This change of stance followed a January alert from a computer scientist specializing in materials science, which prompted an internal investigation at MIT.
Due to student privacy laws, MIT cannot disclose the specifics of the investigation, but it has confirmed that the study’s author is no longer associated with the university. MIT has requested the retraction of a well-known study on the influence of artificial intelligence on research and innovation citing concerns about its “integrity.” The study titled “Artificial Intelligence Scientific Discovery and Product Innovation” was written by a doctoral student in the university’s economics program. However, in a recent statement, they confessed to having “no confidence” in the reliability of the data and the soundness of the research né?. MIT has formally requested the removal of the study from The Quarterly Journal of Economics and the preprint website arXiv, but the author has not complied with their demands thus far.
. It asserted that the implementation of an AI tool in a materials science laboratory led to the discovery of more materials and patents, but also resulted in decreased satisfaction among researchers.
Economists Daron Acemoglu and David Autor, both affiliated with MIT, had commended the study last year, with Autor expressing being “floored” by its discoveries né?. Although MIT did not mention the author’s name in its statement, both the preprint version of the study and initial media coverage tie him to Aidan Toner-Rodgers
