The biomedical ecosystem in Cambridge, Mass., and Boston have a tremendous amount at stake
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
By Robert Weisman — Boston GlobeJuly 14, 2026
This is the year artificial intelligence has emerged in the public square as a full-fledged bogeyman.
College grads boo commencement speakers who invoke AI as the modern equivalent of “plastics,” the career advice given to Dustin Hoffman’s character in the 1967 film “The Graduate.” Workers recoil when companies wield it as a cost-cutting, job-slashing sword. Even a wary Pope Leo XIV warns against the fusion of AI into nuclear war-fighting systems.
