The paper said that after an AI tool was implemented at a large materials-science lab, researchers discovered significantly more materials—a result that suggested that, in certain settings, AI could substantially improve worker productivity. That paper, by Aidan Toner-Rodgers, was covered by The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.
The paper was championed by MIT economists Daron Acemoglu, who won the 2024 economics Nobel, and David Autor.
In a press release, MIT said it “has no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and has no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper.”
The university said the author of the paper is no longer at MIT.
The guy fabricated it completely. Just made the experiment and data up and got caught when the company he mentioned in the paper sued him. What a waste of a Stanford phd.
Exactly, this has nothing to do with MIT being anti-AI.
A student made up a research paper and was kicked out. The fact that the topic of the research paper was AI is largely irrelevant.
Here’s a story of a behavioral science professor (who, ironically, studies dishonesty) at Harvard who was caught making up results: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184289296/harvard-professor-dishonesty-francesca-gino
You wouldn’t look at that article and come to the conclusion that “Harvard is standing up to the pro-Behavioral Science momentum”, because fake research has always been against the rules.