Neil Thompson

@ProfNeilT

Director, FutureTech research project at MIT Computer Science & A.I. Lab, and PI at the Initiative on the Digital Economy at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Cambridge, MA

neil-t.com

Joined September 2017

Replies Reposts Media

Neil Thompson
@ProfNeilT
Mar 13
Our new substack post: Can Academic Science Keep Up with the AI Frontier?
Can Academic Science Keep Up with the AI Frontier?
From mitfuturetech.substack.com
Neil Thompson
@ProfNeilT
Dec 3, 2025
Our new paper shows how AI foundation models are being adopted in science. Growth is rapid, but uneven. The AI models being used are old and underpowered, so there is still lots of room to make science more productive! @MITFutureTech @MIT_CSAIL @mit_ide
arxiv.org
The Rapid Growth of AI Foundation Model Usage in Science
We present the first large-scale analysis of AI foundation model usage in science - not just citations or keywords. We find that adoption has grown rapidly, at nearly-exponential rates, with the...
Neil Thompson
@ProfNeilT
Dec 1, 2025
Our new paper breaks down algorithm progress in AI (which is faster than GPU progress). Surprisingly, much of the gains have only gone to the largest models, which is bad news for AI efficiency improvement. @MITFutureTech
arxiv.org
On the Origin of Algorithmic Progress in AI
Algorithms have been estimated to increase AI training FLOP efficiency by a factor of 22,000 between 2012 and 2023 [Ho et al., 2024]. Running small-scale ablation experiments on key innovations...
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Neil Thompson
@ProfNeilT
May 27, 2025
Excited to announce that I was just promoted to Principal Research Scientist at MIT! (Roughly equivalent to getting tenure)
16
Neil Thompson
@ProfNeilT
Jun 10, 2024
Excited to announce that our paper on the economic impacts of AI-augmented R&D is out in Research Policy. Useful if you want (i) an estimation of the deep learning production function, (ii) a better way of inferring human capital from author lists, or...
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