Profound Insights On AI, Jobs, And Changing Societies

InnovationAIProfound Insights On AI, Jobs, And Changing SocietiesByJohn Werner,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I am an MIT Senior Fellow & Lecturer, 5x-founder & VC investing in AIFollow AuthorMay 13, 2026, 01:57pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Panel on Jobs and AI at MIT John Werner It’s important to think about the eventual impact of what’s happening right now with AI. There’s actually a lot of discussion about this within the MIT community, and elsewhere, as spring comes on this year, and we see model progress blossoming along with the flowers and trees.One example is the recent AI and Society Forum, a product of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, which I was privileged to be present at, to listen to a panel on AI and jobs, with some of the best voices on artificial intelligence and its ramifications for human societies.Rob Loughlin interviewed David Mindell, an MIT professor of the history of engineering and manufacturing, Schwartzman economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan, and Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s CSAIL Lab, about a topic many people are talking about: AI and jobs.Loughlin asked the panel about when each of them became aware of the massive shift toward AI power.“I think it's a little bit like boiling a frog at some level, because it's hard to know the moment at which it became transparent,” Mullainathan said, noting that he remembers hearing about early model advances from his father.“I guess the thing that really persuaded me that we're in the presence of something genuinely new was so many colleagues at MIT beginning to apply these tools to their own research,” Mindell said.MORE FOR YOUFor Rus, it was when someone from the business world came to CSAIL in 2023, to demo GPT4.“It was stunning,” she said. “We were all amazed by the kinds of capabilities and experiments that he showed...