We are an interdisciplinary group at MIT that studies the foundations of progress in computing: what are the most important trends, how do they underpin economic prosperity, and how can we harness them to sustain and promote productivity growth.
Our purpose as an interdisciplinary research group is to identify the most important economic and technical trends driving progress in computing and AI, to research how these trends underpin scientific progress and economic prosperity, and to produce academically rigorous insights that inform business and policy decisions.
FutureTech’s mission is to uncover new insights at the intersection of computer science and economics that help to understand how computing and AI are advancing and what this means for scientific progress and economic prosperity.
We believe that one of the most valuable ways that we can contribute to the world is to quantify the pace at which new technological capabilities are emerging and to understand the implications of their adoption.
We do this with the goal of helping practically guide decisions on humanity’s most important questions.We strive to achieve our goals by giving talented people the right tools and a supportive, collegial environment in which they can flourish.
Our research has been published in leading journals and conferences, including Science, Nature Communications, Communications of the ACM, IEEE Spectrum, and many more. Our research has been covered by the Washington Post, Nature, Wired, VentureBeat, HPCWire, The Guardian, The Economist, IEEE Spectrum, and many others.
We also advise governments, nonprofits and industry, including via National Academies panels on transformational technologies and scientific reliability, the Council on Competitiveness’ National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers, and the National Science Foundation’s National Network for Critical Technology Assessment.
The FutureTech project is supported by grants from Open Philanthropy, the National Science Foundation, Accenture, IBM, the MIT-Air Force AI accelerator, and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
MIT FutureTech
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
32 Vassar Street, Office 386, Cambridge, MA 02139
617-258-5030
© 2026 FutureTech. All rights reserved.
MIT Accessibility