To help find solutions to the planet’s climate crisis, MIT Associate Professor Daniel Suess is looking to Earth’s ancient past.

Early in the evolution of life, cells gained the ability to perform reactions such as transferring electrons from one atom to another. These reactions, which help cells to build carbon-containing or nitrogen-containing compounds, rely on specialized enzymes with clusters of metal atoms.

By learning more about how those enzymes work, Suess hopes to eventually devise new ways to perform fundamental chemical reactions that could help capture carbon from the atmosphere or enable the development of alternative fuels.

“We have to find some way of rewiring society so that we are not just relying on vast reserves of reduced carbon, fossil fuels, and burning them using oxygen,” he says. “What we’re doing is we’re looking backward, up to a billion years before oxygen and photosynthesis came along, to see if we can identify the chemical principles that underlie processes that aren’t reliant on burning carbon.”

His work could also shed light on other important cellular reactions such as the conversion of nitrogen gas to ammonia, which is also the key step in the production of synthetic fertilizer.

Exploring chemistry

Suess, who grew up in Spokane, Washington, became interested in math at a young age, but ended up majoring in chemistry and English at Williams College, which he chose based on its appealing selection of courses.

“I was interested in schools that were more focused on the liberal arts model, Williams being one of those. And I just thought they had the right combination of really interesting courses and freedom to take classes that you wanted,” he says. “I went in not expecting to major in chemistry, but then I really enjoyed my chemistry classes and chemistry teachers.”

In his classes, he explored all aspects of chemistry and found them all appealing.

“I liked organic chemistry, because there’s an emphasis on making things. And I liked physical chemistry because there was an attempt to have at least a semiquantitative way of understanding the world. Physical chemistry describes some of the most important developments in science in the 20th century, including quantum mechanics and its application to atoms and molecules,” he says.

After college, Suess came to MIT for graduate school and began working with chemistry professor Jonas Peters, who had recently arrived from Caltech. A couple of years later, Peters ended up moving back to Caltech, and Suess followed, continuing his PhD thesis research on new ways to synthesize inorganic molecules.

His project focused on molecules that consist of a metal such as iron or cobalt bound to a nonmetallic group known as a ligand. Within these molecules, the metal atom typically pulls in electrons from the ligand. However, the molecules Suess worked on were designed so that the metal would give up its own electrons to the ligand. Such molecules can be used to speed up difficult reactions that require breaking very strong bonds, like the nitrogen-nitrogen triple bond in N2.

During a postdoc at the University of California at Davis, Suess switched gears and began working on biomolecules — specifically, metalloproteins. These are protein enzymes that have metals tucked into their active sites, where they help to catalyze reactions.

Suess studied how cells synthesize the metal-containing active sites in these proteins, focusing on an enzyme called iron-iron hydrogenase. This enzyme, found mainly in anaerobic bacteria, including some that live in the human digestive tract, catalyzes reactions involving the transfer of protons and electrons. Specifically, it can combine two protons and two electrons to make H2, or can perform the reverse reaction, breaking H2 into protons and electrons.

“That enzyme is really important because a lot of cellular metabolic processes either generate excess electrons or require excess electrons. If you generate excess electrons, they have to go somewhere, and one solution is to put them on protons to make H2,” Suess says.

Global scale reactions

Since joining the MIT faculty in 2017, Suess has continued his investigations of metalloproteins and the reactions that they catalyze.

“We’re interested in global-scale chemical reactions, meaning they’re occurring on the microscopic scale but happening on a huge scale,” he says. “They impact the planet and have determined what the molecular composition of the biosphere is and what it’s going to be.”

Photosynthesis, which emerged around 2.4 billion years ago, has had the biggest impact on the atmosphere, filling it with oxygen, but Suess focuses on reactions that cells began using even earlier, when the atmosphere lacked oxygen and cell metabolism could not be driven by respiration.

Many of these ancient reactions, which are still used by cells today, involve a class of metalloproteins called iron-sulfur proteins. These enzymes, which are found in all kingdoms of life, are involved in catalyzing many of the most difficult reactions that occur in cells, such as forming carbon radicals and converting nitrogen to ammonia.

To study the metalloenzymes that catalyze these reactions, Suess’s lab takes two different approaches. In one, they create synthetic versions of the proteins that may contain fewer metal atoms, which allows for greater control over the composition and shape of the protein, making them easier to study.

In another approach, they use the natural version of the protein but substitute one of the metal atoms with an isotope that makes it easier to use spectroscopic techniques to analyze the protein’s structure.

“That allows us to study both the bonding in the resting state of an enzyme, as well as the bonding and structures of reaction intermediates that you can only characterize spectroscopically,” Suess says.

Understanding how enzymes perform these reactions could help researchers find new ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by combining it with other molecules to create larger compounds. Finding alternative ways to convert nitrogen gas to ammonia could also have a big impact on greenhouse gas emissions, as the Haber Bosch process now used to synthesize fertilizer produces requires huge amounts of energy.

“Our primary focus is on understanding the natural world, but I think that as we’re looking at different ways to wire biological catalysts to do efficient reactions that impact society, we need to know how that wiring works. And so that is what we’re trying to figure out,” he says.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 20 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02273-6

The authors investigate the impacts of drought legacy on springtime leaf unfolding and green-up. They show that drought delays springtime phenology, primarily through exogenous environmental memory effects, and suggest that future spring advances may be dampened by increasing drought.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 20 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02271-8

The authors use experimental and modelling approaches to understand the response of microbial photosynthesis to peatland warming. They show that warming amplifies microbial photosynthesis, which could offset rising CO2 emissions from northern peatlands by 6.0–13.7% in 2100 (SSP 2-4.5–SSP 5-8.5).

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 20 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02302-4

Heatwaves are expected to become more frequent with warming, but how their spatial patterns change is not well understood. Here the authors show that heatwave hotspots in the Northern Hemisphere have shifted westwards over the past few decades.

As director of the MIT BioMicro Center (BMC), Stuart Levine ’97 wholeheartedly embraces the variety of challenges he tackles each day. One of over 50 core facilities providing shared resources across the Institute, the BMC supplies integrated high-throughput genomics, single-cell and spatial transcriptomic analysis, bioinformatics support, and data management to researchers across MIT.

“Every day is a different day,” Levine says, “there are always new problems, new challenges, and the technology is continuing to move at an incredible pace.” After more than 15 years in the role, Levine is grateful that the breadth of his work allows him to seek solutions for so many scientific problems.

By combining bioinformatics expertise with biotech relationships and a focus on maximizing the impact of the center’s work, Levine brings the broad range of skills required to match the diversity of questions asked by researchers in MIT’s Department of Biology.

Expansive expertise

Biology first appealed to Levine as an MIT undergraduate taking class 7.012 (Introduction to Biology), thanks to the charisma of instructors Professor Eric Lander and Amgen Professor Emerita Nancy Hopkins. After earning his PhD in biochemistry from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, Levine returned to MIT for postdoctoral work with Professor Richard Young, core member at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

In the Young Lab, Levine found his calling as an informaticist and ultimately decided to stay at MIT. Here, his work has a wide-ranging impact: the BMC serves over 100 labs annually, from the the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Chemical Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; and, of course, Biology.

“It’s a fun way to think about science,” Levine says, noting that he applies his knowledge and streamlines workflows across these many disciplines by “truly and deeply understanding the instrumentation complexities.”

This depth of understanding and experience allows Levine to lead what longtime colleague Professor Laurie Boyer describes as “a state-of-the-art core that has served so many faculty and provides key training opportunities for all.” He and his team work with cutting-edge, finely tuned scientific instruments that generate vast amounts of bioinformatics data, then use powerful computational tools to store, organize, and visualize the data collected, contributing to research on topics ranging from host-parasite interactions to proposed tools for NASA’s planetary protection policy.

Staying ahead of the curve

With a scientist directing the core, the BMC aims to enable researchers to “take the best advantage of systems biology methods,” says Levine. These methods use advanced research technologies to do things like prepare large sets of DNA and RNA for sequencing, read DNA and RNA sequences from single cells, and localize gene expression to specific tissues.

Levine presents a lightweight, clear rectangle about the width of a cell phone and the length of a VHS cassette.

“This is a flow cell that can do 20 human genomes to clinical significance in two days — 8 billion reads,” he says. “There are newer instruments with several times that capacity available as well.”

The vast majority of research labs do not need that kind of power, but the Institute, and its researchers as a whole, certainly do. Levine emphasizes that “the ROI [return on investment] for supporting shared resources is extremely high because whatever support we receive impacts not just one lab, but all of the labs we support. Keeping MIT’s shared resources at the bleeding edge of science is critical to our ability to make a difference in the world.”

To stay at the edge of research technology, Levine maintains company relationships, while his scientific understanding allows him to educate researchers on what is possible in the space of modern systems biology. Altogether, these attributes enable Levine to help his researcher clients “push the limits of what is achievable.”

The man behind the machines

Each core facility operates like a small business, offering specialized services to a diverse client base across academic and industry research, according to Amy Keating, Jay A. Stein (1968) Professor of Biology and head of the Department of Biology. She explains that “the PhD-level education and scientific and technological expertise of MIT’s core directors are critical to the success of life science research at MIT and beyond.” 

While Levine clearly has the education and expertise, the success of the BMC “business” is also in part due to his tenacity and focus on results for the core’s users.

He was recognized by the Institute with the MIT Infinite Mile Award in 2015 and the MIT Excellence Award in 2017, for which one nominator wrote, “What makes Stuart’s leadership of the BMC truly invaluable to the MIT community is his unwavering dedication to producing high-quality data and his steadfast persistence in tackling any type of troubleshooting needed for a project. These attributes, fostered by Stuart, permeate the entire culture of the BMC.”      

“He puts researchers and their research first, whether providing education, technical services, general tech support, or networking to collaborators outside of MIT,” says Noelani Kamelamela, lab manager of the BMC. “It’s all in service to users and their projects.”

Tucked into the far back corner of the BMC lab space, Levine’s office is a fitting symbol of his humility. While his guidance and knowledge sit at the center of what elevates the BMC beyond technical support, he himself sits away from the spotlight, resolutely supporting others to advance science.

“Stuart has always been the person, often behind the scenes, that pushes great science, ideas, and people forward,” Boyer says. “His knowledge and advice have truly allowed us to be at the leading edge in our work.”

Wildfires set acres ablaze. Earthquakes decimate towns into rubble. People go missing in mountains and bodies of water. Coronavirus cases surge globally.

When disaster strikes, timely, cohesive emergency response is crucial to saving lives, reducing property and resource loss, and protecting the environment. Large-scale incidents can call into action thousands of first responders from multiple jurisdictions and agencies, national and international. To effectively manage response, relief, and recovery efforts, they must work together to collect, process, and distribute accurate information from disparate systems. This lack of interoperability can hinder coordination and ultimately result in significant failures in disaster response.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory developed the Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS) to enable first responders across different jurisdictions, agencies, and countries to effectively coordinate during emergencies of any scale. Originally intended to help U.S. firefighters respond to wildfires, NICS has since evolved from an R&D prototype into an open-source operational platform adopted by emergency-response agencies worldwide, not only for natural disaster response but also search-and-rescue operations, health crises management, public event security, and aviation safety. The global community of users cultivated by NICS, and spinouts inspired by NICS, have maximized its impact.

At the core of the web-based NICS software tool is an incident map overlaying aggregated data from various external and internal sources such as first responders on the ground, airborne imaging sensors, weather and traffic reports, census data, and satellite-based maps; virtually any data source can be added. Emergency personnel upload the content directly on a computer or mobile app and communicate in real time through voice and chat functions. Role-based collaboration rooms are available for user-defined subsets of first responders to focus on a particular activity — such as air drop support, search and rescue, and wildlife rescue — while maintaining access to the comprehensive operational picture.

With its open-standards architecture, NICS interoperates with organizations' existing systems and allows internal data to be shared externally for enhanced visibility and awareness among users as a disaster unfolds. The modular design of NICS facilitates system customization for diverse user needs and changing mission requirements. The system archives all aspects of a created incident and can generate reports for post-incident analysis to inform future response planning. 

Partnering with first responders

As a federally funded research and development (R&D) center, Lincoln Laboratory has a long history of conducting R&D of architectures for information sharing, situational awareness, and decision-making in support of the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal entities. Recognizing that aspects of these architectures are relevant to disaster response, Lincoln Laboratory's Technology Office initiated in 2007 a study focused on wildfire response in California. A laboratory-led research team partnered with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), which annually responds to thousands of wildfires in collaboration with police, medical, and other services.

"CAL FIRE provided firsthand insight into what information is critical during emergency response and how may be best to view and share this information," says NICS co-developer Gregory Hogan, now associate leader of the laboratory's Advanced Sensors and Techniques Group.

With this insight, the laboratory developed and demonstrated a prototype of NICS. Noting the utility of such a system, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) began funding the R&D of NICS in 2010. Over the next several years, the laboratory team refined NICS, soliciting input from an organically formed users' group comprising more than 450 organizations across fire, law, medical, emergency services and management, border patrol, industry, utilities, nongovernmental organizations, and tribal partners. Thousands of training exercises and real emergencies employed NICS to coordinate diverse emergency-response activities spanning disaster management, law enforcement, and special security.

In 2014, CAL FIRE — which had been using NICS to respond to wildfires, mudslides and floods — officially adopted NICS statewide. That same year, the Emergency Management Directorate of Victoria, Australia's largest state, implemented NICS (as the Victorian Information Network for Emergencies, or VINE) after a worldwide search for a system to manage large-scale crises like bush fires.

In 2015, NICS was transferred to the California Office of Emergency Services. The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services deployed NICS as the Situation Awareness and Collaboration Tool (SCOUT) for emergency responders and law enforcement officials statewide in 2016.

Creating an open-source community

NICS also spawned an initial spinout company formed by personnel from CAL FIRE, the Worldwide Incident Command Services (WICS), which received a license for the system's software code in early 2015. WICS is a California-incorporated nonprofit public benefit corporation and the official DHS S&T Technology Transition Partner created to transition the NICS R&D project to a robust operational platform, which was named Raven. Later that year, DHS S&T made NICS available worldwide at no cost to first responder and emergency management agencies through an open-source release of the software code base on Github.

Sponsorship of NICS by DHS S&T is ongoing, with contributions over the years from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Research and Development Center and the NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Program. In 2015, the USCG funded the development of the cross-platform mobile app Portable Handset Integrated NICS (PHINICS), which enables first responders to access NICS with or without cellular coverage.

In 2016, Lincoln Laboratory and DHS S&T launched a four-year partnership with the NATO SPS Program to extend NICS to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia, North Macedonia, and Montenegro for enhanced emergency collaboration among and within these Western Balkan nations. Under this Advanced Regional Civil Emergency Coordination Pilot, NICS was demonstrated in dozens of field exercises and applied to real-life incidents, including wildfires in BiH and a 6.2-magnitude earthquake in Croatia. In 2019, North Macedonia adopted NICS as its official crisis management system. And, when Covid-19 struck, NICS entered a new application space: public health. In North Macedonia, emergency institutions used NICS to not only coordinate emergency response, but also inform residents about infection cases and health resource locations. The laboratory team worked with North Macedonia's Crisis Management Center to enable national public access to NICS. 

Increasing global impact

NICS' reach continues to grow. In 2021, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division and the U.S. Department of Transportation Volpe National Transportation Systems Center collaborated with Lincoln Laboratory using the baseline NICS system to field a new web-based tool: the Commonwealth aiRspace and Information Sharing Platform (CRISP). Integrating sensor feeds, airspace information, and resource data, CRISP enables a robust counter–small uncrewed aircraft systems mission for the safety and security of aviation and aviation-related activities throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

"The NICS project has demonstrated the power of collaborative development, in which each partner lends their expertise, resulting in a meaningful contribution to the global disaster response community," says Stephanie Foster, who was the lead developer and program manager of NICS.

In 2023, Foster co-founded the spinout company Generation NYX to increase access to NICS, renamed NYX DEFENDER, and create a community of users who work together to advance its capabilities. Generation NYX offers services to existing users established during the laboratory's R&D work, and provides a software-as-a-service solution for all new users. NYX DEFENDER improves the ability of local emergency management organizations to manage events such as parades and festivals; supports decision-making during floods and other natural disasters; and expands awareness among community stakeholders such as police, fire, and state officials. 

"NYX DEFENDER offers an innovative tool for local emergency management and public safety agencies and departments to create a common operating picture and foster interoperability, improve communications, and develop and maintain situational awareness during preplanned and no-notice events," says Clara Decerbo, director at the Providence Emergency Management Agency. "Our use of NYX DEFENDER during major City of Providence events has allowed us to integrate situational awareness between multiple public safety entities, private security, and event organizers and assisted us in ensuring our teams have the information they need to provide well-organized and coordinated public safety services to members of our community and visitors."

Generation NYX was recently subcontracted to provide support for a new three-year project that NATO SPS and DHS S&T kicked off earlier this year with the laboratory to establish NICS as the national disaster management platform in BiH. Foster has experience in this area, as she not only led the laboratory technical team who successfully adapted and deployed NICS in the Western Balkans under the 2016 SPS pilot, but also coordinated teams across the four nations. Though BiH participated in the 2016 SPS pilot, this latest effort seeks to expand NICS' adoption more broadly across the country, working within its complex multilevel government structure. NATO SPS is funding a second project, which began in October 2024, that will bring NICS to Albania and Georgia for use in search and rescue, particularly in response to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events. For both projects, the laboratory team will enhance the open-source NICS code to operate on the edge (i.e., in disconnected communication scenarios) and integrate wearables for monitoring the health of first responders.

Since NICS was released open source on Github, NICS' worldwide usage has continued to grow for a wide range of applications. NICS has been used to locate missing persons in the Miljacka and Bosna Rivers in BiH; to direct ambulances to hypothermic runners at the Los Angeles Marathon; and to provide situational awareness among the National Guard for the Fourth of July celebration in Boston, Massachusetts. NICS has also proven its utility in mine and unexploded ordnance detection and clearance activities; in BiH, an estimated 80,000 explosive remnants of war pose a direct threat to the country's residents. Envisioned applications of NICS include monitoring of critical infrastructure such as utilities.

In recognition of its broader humanitarian impact, NICS was awarded a 2018 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award, Northeast Region, from the Federal Laboratory Consortium and a 2019 IEEE Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award.

"NICS is a mature product, so what we are thinking about now is outside-the-box use cases for the technology," says the laboratory's Bioanalytics Systems and Technologies Group Leader Kajal Claypool, who is supervising the ongoing NATO SPS and DHS S&T projects. "That is where I see Lincoln Laboratory can bring innovation to bear."

EFF was delighted to once again attend RightsCon—this year hosted in Taipei, Taiwan between 24-27 February. As with previous years, RightsCon provided an invaluable opportunity for human rights experts, technologists, activists, and government representatives to discuss pressing human rights challenges and their potential solutions. 

For some attending from EFF, this was the first RightsCon. For others, their 10th or 11th. But for all, one message was spoken loud and clear: the need to collectivize digital rights in the face of growing authoritarian governments and leaders occupying positions of power around the globe, as well as Big Tech’s creation and provision of consumer technologies for use in rights-abusing ways. 

EFF hosted a multitude of sessions, and appeared on many more panels—from a global perspective on platform accountability frameworks, to the perverse gears supporting transnational repression, and exploring tech tools for queer liberation online. Here we share some of our highlights.

Major Concerns Around Funding Cuts to Civil Society 

Two major shifts affecting the digital rights space underlined the renewed need for solidarity and collective responses. First, the Trump administration’s summary (and largely illegal) funding cuts for the global digital rights movement from USAID, the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy and other programs, are impacting many digital rights organizations across the globe and deeply harming the field. By some estimates, U.S. government cuts, along with major changes in the Netherlands and elsewhere, will result in a 30% reduction in the size of the global digital rights community, especially in global majority countries. 

Second, the Trump administration’s announcement to respond to the regulation of U.S. tech companies with tariffs has thrown another wrench into the work of many of us working towards improved tech accountability. 

We know that attacks on civil society, especially on funding, are a go-to strategy for authoritarian rulers, so this is deeply troubling. Even in more democratic settings, this reinforces the shrinking of civic space hindering our collective ability to organize and fight for better futures. Given the size of the cuts, it’s clear that other funders will struggle to counterbalance the dwindling U.S. public funding, but they must try. We urge other countries and regions, as well as individuals and a broader range of philanthropy, to step up to ensure that the crucial work defending human rights online will be able to continue. 

Community Solidarity with Alaa Abd El-Fattah and Laila Soueif

The call to free Alaa Abd El-Fattah from illegal detention in Egypt was a prominent message heard throughout RightsCon. During the opening ceremony, Access Now’s new Executive Director, Alejandro Mayoral, talked about Alaa’s keynote speech at the very first RightsCon and stated: “We stand in solidarity with him and all civil society actors, activists, and journalists whose governments are silencing them.” The opening ceremony also included a video address from Alaa’s mother, Laila Soueif, in which she urged viewers to “not let our defeat be permanent.” Sadly, immediately after that address Ms. Soueif was admitted to the hospital as a result of her longstanding hunger strike in support of her son. 

The calls to #FreeAlaa and save Laila were again reaffirmed during the closing ceremony in a keynote by Sara Alsherif, Migrant Digital Justice Programme Manager at UK-based digital rights group Open Rights Group and close friend of Alaa. Referencing Alaa’s early work as a digital activist, Alsherif said: “He understood that the fight for digital rights is at the core of the struggle for human rights and democracy.” She closed by reminding the hundreds-strong audience that “Alaa could be any one of us … Please do for him what you would want us to do for you if you were in his position.”

EFF and Open Rights Group also hosted a session talking about Alaa, his work as a blogger, coder, and activist for more than two decades. The session included a reading from Alaa’s book and a discussion with participants on strategies.

Platform Accountability in Crisis

Online platforms like Facebook and services like Google are crucial spaces for civic discourse and access to information. Many sessions at RightsCon were dedicated to the growing concern that these platforms have also become powerful tools for political manipulation, censorship, and control. With the return of the Trump administration, Facebook’s shift in hate speech policies, and the growing geo-politicization of digital governance, many now consider platform accountability being in crisis. 

A dedicated “Day 0” event, co-organized by Access Now and EFF, set the stage of these discussions with a high-level panel reflecting on alarming developments in platform content policies and enforcement. Reflecting on Access Now’s “rule of law checklist,” speakers stressed how a small group of powerful individuals increasingly dictate how platforms operate, raising concerns about democratic resilience and accountability. They also highlighted the need for deeper collaboration with global majority countries on digital governance, taking into account diverse regional challenges. Beyond regulation, the conversation discussed the potential of user-empowered alternatives, such as decentralized services, to counter platform dominance and offer more sustainable governance models.

A key point of attention was the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a rulebook with the potential to shape global responses to platform accountability but one that also leaves many crucial questions open. The conversation naturally transitioned to the workshop organized by the DSA Human Rights Alliance, which focused more specifically on the global implications of DSA enforcement and how principles for a “Human Rights-Centered Application of the DSA” could foster public interest and collaboration.

Fighting Internet Shutdowns and Anti-Censorship Tools

Many sessions discussed internet shutdowns and other forms of internet blocking impacted the daily lives of people under extremely oppressive regimes. The overwhelming conclusion was that we need encryption to remain strong in countries with better conditions of democracy in order to continue to bridge access to services in places where democracy is weak. Breaking encryption or blocking important tools for “national security,” elections, exams, protests, or for law enforcement only endangers freedom of information for those with less political power. In turn, these actions empower governments to take possibly inhumane actions while the “lights are out” and people can’t tell the rest of the world what is happening to them.

Another pertinent point coming out of RightsCon was that anti-censorship tools work best when everyone is using them. Diversity of users not only helps to create bridges for others who can’t access the internet through normal means, but it also helps to create traffic that looks innocuous enough to bypass censorship blockers. Discussions highlighted how the more tools we have to connect people without unique traffic, the less chances there are for government censorship technology to keep their traffic from going through. We know some governments are not above completely shutting down internet access. But in cases where they still allow the internet, user diversity is key. It also helps to move away from narratives that imply “only criminals” use encryption. Encryption is for everyone, and everyone should use it. Because tomorrow’s internet could be tested by future threats.

Palestine: Human Rights in Times of Conflict

At this years RightsCon, Palestinian non-profit organization 7amleh, in collaboration with the Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition and supported by dozens of international organizations including EFF, launched #ReconnectGaza, a global campaign to rebuild Gaza’s telecommunications network and safeguard the right to communication as a fundamental human right. The campaign comes on the back of more than 17 months of internet blackouts and destruction to Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure by the Israeli authorities. Estimates indicate that 75% of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure has been damaged, with 50% completely destroyed. This loss of connectivity has crippled essential services—preventing healthcare coordination, disrupting education, and isolating Palestinians from the digital economy. 

On another panel, EFF raised concerns to Microsoft representatives about an AP report that emerged just prior to Rightscon about the company providing services to the Israeli Defense Forces that are being used as part of the repression of Palestinians in Gaza as well as in the bombings in Lebanon. We noted that Microsoft’s pledges to support human rights seemed to be in conflict with this, something EFF has already raised about Google and Amazon and their work on Project Nimbus.  Microsoft promised to look into that allegation, as well as one about its provision of services to Saudi Arabia. 

In the RightsCon opening ceremony, Alejandro Mayoral noted that: “Today, the world’s eyes are on Gaza, where genocide has taken place, AI is being weaponized, and people’s voices are silenced as the first phase of the fragile Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire is realized.” He followed up by saying, “We are surrounded by conflict. Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, and beyond…where the internet and technology are being used and abused at the cost of human lives.” Following this keynote, Access Now’s MENA Policy and Advocacy Director, Marwa Fatafta, hosted a roundtable to discuss technology in times of conflict, where takeaways included the reminder that “there is no greater microcosm of the world’s digital rights violations happening in our world today than in Gaza. It’s a laboratory where the most invasive and deadly technologies are being tested and deployed on a besieged population.”

Countering Cross-Border Arbitrary Surveillance and Transnational Repression

Concerns about ongoing legal instruments that can be misused to expand transnational repression were also front-and-center at RightsCon. During a Citizen Lab-hosted session we participated in, participants examined how cross-border policing can become a tool to criminalize marginalized groups, the economic incentives driving these criminalization trends, and the urgent need for robust, concrete, and enforceable international human rights safeguards. They also noted that the newly approved UN Cybercrime Convention, with only minimal protections, adds yet another mechanism for broadening cross-border surveillance powers, thereby compounding the proliferation of legal frameworks that lack adequate guardrails against misuse.

Age-Gating the Internet

EFF co-hosted a roundtable session to workshop a human rights statement addressing government mandates to restrict young people’s access to online services and specific legal online speech. Participants in the roundtable represented five continents and included representatives from civil society and academia, some of whom focused on digital rights and some on childrens’ rights. Many of the participants will continue to refine the statement in the coming months.

Hard Conversations

EFF participated in a cybersecurity conversation with representatives of the UK government, where we raised serious concerns about the government’s hostility to strong encryption, and the resulting insecurity they had created for both UK citizens and the people who communicate with them by pressuring Apple to ensure UK law enforcement access to all communications. 

Equity and Inclusion in Platform Discussions, Policies, and Trust & Safety

The platform economy is an evergreen RightsCon topic, and this year was no different, with conversations ranging from the impact of content moderation on free expression to transparency in monetization policies, and much in between. Given the recent developments at Meta, X, and elsewhere, many participants were rightfully eager to engage.

EFF co-organized an informal meetup of global content moderation experts with whom we regularly convene, and participated in a number of sessions, such as on the decline of user agency on platforms in the face of growing centralized services, as well as ways to expand choice through decentralized services and platforms. One notable session on this topic was hosted by the Center for Democracy and Technology on addressing global inequities in content moderation, in which speakers presented findings from their research on the moderation by various platforms of content in Maghrebi Arabic and Kiswahili, as well as a forthcoming paper on Quechua.

Reflections and Next Steps

RightsCon is a conference that reminds us of the size and scope of the digital rights movement around the world. Holding it in Taiwan and in the wake of the huge cuts to funding for so many created an urgency that was palpable across the spectrum of sessions and events. We know that we’ve built a robust community and that can weather the storms, and in the face of overwhelming pressure from government and corporate actors, it's essential that we resist the temptation to isolate in the face of threats and challenges but instead continue to push forward with collectivisation and collaboration to continue speaking truth to power, from the U.S. to Germany, and across the globe.

Some downplay the threat of global warming. Others question the efficacy of climate policy. All could be of interest to the new administration.

The plan by Administrator Lee Zeldin to fire scientists could disrupt environmental rules long after President Donald Trump leaves office.

The ruling orders EPA and climate change groups to return to court to argue about the fate of the money.

The long-delayed regulations would require some residents to clear combustible materials from within 5 feet of their homes.

The Science-Based Targets initiative proposed an update to allow some corporations to use technologies to meet their climate goals.

Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo teased Republican state Sen. Ileana Garcia about conspiracy theories before he wound up supporting the bill.

The partnership to promote clean energy and transportation comes against a backdrop of national trade tensions.

Emergency services were still searching for a couple whose off-road vehicle was washed away when they were driving across their property in the municipality of Constantina, an official said.

When it comes to food, beef contributes by far the most emissions fueling climate change. Yet demand for beef around the world is only expected to grow.

Its authors identify ways low-income and communities of color can build water and wastewater systems to withstand extreme weather.

A hospital that wants to use a cloud computing service to perform artificial intelligence data analysis on sensitive patient records needs a guarantee those data will remain private during computation. Homomorphic encryption is a special type of security scheme that can provide this assurance.

The technique encrypts data in a way that anyone can perform computations without decrypting the data, preventing others from learning anything about underlying patient records. However, there are only a few ways to achieve homomorphic encryption, and they are so computationally intensive that it is often infeasible to deploy them in the real world.

MIT researchers have developed a new theoretical approach to building homomorphic encryption schemes that is simple and relies on computationally lightweight cryptographic tools. Their technique combines two tools so they become more powerful than either would be on its own. The researchers leverage this to construct a “somewhat homomorphic” encryption scheme — that is, it enables users to perform a limited number of operations on encrypted data without decrypting it, as opposed to fully homomorphic encryption that can allow more complex computations.

This somewhat homomorphic technique can capture many applications, such as private database lookups and private statistical analysis.

While this scheme is still theoretical, and much work remains before it could be used in practice, its simpler mathematical structure could make it efficient enough to protect user data in a wider range of real-world scenarios.

“The dream is that you type your ChatGPT prompt, encrypt it, send the encrypted message to ChatGPT, and then it can produce outputs for you without ever seeing what you are asking it,” says Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, the Douglas Ross Career Development Professor of Software Technology in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a co-author of a paper on this security scheme. “We are a long way from getting there, in part because these schemes are so inefficient. In this work, we wanted to try to build homomorphic encryption schemes that don’t use the standard tools, since different approaches can often lead to more efficient, more practical constructions.”

His co-authors include Alexandra Henzinger, an EECS graduate student; Yael Kalai, an Ellen Swallow Richards (1873) Professor and professor of EECS; and Vinod Vaikuntanathan, the Ford Professor of Engineering and a principal investigator in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). The research will be presented at the International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques.

Balancing security and flexibility

MIT researchers began theorizing about homomorphic encryption in the 1970s. But designing the mathematical structure needed to securely embed a message in a manner flexible enough to enable computation proved to be enormously challenging. The first homomorphic encryption scheme wasn’t designed until 2009.

“These two requirements are very much in tension. On the one hand, we need security, but on the other hand, we need this flexibility in the homomorphism. We have very few mathematical pathways to get there,” says Henzinger.

Essentially, homomorphic schemes add noise to a message to encrypt it. As algorithms and machine-learning models perform operations on that encrypted message, the noise inevitably grows. If one computes for too long, the noise can eventually overshadow the message.

“If you run a deep neural network on these encrypted data, for instance, by the time you get to the end of the computation, the noise might be a billion times larger than the message and you can’t actually figure out what the message says,” Corrigan-Gibbs explains.

There are two main ways to get around this problem. A user could keep operations to a minimum, but this restricts how the encrypted data can be used. On the other hand, a user could add extra steps to reduce noise, but these techniques require a massive amount of additional computation.

Somewhat homomorphic encryption seeks to meet users somewhere in the middle. They can use the technique to perform secure operations on encrypted data using a specific class of functions that keep the noise from growing out of hand.

These functions, known as bounded polynomials, are designed to prevent excessively complex operations. For instance, the functions allow many additions, but only a few multiplications on encrypted data to avoid generating too much extra noise.

Greater than the sum of their parts

The researchers built their scheme by combining two simple cryptographic tools. They started with a linear homomorphic encryption scheme, which can only perform additions on encrypted data, and added one theoretical assumption to it.

This cryptographic assumption “lifts” the linear scheme into a somewhat homomorphic one that can operate with a broader class of more complex functions.

“On its own, this assumption doesn’t give us much. But when we put them together, we get something much more powerful. Now, we can do additions and some bounded number of multiplications,” Henzinger says.

The process for performing homomorphic encryptions is quite simple. The researchers’ scheme encrypts each piece of data into a matrix in a way that the matrix provably hides the underlying data. Then, to perform additions or multiplications on those encrypted data, one only needs to add or multiply the corresponding matrices.

The researchers used mathematical proofs to show that their theoretical encryption scheme provides guaranteed security when operations are limited to this class of bounded polynomial functions.

Now that they have developed this theoretical approach, one next step will be making it practical for real-world applications. For that, they will need to make the encryption scheme fast enough to run certain types of computations on modern hardware.

“We haven’t spent 10 years trying to optimize this scheme yet, so we don’t know how efficient it could get,” Henzinger says.

In addition, the researchers hope to expand their technique to allow more complex operations, perhaps moving closer to developing a new approach for fully homomorphic encryption.

“The exciting thing for us is that, when we put these two simple things together, something different happened that we didn’t expect. It gives us hope. What else can we do now? If we add something else, maybe we can do something even more exciting,” Corrigan-Gibbs says.

This research was funded, in part, by Apple, Capital One, Facebook, Google, Mozilla, NASDAQ, MIT’s FinTech@CSAIL Initiative, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and a Simons Investigator Award.

David Schmittlein, an MIT professor of marketing and the MIT Sloan School of Management’s longest-serving dean and a visionary and transformational leader, died March 13, following a long illness. He was 69.

Schmittlein, the John C Head III Dean from 2007 to 2024, guided MIT Sloan through a financial crisis, a global pandemic, and numerous school-wide milestones. During those 17 years, Schmittlein led initiatives introducing several new degree programs, redesigning the academic program portfolio while maintaining the MBA as the flagship degree, and diversifying executive offerings. Under his guidance, the school enhanced alumni engagement, increased philanthropic support, expanded the faculty, oversaw numerous campus capital projects, and opened several international programs. He also championed a centennial celebration of Course 15 — MIT’s designation for management — and led a branding and marketing effort that cemented MIT Sloan’s reputation as a place for smart, open, grounded, and inventive leaders.

In all, he brought MIT Sloan’s value to managers, organizations, and the world into clear focus, positioning and preparing the school to lead in a new era of management education.

“Dave transformed the MIT Sloan School of Management from a niche player to a top five business school and, in the process, drew us closer to the Institute in ways that all of the faculty, staff, and students welcome and support,” says MIT professor of finance Andrew W. Lo. “He greatly expanded our visibility internationally [and] also expanded our footprint from a research and educational and outreach perspective. Really, it gave us the opportunity to define ourselves in ways that we weren’t doing prior to his joining.”

In a letter to the MIT community, President Sally Kornbluth wrote, “Dave helped build MIT Sloan’s reputation and impact around the globe, worked with faculty to create first-rate new management education programs, and substantially improved current students’ educational opportunities.”

Kornbluth, who was appointed MIT president in 2023, noted that she didn’t overlap with Schmittlein for very long before he stepped down in February 2024 due to his illness. But during that year, his “wise, funny, judicious counsel left a lasting impression,” Kornbluth wrote. “I knew I could always call on him as a sounding board and thought partner, and I did.”

Professor Georgia Perakis, who was appointed the John C Head III Dean (Interim) when Schmittlein left last year, says, “Dave was not only an incredible leader for MIT Sloan, but also a mentor, teacher, and friend. Under his leadership, he took MIT Sloan to new heights. I will always be grateful for his guidance and support during my time as interim dean. I know the legacy of his contributions to MIT and MIT Sloan will always stay with us.”

Before coming to MIT Sloan, Schmittlein was a professor of marketing and deputy dean at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he spent 27 years. Schmittlein, who grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, viewed his appointment as the eighth dean of MIT Sloan as a homecoming in 2007.

From modest roots, and the oldest of six siblings, Schmittlein graduated from Brown University, where he earned a BA in mathematics, and Columbia University, where he was awarded both an MPhil in business and a PhD in marketing.

“Growing up in Massachusetts, MIT was always an icon for me,” Schmittlein later wrote.

“MIT picks an outsider to lead Sloan School”

As The Boston Globe headline announcing his arrival made clear, Schmittlein’s appointment as dean was unusual. He was the first to come from outside MIT since the school’s founding dean, E. Pennell Brooks, was appointed. But, in 2007, Institute leadership determined that there was a need for a fresh perspective at MIT Sloan.

“While most of Dean Schmittlein’s MIT predecessors had risen through the MIT faculty ranks, I directed the search committee to search broadly to identify a leader who could amplify the MIT Sloan School’s impact and extend its reach,” says President Emerita Susan Hockfield, who led MIT from 2004 to 2012. “David Schmittlein emerged with his unusual combination of cerebral and collaborative talents, along with his academic experience at the highest level.”

By the time Schmittlein arrived, the MIT Sloan School, which had its origins in 1914 as an undergraduate major called Engineering Administration, was at an exciting crossroads. Schmittlein’s predecessor, Richard Schmalensee, who had served as dean for nearly a decade, had secured donor funding for the construction of a new central building and established a concise mission statement that would guide the school in the coming decades. MIT’s management school was at a point of reflection and growth.

“I acknowledged head-on that I was coming from a very different school — not to change MIT, but to help it be the best version of its distinctive self,” Schmittlein wrote recently.

Schmittlein quickly identified several critical tasks. In 2007, the school had a group of 96 tenure-line faculty members, but they often left for peer schools, and the small faculty size meant that one person’s exit affected an entire department. There was no real mechanism for highlighting MIT Sloan expert faculty insights. The flagship MBA program was successful, but had challenges with selectivity and scale. And the comparatively small class size meant that the alumni community was challenged in networking, particularly in finance.

Financial crisis and MFin degree

Schmittlein collaborated with the school’s finance faculty to launch the Master of Finance degree program in 2008. Nobel laureate Robert C. Merton, who had begun his career at MIT Sloan but had decamped to Harvard University, returned to the school in 2010 to be involved in the one-year program. Today, the MFin program — known for its selectivity and rigor — offers a range of quantitative courses and features an 18-month option in addition to the original one-year curriculum.

Schmittlein’s arrival at MIT coincided with the global financial crisis of 2007–09. “The entire Institute was reeling from the meltdown,” Lo remembers. “We had to respond … and one of the most impressive things Dave did was to acknowledge the problems with the financial crisis and the financial system. But instead of de-emphasizing finance, he encouraged the finance group to do research on the crisis and to come up with a better version of finance that acknowledged these potential dangers.”

In turn, program enrollment increased, and “a number of our students ultimately went off to regulatory positions, as well as to industry, with a new knowledge of how to deal with financial crises more systematically,” Lo says.

Expansion of executive and other degree programs

In 2010, the long-standing full-time MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program attracted mid-career leaders and managers from around the world to MIT Sloan. That year, Schmittlein shepherded the launch of the 20-month part-time MIT Executive MBA program. This program opened up more opportunities for U.S.-based executives to earn a degree without having to leave their jobs for a full-time program.

Next, MIT Sloan launched the Master of Science in Management Studies program, which allowed graduates and current students from several international partner schools, including Fudan University and Tsinghua University in China, to earn a master’s degree from MIT in nine months.

Rounding out the portfolio of academic programs introduced during Schmittlein’s tenure is the MIT Sloan Master of Business Analytics program, launched in 2016. The program, which bridged MIT Sloan’s classes with MIT’s offerings in computer science, became one of the most competitive master’s degree programs at the Institute.

One distinction for MIT Sloan was “its integration with the university within which it lives,” Schmittlein said in a 2008 interview. “We are different from other schools in that regard. Most other leading schools of management wall off their teaching programs and their research programs from the rest of the university. We simply don’t do that.”

“MIT Sloan in 2025 is very much ‘the house that Dave built,’” says Professor Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan.

“This is nothing short of astonishing, given that Dave came to Sloan from another business school with a distinct mission and culture … What’s more, Sloan was hardly broken — it had several strong deans leading up Dave’s arrival, a sterling reputation, and very proud traditions,” Zuckerman Sivan says.

Zuckerman Sivan, who served as MIT Sloan’s deputy dean and then as an associate dean for teaching and learning from 2015 to 2021, says it was a tremendous privilege to work for Schmittlein, and he notes that Schmittlein often saw potential in others before they saw it in themselves, including him.

“Personally, I hadn’t given a thought to becoming a dean … when Dave popped the question to me. I’m so glad he did, though, because I learned so much from the experience, not least from being able to consult with Dave and see how he thought about different managerial challenges,” Zuckerman Sivan says.

Faculty, capital projects, and international ties

Schmittlein invested in faculty compensation, and by 2012 the MIT Sloan faculty count had grown to 112.

“Dave recognized early on that growth was essential for Sloan to retain and recruit the very best faculty,” Zuckerman Sivan says. “And every move he made, especially with regard to the degree programs, was done in close and deliberate collaboration with faculty leaders. This was absolutely key. He got senior faculty at Sloan on board with the moves that he had recognized were essential for the school, such that now the moves seem obvious and organic.”

Schmittlein also oversaw several capital projects, some of which were already underway when he joined MIT Sloan. When Building E62 opened in 2010, for the first time in history all of MIT Sloan’s faculty members were housed under one roof. The Gold-certified LEED building also included six new classrooms and an executive education suite. Following that, the landmark historic buildings E60 and E52 were renovated and refreshed.

President Emerita Hockfield says that Schmittlein advanced the school in many dimensions. One area that resonates with her was his agility in building and maintaining relationships with international partners and donors. During Schmittlein’s tenure, the MIT Sloan Latin America Office opened in Santiago, Chile, in 2013, and the Asia School of Business was launched in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2015. Schmittlein also helped to lay the groundwork for the launch of the MIT Sloan Office for Southeast Asian Nations, which opened in October 2024 in Bangkok.

The international collaborations increased the school’s visibility throughout the world. Hockfield notes that those international relationships benefited MIT Sloan students.

“For any leader today — being able to foster international relationships has to be a critical part of anyone’s toolkit,” she says. “And [for MIT Sloan students] to see that up close and personal, they can understand how they can make that happen as business leaders.”

Indeed, some MIT Sloan students were introduced firsthand to global business leaders under the guidance of both Hockfield and Schmittlein, who, for the past several years, co-taught an elective course, Corporations at the Crossroads, that featured guest speakers discussing management, strategy, and leadership.

“It was inspiring and just a lot of fun to teach that course with him … Dave possessed the wonderful combination of a brilliant intellect and a profound kindness. While he generously shared both, he more eagerly shared his kindness than his brilliance,” Hockfield says.

Ideas Made to Matter

During Schmittlein’s tenure, MIT Sloan launched a brand identity project with new messaging and the tagline “Ideas Made to Matter,” accompanied by a new website and logo. In the early 2000s, at Wharton, he had championed the online business journal Knowledge at Wharton, which went on to be a standout thought leadership publication. Under Schmittlein’s helm, MIT Sloan launched Ideas Made to Matter, a publication bringing practical insights from MIT Sloan’s faculty to global business leaders.

Hockfield recalls how Schmittlein deftly brought marketing insights to MIT Sloan. “He really understood organizational communications … and he was brilliant [at getting the MIT Sloan story out] with just the right tone,” she says.

Legacy: Principled, innovative leaders who improve the world

Lo says that Schmittlein embodied the example of a principled leader. “He was not only an amazing leader, but he was an amazing human being. He inspired all of us, and will continue to inspire all of us for years to come,” he says.

“Dave gave the Sloan School and MIT a great gift,” Lo continues. “We are now perfectly positioned to reach the next inflection point of changing the role of management education, not only at MIT but around the world.”

Hockfield says, “One of the things I deeply admired about Dave is that his personal ambitions were always secondary or tertiary to his ambitions for the school, the faculty, and the students. And that’s just a wonderful thing to behold. It brings out the best in people … I’m just so grateful that MIT had the benefit of his brilliance and curiosity for the time that we did. It’s a huge loss.”

“We are heartbroken,” MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart says. “For nearly 17 years, the MIT community relied on and benefited from Dave Schmittlein’s inspiring vision, skillful leadership, and kind and collaborative nature. He worked tirelessly to advance MIT Sloan’s mission of developing principled, innovative leaders, all while strengthening the school’s ties to the rest of campus and building partnerships across the country and globe. He will be deeply missed by his friends and colleagues at MIT.”

Schmittlein continually searched for ways to invent and innovate. He often quoted Alfred P. Sloan, the original benefactor of MIT Sloan, who said in 1964, “I hope we all recognize that the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management is not finished. It never will be finished. It is only on its way. Nothing is finished in a world that is moving so rapidly forward …”

Schmittlein is survived by his wife of nearly 33 years, Barbara Bickart, and their children, Brigitte Schmittlein and Gabriel Schmittlein, as well as his siblings, in-laws, several nieces and nephews, and a host of lifelong friends and colleagues.

MIT Sloan is developing plans for a future celebration of Schmittlein’s life, with details for the community to come. To read more about his life and contributions, read his obituary online.

Ben Vinson III, president of Howard University, made a compelling call for artificial intelligence to be “developed with wisdom,” as he delivered MIT’s annual Karl Taylor Compton Lecture on campus Monday. 

The broad-ranging talk posed a series of searching questions about our human ideals and practices, and was anchored in the view that, as Vinson said, “Technological progress must serve humanity, and not the other way around.”

In the course of his remarks, Vinson offered thoughts about our self-conception as rational beings; the effects of technological revolutions on human tasks, jobs, and society; and the values and ethics we want our lives and our social fabric to reflect.   

“Philosophers like Cicero argue that the good life centers on the pursuit of virtue and wisdom,” Vinson said. “Can AI enhance our pursuit of virtue and wisdom? Does it risk automating critical aspects of human reflection? Does a world that increasingly defers to AI for decision-making and artistic creation, and even ethical deliberation, does that reflect a more advanced society? Or does it signal a quiet surrender of human agency?”

Vinson’s talk, titled “AI in an Age After Reason: A Discourse on Fundamental Human Questions,” was delivered to a large audience in MIT’s Samberg Conference Center.

He also suggested that universities can serve as an “intellectual compass” in the development of AI, bringing realism and specificity to the topic and “separating real risks from speculative fears, ensuring that AI is neither demonized nor blindly embraced but developed with wisdom, with ethical oversight, and with societal adaptation.”

The Compton lecture series was introduced in 1957, in honor of Karl Taylor Compton, who served as MIT’s ninth president, from 1930 to 1948, and as chair of the MIT Corporation from 1948 to 1954.

In introductory remarks, MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth observed that Compton “helped the Institute transform itself from an outstanding technical school for training hands-on engineers to a truly great global university. A renowned physicist, President Compton brought a new focus on fundamental scientific research, and he made science an equal partner with engineering at MIT.”

Beyond that, Kornbluth added, “through the war, he helped invent a partnership between the federal government and America’s research universities.”

Introducing Vinson, Kornbluth described him as an academic leader who projects a “wonderful sense of energy, positivity, and forward movement.”

Vinson became president of Howard University in September 2023, having previously served as provost and executive vice president of Case Western Reserve University; dean of George Washington University's Columbian College of Arts and Sciences; and vice dean for centers, interdisciplinary studies, and graduate education at Johns Hopkins University. A historian who has studied the African diaspora in Latin America, Vinson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former president of the American Historical Association.

Using history as a guide, Vinson suggested that AI has potential to substantially influence society and the economy, even if it may not fully deliver all of the advances it is imagined to bring.

“It serves as a Rorschach test for society’s deepest hopes and anxieties,” Vinson said of AI. “Optimists, they see it as a productivity revolution and a leap in human evolution, while pessimists warn of mass surveillance, bias, job displacement, and even existential risk. The reality, as history suggests, will likely fall somewhere in between. AI will likely evolve through a cycle of inflated expectations, disillusionment, and eventual pragmatic inspiration.”

Still, Vinson suggested there were substantial differences between AI and some of our earlier technological leaps — the industrial revolution, the electrical revolution, and the digital revolution, among others.

“Unlike previous technologies that have extended human labor, again, AI targets cognition, creativity, decision-making, and even emotional intelligence,” Vinson said.

In all cases, Vinson said, people should be active about discussing the profound effects technological change can have upon society: “AI is not just about technological progress, it is about power, it is about justice, and the very essence of what it means to be human.”

At a few times, Vinson’s remarks looped back to the subject of education and the impact of AI. Howard, one of the nation’s leading historically Black colleges and universities, has recently achieved an R1 designation as a university with a very high level of research activity. At the same time, it has thriving programs in the humanities and social sciences that depend on individual cognition and inquiry.

But suppose, Vinson remarked, that AI eventually ends up displacing a portion of humanistic scholarship. “Does a world with fewer humanities truly represent human progress?” he asked.

All told, Vinson proposed, as AI advances, we have a responsibility to engage with the advances and potential of the field while keeping everyday human values in mind.

“Let’s guide the world through this transformative age with more wisdom, with foresight, and with an unwavering dedication to the common good,” Vinson said. “This is not just a technological moment. It is a moment that calls for a form of intellectual courage and moral imagination. Together, we can shape an AI future that honors dignity for everyone, and at the same time, advances the ideals of humanity itself.”