become there's you're gonna have boilerplate You're gonna have boilerplate that gets pasted in so you will have checked that box. Right. That can't be enough Sure, do it, but it can't be enough and it almost You know risks alienating people because if it becomes you have to have promised that you have thought about the ethics And and have an ethicist on the proposal, right, right? It's got to be much more vibrant than that We've got to actually argue about this stuff But is there a way to make it organic and vibrant and also Ensure that those discussions are happening as opposed to it sort of bubbling up through the culture Well, I I think there's a responsibility for for us as leaders who To raise these issues with our colleagues But I but I see it coming both ways Um, you know things things work a lot better if if If they bubble up, right? But um, right, but it's but it's but I think it's Perfectly fine for us to say Hey, have you thought about this and and it does start conversations, you know, I mean on a on a variety of Difficult issues here at MIT and also at the Broad We were talking about this before, you know, our president or or eric, you know Puts out a very our president Am I clarified? Yeah You know puts out an extremely thoughtful note about a difficult subject Which um, you know that that actually generates a lot of Not only among our community, but Among our alums and actually well well beyond our community in terms of the feedback that we get but Um So um, so like I said, I think it has to come at all levels in small ways I I teach and I've taught for 27 years MIT's intro bio course, right? One of the sessions is devoted to Like your biology and society we look at genome editing and other things and we devote one of these freshman classes to it And I think we could probably go further. You could ask should problem sets, right? Should each problem set includes something that has social implications should you get woven in more, right? Yeah, probably we have to figure out how to do it. Well, we have to do it in a way that challenges People to think freshly about it and argue about it And is that something that has been in the course in the 27 years you've taught it or is that Of course you're about 12 years now, okay, and it's and I do it as a case method discussion It's not a lecture, right? I put up a few things and then we engage in a full room discussion And sometimes, you know, I've had 500 students in the class, but you know, it's a big full room discussion Well, it is but but but people get really really it's the it's the most active discussion of the entire year because you know people Just open up to the challenges and and you get people who disagree and it's great And sometimes a large room is really good because you'll take you'll get people who'll take An unpopular minority position and then have to defend it and And people who who realize that there was some challenge and something that they said It's I love it and it's part of it and I think we'll probably Increasingly see more of this embedded in the curriculum, right, right? You know, it's tougher in say calculus, but otherwise, right? Hopefully all those people in math will move over to biology like Um, uh, all right there I could go on for a long time, but let's open it up to all of you Just a reminder, uh, please come to one of the microphones And introduce yourself when you ask your question And don't be shy. Come on in. Yeah You don't need to raise your hand. You can just you can just show off. Yeah. All right. So, uh, I'm josh I'm a fourth year undergrad here senior What are you studying? I'm studying robotics. So relevant to the stuff you're talking about so I think I'm gonna ask maybe a pretty basic question. So bear with me a bit But so we've just been discussing the whole time that we have uh as scientists engineers a Responsibility for the consequences of our research and how it's used. Um But we also let off with was that some of the magic of basic research Is that we don't necessarily know where it will lead or what the consequence of that will be? So isn't there a contradiction there? and Given that Both of you have been engaged in this really fundamental research throughout your whole careers Are you confident that that has and will leave the world better than you found it? And if you are, you know, where does that confidence come from? MIT students are tough. Oh So there's no contradiction I think the fact that we don't know where it's gonna lead And that it can lead to such amazingly good things Is the source of the responsibility Because we know it might not lead to those things So They go together if we could predict what the consequences were We could just shut down the research that was going to end up being unbalanced bad But we can't because of this miracle machine We don't know where it's going to go Which means when you give birth to something you're responsible to for it For shaping where it goes, you know the people who thought about nuclear energy didn't think about about nuclear physics Didn't necessarily think about bombs, but when they had to build bombs in World War II They felt they then had a lifelong responsibility to attend to making sure we didn't blow ourselves up with bombs They they are part and parcel of each other that the unpredictability of the technology means You have lifelong responsibility. So then you ask are we confident it's going to be used for unbalanced good I am But only because at heart i'm an optimist that you can get people to see that But it takes a lot of work. I don't think it's a theorem That it happens. I don't think it happens without a tremendous amount of work I think it takes a lot of moral persuasion. I think it takes a lot of argument to happen And I agree that on any given year It could go wrong and it could go wrong badly and that's a real risk Um, and it just means we have to work really really really hard I'm an optimist because I think I think people Most people want the world to be a better place But it is not easy because it doesn't take us doesn't take a large group of people who want to weaponize something to make it really really hard and in the 1950s and 1960s the things we were dealing with With nuclear weapons they were pretty easy to detect As you move down to chemical weapons biological weapons AI weapons They become almost impossible to detect and so the norms that are going to keep us in check Are going to have to be strong and strong international norms that countries don't do certain things But we did sign treaties like that and shockingly they did stick So I care a lot about the existence of norms and it bothers me when we break norms because norms keep us in check sometimes I think You know that that's kind of the weaponized uses But you know there are these other things that that could just Displace jobs there I count Optimistically and I think much more confidently on the fact that there is a young generation of people who come along who want to fix the world And they will find ways to fix the world. I don't think they're it's a theorem that AI has to displace work I think there that's that's a downhill kind of thing That's flowing with the energy that people are going to come in and figure out how to use it for good But we need to inspire people to feel like that's part of the job And so as teachers as universities You know whether this happens in the right way is going to be a direct function of of how many people We inspire and how many people we we Bring up with that sense of responsibility If you lose those things if you lose norms if you lose sense of responsibility Yeah, you get a world, you know like Yeah, and I'll just add to that. I mean the the very fact that We have to Keep after these discoveries and make sure they get used well Make sure they get deployed well I mean it's part of the reason that Eric and I are not doing as much of our own research now as we Have done in the past. I mean we've both taken on You know a considerable amount of government service, but also You know advisory, you know many many advisory councils for scientific societies and for the government to um to ponder these things and put out thoughtful reports and And and and go out and talk about them and do events like this a lot Um in order to raise these issues. So um, so there there is a big responsibility that those who Create these things really have to be responsible for continuing to guide them in the in the right direction Good question. Come on folks Yeah, come on out. Yeah, um, so I was curious about when you talked about like bringing up these ethical dilemmas and ethical issues um and how a lot of times people differ on them and um, I'm taking a bioethics class right now And what I found interesting was um, there was a specific case talked brought up about the institutional review boards and I was curious um What exactly does that role of like ethical dilemma really actually play in the greater sense because if people differ on so many values Um, and especially as you said with like communication and technology Bring people both closer together, but also revealing a lot of these differences How do we further like reconcile these differences and how can these kind of values be like brought together and how can There be like a consensus formed whatsoever if it's so Diverse and different which is both something that we triumph over but also something that kind of Creates that divide Yeah, we'll start with that one and toss it over to you So, um, yeah, so the the institutional review review board at mit is is under my office and one of the things that we've done this year is uh, Is add social scientists and human humanists to that board So because these issues are arising and we felt that it was really important that we get those voices Into the discussion. So so it's a it's a it's an ongoing Situation but but and we're already seeing it But that's the kind of action we've taken to um to start to move in that direction of Of handling these these really difficult issues When you got differences you Go to two different outcomes You can yell at each other and go to your corners and harden your differences Or you have differences amongst people who say, okay, if you see this so differently I got to understand what you're thinking and I got to inform myself about about how you could possibly believe that and What I see around here at its best Is people understand why you believe that and say I think you're weighing that too much. Yes, that could be but I don't think that's the likely outcome But I now have to acknowledge that that's a possibility And I've had to suddenly become more nuanced. So I worry about does the world go to its corners Or does the world move toward the middle? They're not going to blend. They're not going to give up on those differences It bothers me no end that we are seeing social discourse Go in this fashion of polarization Polarization there is no good outcome to polarization Things are hard. We have to grapple with things. There are no easy solutions to anything in science Certainly no way to get the benefits of science. There are no easy solutions to economics. There are no easy solutions to politics diversity is Not a nice nostrum diversity is essential to actually figuring out how to wind our way Through a solution and I think modeling discourse As wimpy as it might sound to people who don't understand the power of it Is some of it's one of the most important things that we have to have as a country Is the ability to have discourse between people who disagree in good faith? It's a great question What was the Was there something that sparked the addition of social scientists and humanists into the IRB? Well, it was it was just these discussions were Coming up and you know, we just looked at it and said well, you know, we we've got to Get some more discussion going in in these groups. Right. Um, so That was what that was what drove it. So and you've got community members on an IRB too Which is really such a brilliant innovation Is there might have been a time you think you just want scientists on the IRB because they understand Yeah, but they only understand a certain bit of it. And is that something that mit does that is not done everywhere having community members on IRBs and You think that's a general requirement for medicine for medicine medicine may not be in other things medicine requires at least one community member Precisely, we don't have a medical school. So we're yeah, right But um, but we we certainly do interact with You know clinicians. So all right Hi, I'm Katie. I'm a Brody actually. Oh, hey. Hi. What are you doing at the road? I'm a project coordinator with the macarthur group. Awesome. Um, so actually building on that question about the expansion of the IRB and including social scientists and humanists and tying it back to early on in the conversation when we were talking about How the miracle machine kind of came about by this unconventional path of rather than Government laboratories introducing academia and industry and other groups to bring technological development as we move towards ethical questions and technology Do you think that's going to exclusively kind of be The tone of this discussion that it's the responsibility of each individual member involved Or do you think that will add to New additions and growths of the miracle machine and do you what kind of groups? Do you think will be involved in that growth of it's going to happen that way? Well, hopefully a lot of people are going to be involved in this conversation. I mean I I I I frankly Uh, I frankly do expect the government to get involved and and in some of these areas The government should get involved and and the question is how does the government get involved in the right way? Okay, and and so You know the the goal is going to be and will be a part of that discussion here Many many many more people than you know the two of us here but uh, but just to make sure that That we preserve What's great about the miracle machine? I mean actually our our discussions You know with with a lot of folks in dc including A lot of folks who you wouldn't think would Would be viewing the conversation this way is like they they realize What america america's innovation ecosystem has brought to this country? And and and they don't want it ruined on their watch And and so You know there there has to be a way to get a sufficient number of voices Involved in this so that you can have a rational conversation to to say let's let's keep what's great about this Let's evolve it right and let's not break it Also people take initiatives to create groups During the period when we had a cold war There was the pug wash conferences and the physicians against nuclear war Um, I wouldn't be shocked to see I'd be thrilled to see around this community People begin to organize the societies that are going to help debate these questions about ai And many others I think there are many many forms there's the government for sure And then there's individual initiative All all these groups that take responsibility to do things started by some small group of Often students who feel like that's what the generation has to do While we're letting people screw up their courage um One one issue That I know has come up is a is a question of Especially cooperating with china and and given that they have not always Adhere to these norms So how does how do you how does one grapple with that tension that you want to Both be able to collaborate and partner with as wide a group of people as possible and You have some places where there are these very legitimate concerns about how that information is going to be used about ip theft about all sorts of issues Yeah, well, I Actually, I was just on the phone with the pentagon Um before I came over here Um talking about these issues. So we you know, we China has learned a lot from us Um We actually have a lot to learn from china in certain areas and um And uh, you know these these issues of uh ip theft are uh, they're real The um, you know, the the easy thing to say is that anything on a university campus Is just open research and so we publish it And so we shouldn't be concerned about but um, but the the fact of the matter is um You know, and and if it's sensitive classify it and then we're all done. Okay um, however, um, there are um There are there's research being done in labs all over the world where Any one part of it might be perfectly reasonable and open But if you took several things together and combined it, um, it could be very detrimental and um, and so um So it's it's really a case of you know, we need to um We need to have all countries, um Obeying international norms Okay for uh data use data release And responsible use of information and um, and so um, you know part of this happens because um Uh people in different countries, they want to publish their papers in the best journals, right? And so um, so to publish in the best journals there has to be a certain amount of transparency in terms of discussion of your methods and you know making your raw data available making your the programs available that you You know, uh did this analysis for and um and so um so so You know reviewers have a role to play in this the journals have a role to play in this um Actually, some of this is going to be done diplomatically. Uh, there's a role in that but um, but basically I I think it's a matter that we've We've got to get everybody to play by a set of established rules and And if we do that Then we can all learn from each other and continue to collaborate And what if people don't play by a set of established rules well, then then uh Things are going to change in terms of access I mean if if one country doesn't And you have international norms about this you ostracized, right? But that requires a rule based international order Do we have that right now? I mean do we have the ability to do it? And you know, it's and it's not just uniquely United states I think we're seeing much more of a migration from the rule based international order to You know countries simply exerting power because they can So interlocking systems that were put in place sound in the short run You know weak the long run may be very strong in the long run our best defense With china may be entanglement with china right levels best defense is is sort of collaboration essentially in well, essentially Countries that Actually benefit from each other tend not to go to war with each other right and so making it in people's enlightened self-interests But then you have to be thinking about long-term self-interest not just short-term self-interest, right? I think you have more faith in people's enlightened self-interest than I do Do you have an alternative? Well, no, I certainly don't have an alternative But fine, then I'm gonna stick mine to stick with mine till you've got an alternative. I mean, you know, we we yeah, okay That's a longer discussion At another point. Who else you got? Jason. Yeah, I'm Jason Deer and I'm a night science journalism fellow For where? The Associated Press School. Yeah, I'm from San Francisco and I live there for 23 years and watched as The city really changed as city leaders gave away a lot of public resources to the tech companies and You know now firemen and policemen and teachers can't live there. It's become really an island of the wealthy and Now I live here and I'm seeing kind of similar indications around MIT of you know, what's Similar types of things that are happening with the the new life sciences buildings that are being built around campus and I'm wondering if MIT is looking to the west coast and the mistakes that were made out there in planning and Allowing kind of companies to come in and influence the planning and development of the city To the detriment of a lot of people who live there and if MIT Or is working with cambridge or any of the community here to kind of help Ease the transition that I see going on around campus in this absolutely. Yeah, that's a that's a big part of the discussion so How? So first of all MIT Wouldn't be building any of those buildings in Kendall Square If it if it wasn't if the plan wasn't approved by the cambridge city council so So there there's been a lot of interaction with the city of cambridge in terms of You know, what has to happen in terms of affordable housing and providing internet for neighborhoods Etc. Etc. Etc. And and there's a another area where the Called vulpi which is kind of across the other side of the marriott, which which MIT also received the bid to develop and And you know, there's again, there's plans going on for how this is going to affect the local community And what are we going to do in terms of housing? You know for people there, but but these you know these discussions are ongoing and you know cambridge the The cambridge city council is Is is extremely involved, you know, there's a a lot of people who spend a lot of time on that So these you know, there's a there's a lot going on in terms of negotiations and you know, we have to live here with this community and and actually MIT was was awarded the vulpi site Because of our experience of working with the cambridge community, so if they had given it to another developer There would be a far less of an understanding of the sensitivities You know, I mean MIT kind of has you know a sense of What these neighborhoods need to be you know, we want our um We want our students and faculty to you know be able to live in this neighborhood and live Nearby and so the reason we're building here is because well and interestingly I mean, you know a number of years probably 10 years ago now There was a plan for You know building a building for faculty housing, you know nearby Campus and it just had no traction. No one wanted to live in near campus and and now Everybody wants to live in near campus and this is getting to be some of the you know, hottest real escape real estate Going so So there yeah, and that's the point is just who can who can live here. That's right And and MIT it certainly plays a role in that because you're The reason the companies are coming and building here is because of the access to talent and but I mean As a citizen of cambridge I think it's good that MIT is thinking hard about it and is responsible, but it's really our responsibility as the city government To citizens that have a city government that thinks about How do we use the tax revenues that come out of the city from all of these companies that are here to guarantee affordable housing? And when I look at it, I don't yet see but this is not MIT's issue. This is our city council's issue the formula that will say corporate real estate taxes Will funnel into some kind of affordable housing so that we can achieve the mix we want You know, I'm no expert on this but I see we're going to set aside something that will be affordable housing for some period of time What I don't see is a sustainable formula that will keep a balance But what I do believe is like the folks around MIT are smart enough and think enough about systems and economics and other things That our city council could benefit from people saying how do we build this as an organic sustainable ongoing thing? That keeps our community mixed and if they needed those questions answered they could probably come here and sorry If they needed those questions answered they could probably come here and find yes But they probably need the questions answered but like with much in the miracle machine It probably starts with students And faculty who say oh, I see a better way to do this. I see a need for Municipalities to be able to strike balances and to be creative about it and the effect won't just be on Cambridge I mean many ideas come out of this community ideas about Affordable care acts and many other things. I think the idea about how you engineer government systems so that they work better for everybody Is part of the product of a place like MIT and on harvard and And when we say it's a product of MIT and on harvard It's a product of people who just decide they're gonna pull together and do it So if you're bothered by this and you're in this community Go organize a study group and get some economists and figure out. Why don't we have Why don't we have an organic formula that makes it work because I actually asked this question a lot I'm sensitive to so what are you doing about it? Yeah, and I've written a lot about it Way to turn that around I've written a lot about and I guess that's why I asked is because You know seeing it from the other coast and we were talking about the divide earlier You know where you notice not the divide, but the difference is I guess is how you wanted to spin it but But but no, I just thought it was interesting Coming here from the west coast having seen the real devastation that a lot of the kind of Policies that that the city has made the decisions that they've made in conjunction with the technology industry You know many are fueled by graduates of this university and many of the other great universities in our country and Just you guys are having this discussion tonight, which is great And since I've been here, I think MIT has been it's been something I've been hearing from the professors and students and talks Talk about the effects of the work and the innovations here and what they have but um I think uh, there's still a lot more to be learned in terms of the effects on On the cities where a lot of these innovations are happening and of the changes that are occur So as a journalist, you have special superpowers also to contribute to this. So I'm I'm not joking around in saying Things happen because people care about them. You obviously care about the problem. You're knowledgeable about the problem You know, I think you'll find people who are eager to help but it takes leadership Indeed Am I am I right in remembering that the development does include set aside for for affordable housing specifically I think the MIT projects are doing a very good job of it. I'm much more concerned of do we have a On the larger scale. I think MIT is not the locus of the right right. I just that that was my memory I just didn't know that was I think I think those projects are well far out, right? Hi, my name is Ronit. Um, I'm a third year undergrad in the computer science department Um, and I had just a general question about like balance. So you spoke So we have kind of these things that we see where there's like billions of dollars being invested into like the Biotechnology industry, but if you look at things like the biological weapons convention, which is like supposed to keep us Safe from these bio weapons. It's like critically underfunded And it's also always at at a budget deficit But then also the fact that we're seeing a lack of investment in research Which is just how do we balance like this investment in in Creating new technologies and really supporting those industries while also making sure that we don't Like that we actually invest in preparedness Um, and in the same kind of balancing way like how do we make sure that we are Supporting these like norms, but also regulating them in a in an efficient way like from the natural like government Like top down way without telling you to stop doing your research Yeah, so I mean these these discussions are just going on constantly and um uh, and um I mean on the the biocide, you know that I so I You know part part of the challenge that we We run into on the kind of the bioterror side is that There isn't a whole lot of Expertise on that in the Pentagon. So they they know how to make the next big plane Or you know the next big ship and they know a whole lot less About what they ought to be investing in in terms of what you know the the bio terror hazards are and in fact I don't know if you remember Ash Carter when he was secretary of defense brought up a whole group from the pentagon and spent time Here and you were rude. Yeah, and at the brode, you know Educating themselves on on what these risks were So that the the pentagon could plan better for them and um, and that's you know So that that is an ongoing thing and actually out at Lincoln lab, which which I oversee which is um, You know, they're they're investing more in biology as well. I mean there's there's really it turns out there's really really interesting Work in this sphere and and it's based on infectious diseases And and it's a and it's fundamental research. That's actually excellent and uh, and actually people in the life science areas don't think about this as a You know possible career path, but it's you know, there's there's a great, you know, social motivation to You know, kind of get involved in that kind of work and and it's actually very very Interesting and state-of-the-art research as well. So I so I think we're going to be seeing more in that area actually I I agree one of the last reports that pcast worked on was essentially on these questions of bioweapons and there were some in the department defense who Inclined in the short term to say well, shouldn't we just classify all this stuff? We had to kind of explain that just wasn't going to happen because most of it 95 percent of it plus was going on in the open scientific community And even if the us tried to classify it the rest of the world was doing it wasn't going to happen. So We took the position that We were going to need to use the technology that could be used offensively To be able to rapidly build defense as needed. We had to get incredibly good at defeating a bioweapon and and rapidly vaccinating against bio and etc etc We said we weren't going to get to practice On a bio attack We're gonna have to practice on natural disease and that there was an there was an A nice alignment that if we wanted to provide biosecurity as a matter of national defense We really had to be investing hard in dealing with natural outbreaks and uh, I Think that's probably the right answer there is that the technology is we're going to have to get really good And we're just gonna have to do it by saving lives against natural diseases And we can choke it up against our natural defense budget national defense budget You know more broadly you're asking about public goods Um private goods it's easy to get investments in companies biotech billions of dollars You want investments in these conventions and these things to protect us those are public goods They're not going to get the investment to private investors and therefore we need a country that believes in the importance of public good It again bothers me when I when I hear people say Oh, you know, we don't want government to do things. There's some things you can't do but by government Government is just the expression of people saying What what is our common needs and our common good that can't be solved by an investor? So i'm glad you're raising it and the answer is Continuously to to argue for the importance of investment in public goods Thank you. Thank you You want to ask one of the way out you could it's okay PhD student in computer science And my question is about changing research cultures So fundamentally like these ethics questions are interdisciplinary and they like you said they require social scientists and humanists and Methodologies and thinking from the humanities But it's not clear to me that current scientific disciplines really appreciate and value interdisciplinary research and I And I mean, I think I guess it makes sense because there are these norms and ways to benchmarks success and accomplishment That are kind of baked into these established fields like in machine learning for example, which is what I work in there are these Top conferences and you're kind of expected to publish in many of them and And there are things that they look for that that they accept that are not really not exactly Encouraging or appreciative of interdisciplinary methods. And so I guess as leaders in your fields. How do you think about changing the like what's the best way to kind of start changing research cultures to Be aware and appreciative of different things besides what has commonly led to success in those fields. Yeah, well, you know We're spending so much time talking about that. Yeah, we just announced the College of Computing where We have to do what you just said In order for this to succeed So um and and this It will succeed. We will we will not fail at this but but But we're gonna, you know When we get assessments of individuals, you know in certain fields people look at certain things And you you have to be You have to be really smart about How you do your assessments. So, I mean the most important thing that we do As faculty at mit is we In in faculty development we we attract and and then we promote and we retain and we train and and And if we just go by traditional stove pipes We're not going to be able to evolve the kind of interdisciplinary Work that you're talking about that's so essential So, um, so you've you know, you you've got to get people Who are experienced in the different fields and and they've all got to kind of get together and you know Serve on essentially serve on the committees that do these evaluations So that um, you know, you could you could get Somebody writing a negative letter, you know about your work because it's missing this piece But of course they don't understand This whole piece, but you know, then you have evaluations over here of people who understand that and you know You know a really enlightened Group will look at that and say well, it's it's got all the pieces that we need So this is this is a matter of uh ongoing interest and and it's going to be it's going to be tested in real time starting next September, so In the short term It's very frustrating that people have their boundaries and And expectations if you integrate over a somewhat longer period So much the exciting stuff occurs at boundaries Those early people who were doing stuff at boundaries later in their careers when they're highly successful Having pioneered this new thing that was at the boundary Get to tell the stories about how their papers were turned down and their grants were turned down And and they do that with this, you know, both smug satisfaction and still a little bit of an edge But that is how progress happens as most of the interesting stuff is at new interfaces that haven't been explored And you shouldn't be too discouraged by that There is some value in people defining these disciplines And if you're interested in working at the boundaries of disciplines, you should you should know that the store usually works out Okay, you just have to be more stubborn Good luck We probably have time for one or two more questions Anyone yeah Jack in the box that's great I had too much coffee today. Um, so my name is Catherine Clark. I'm an associate professor of French studies here And my training is in history Um, and I wonder so there have been all this this talk about computation at mit in the new college and In talking about reworking the gir's Why aren't we talking about having a gir in ethics or an ethics requirement for our students? Just to make sure that an expertise in science and technology In their fields is going hand in hand with an expertise or not an expertise But even just a an awareness of how to have these debates and how to frame them and discussions with Humanists happening in their undergraduate training So so there certainly has been Discussion about ethics for a gir. I mean there's also been discussions about project-based learning for a gir computation for a gir statistics for a gir um diversity for a gir climate change for so Um, and then if that was the case you'd have maybe that should be six years Yeah for any non mit people here gir's are generally requirements. Sorry required court space. Yes. So um, so probably That the best way to move forward on this Is is not to make it a requirement But to um, but to put courses out there that are easily findable and easily available and People will get attracted to those courses and they are being attracted to those courses But there's another interesting possibility, which is Um build it in build it in. Yeah that that there's this notion. I guess there's a professor at harvard I'm forgetting her name right now Who has been pushing embedded ethics? It might be that creating a gir in ethics would also be less effective because It would be walled off and everybody would feel like they have to take the castor oil whereas if you said You know every course should have embedded ethics relevant to its field then people might say oh Ethics is not a separate thing ethics is part of the thing that might be a really interesting movement Yeah, certainly certainly in the in the college of uh computation The donor steven schwarzman Made it very clear from the beginning that he was he was interested in having ethics be a part of Of the curriculum so Yeah, so I I think we're gonna see this Thank you all for being here. My name is michael simons. I used to work in the department of undergrad Here at the teaching and learning lab Um, I wonder you know for all three panelists we'll get set included And uh, this is the easy doing all the work. Yeah, that's here. I just got to sit back But in terms of your own, um things outside of your specialty uh biology and math and um Very you know universe. Yeah the universe and grinding lenses and Uh, did you You know inspiration from other areas such as literature or poetry nature and how Number one was any of that part of your upbringing and did that inspire you in your field and do you seek people that have that Did that provide value to you? And maybe the answer is no, I just do math or I just do You know particle physics. Yes. So I'll tell you what I did so I I was um I was pretty As I said pretty focused on being a space scientist and that's what I did. Um, but uh I actually Did a fellowship at radcliffe for a year and um, and I was I was in the class Drew foust when she was dean of radcliffe Decided to start bringing scientists into radcliffe and and I was Like one of the first people that she recruited certainly in the first class And um, and that year I spent I read every book on the new york times best seller list That year because you had to or else you couldn't if you went to lunch you had nothing to say, right? You had to you had to right culture required. Yeah, and it was um, and um Drew actually tells a story that you know, I mean for me I got the liberal arts education that I didn't afford myself Earlier in my I mean, I read books growing up to don't get me wrong But I I really gave myself the liberal education that I You know denied myself more broadly so that I could become a scientist But it it actually I'm it made me a much better scientist because You know I there were poets there and social scientists and and And to be able to have to to be able to explain my work to people like that and to see how they explain their work I mean just really opened my eyes as to the way That you really need to think to communicate with other people who are who are not scientists or engineers and so it uh, you know, it You know helped me immensely to to get where I am today So I I wasn't as focused as you were from age six. I was hopeless. You were really really focused. It's just amazing. So I think of Just what influential things there were There was a 1964 65 world's fair in new york and my mom took me to that 13 times and Cheap entertainment. Well, I was in brooklyn. It was queens. It wasn't like infinitely far but boy It opened my eyes to the fact that there was a world out there which in my corner of brooklyn you might not have known And it was really quite amazing When I was an undergraduate I was a student at princeton I took john mcfee's course. I don't know how many of you know john mcfee, but an amazing nonfiction writer. He taught a course called the literature effect on nonfiction writing And it's influenced all my scientific writing when I write papers. I still have john mcfee's editorial voice in my head I wrote for three years for the daily newspaper and daily journalism was an amazingly powerful thing Because I think as a as a Professor you are in the business of communicating you communicate in your class You can educate in scientific papers and in scientific scientific meetings and I think about those experiences and how they've shaped me and I would credit them with a non-trivial portion of credit for whatever success I've had is learning those things that I never learned in a science classroom And I'm just just making me think about what things influence me. There was an amazing renaissance architecture course I took that for the first time I understood how it is that art develops art is not just stuff Art is a conversation over time and to watch Renaissance architecture develop over the course of of several hundred years was You know just like eye-opening for me to understand that there were those structures and all those things end up having an effect on the way I do science And so I think all of us are are very influenced in getting people exposed to things You never know what it'll be But I can still you know in my mind walking around the world's fair from 64 65 And and it was it was like pretty influential. So you want to think about how you expose people to things I sort of feel like my entire career is Being exposed to different things and then having the freedom to get obsessed about it and then move on to something else Um, uh, but in high school. I read um Essays by a biologist named lewis thomas. Oh, yeah And was that in lives of a cell? Yeah lives of a cell But it was it was columns that you wrote either for jamma or for the new england journal. I can't I don't remember which But uh That had a big influence on me I knew I didn't want to be a bench scientist But that I wanted to be involved in and win science Um, but you know, I I was and still am I have no musical affinity. I am obsessed with music. So I spent the first four years of my career as a music critic Um, uh primarily so I could go to concerts for free Also how I wrote a book about the red socks because I wanted to go to playoff games for free Um, it's a good gig. Yeah, right. Yeah way to go But um, yeah, so for me, I feel like my my the great The most exciting thing I I think journalism is the best career anyone could ever have and the most exciting thing about it is That it gives one the freedom to find something that's exciting And instead of meaning to go through the stations of the cross You just get to go to the best people in that area and say spend a lot of time with me and teach everything you know And and that's incredible so um, I think uh That about does it if there's unless anyone has one last question Please will will everyone please join me in and really thanking the speaker