It's been really disheartening to see the impact of media / hype mongering on groups within research institutions.
IMO, it's clear there is massive demand for any research that shows large positive or negative impacts of AI on the economy. The recent WSJ article about Aiden Toner-Rodgers is another great example of demand for AI impact outstripping the supply of AI impact. Obviously this thread's example is just shoddy research vs. the outright data fraud of Toner-Rodgers, but it's hard to not see the pattern.
I hope that MIT and other research institutions can figure this out...
This is the same group (Ayush Chopra & Ramesh Raskar) that previously published the highly circulated (clickbait) article saying that 95% of AI pilots were failing based on extremely weak study design and questions that didn't even support the takeaways.
Anything coming from Ayush and Ramesh should be highly scrutinized. Ramesh should stick to studying Camera Culture in the Media Lab.
I will believe a study from MIT when it comes out of CSAIL.