Last Friday, Apple’s long-awaited contribution to the virtual reality headset market finally hit stores across the U.S. Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the new technology would be nothing short of revolutionary when he unveiled it last summer. But let’s not forget the fate of the Google Glass, the glasses with a built-in display and camera first released by Google in 2013 and formally ended a decade later. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Lance Ulanoff, U.S. editor-in-chief of TechRadar, for his take on the Vision Pro. Ulanoff said Apple’s new headset just might catch on, thanks to what Apple calls “spatial computing.”

Companies vying for AI dominance have told us their stories, but this week they showed us their numbers, and there is a clear front-runner. Plus, a court struck down Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package, but it’s the announcement that his startup Neuralink did its first human brain implant that has us really scratching our heads. First, though, a look back at Wednesday’s Senate hearing that put tech execs, politicians and families affected by online child sex abuse in a room together on Capitol Hill. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Anita Ramaswamy, columnist for Reuters Breakingviews, for her take on these stories.

The universe of industries that make money off dying in this country is extensive, and tech entrepreneurs have managed to insert themselves into various corners of it. That’s all according to culture journalist Mihika Agarwal, who’s been reporting on the grief tech industry — including ghost bots, the chatbots that are supposed to help us process grief. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Agarwal about her reporting.

In 2021, the Biden administration put out a report about gaps in the supply chain for electric vehicles. It estimated global demand for lithium and graphite would grow by more than 4,000% by 2040 if the world were to achieve the climate goals laid out in the Paris accords. These materials, along with copper, nickel and others, are critical to green technologies. And there is a global fight over their supply, one that Reuters correspondent Ernest Scheyder documents in his new book, “The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives.” He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about why lithium, in particular, is in such high demand and the challenges of bringing it to market.

By 2030, there are expected to be up to 11 million hybrid or electric vehicles in the United Kingdom, according to the Local Government Association. But there are currently only around 45,000 mechanics who are qualified to fix and service them. Unless more people sign up to be EV mechanics, drivers in the U.K. might find themselves with an electric car they can’t get fixed or afford to insure. We’ll hear more from BBC reporter Frey Lindsay.

In rural North Dakota an old, coal-fired power plant is being retrofitted to capture emissions before they enter the atmosphere and store them underground. $890 million from the 2022 bipartisan infrastructure law will go towards that and two similar projects in California and Texas. Critics take issue with spending taxpayer money to kick the tires on “carbon capture and storage” technology. Among those critics are Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former minister of environment and climate change. She’s now CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, an advisory firm,  and Chairs the UN’s expert group on net-zero commitments.

On the show today, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds have parked a whole lot of money in Silicon Valley. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, for one, spent more than $31 billion on 49 venture deals, up 33% in 2023. Why does the tech industry find it so hard to break up with Middle East money? Plus, Netflix changes up its business model — again. We look at why the streaming giant sees even more ads in its future. But first, job cuts continue across the tech landscape. Even TikTok, with its $225 billion valuation and 150 million active users in the U.S. alone, is letting people go. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on these stories.

The World Court is expected to rule Friday on whether to grant emergency measures to stop the war in Gaza. South Africa has accused Israel of carrying out genocide in the Palestinian enclave. Israel says it’s targeting Hamas militants – not civilians – in response to the deadly Hamas attack of Oct. 7. But more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes, and according to Corey Scher of the City University of New York and Oregon State University’s Jamon Van Den Hoek, nearly half the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Scher and Van Den Hoek about their work mapping the destruction with satellite radar technology.

It’s hard to disappear these days. Everything from renting property and using a credit card to working a job leaves a digital footprint. But just because it’s hard to vanish from the virtual world doesn’t mean people aren’t trying. Some do it out of necessity, to escape violence or persecution. Others do it out of curiosity, pursuing total anonymity just to see how far they can take things. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Hal Triedman, a privacy engineer who recently wrote about the “extreme privacy” community for the online magazine Reboot.

AI can be used for unsavory things, like any technology. But researchers at the nonprofit Global Fishing Watch have revealed a promising use case — enlisting AI to accurately track human activity on the oceans, according to its new study published in the journal Nature. There’s a lot out there that has long floated under the radar of monitoring systems, including the so-called dark fleets involved in illegal and unregulated fishing. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with David Kroodsma, director of research and innovation at Global Fishing Watch, about the group’s work.

It’s been almost two weeks since several investment products tied to bitcoin started trading on old-school financial markets. These bitcoin ETFs have made it easier for everyday investors to place bets on the crypto market, and in the days since federal regulators gave the green light, investors have poured nearly $2 billion into the new bitcoin funds. But probably not the crypto purists, says Joel Khalili, who reports on the industry for Wired. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Khalili about crypto early adopters, who, he says, are quite happy to stay on the fringes of the financial system.

On the show today, the Food and Drug Administration expanded its approval for CRISPR gene-editing therapies. We look at the affordability of these treatments, which can cost well into the millions of dollars. Plus, is bad marketing stunting health tech companies? More on how startups can up their game. But first, at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there were 32 scheduled events devoted to AI. When they weren’t comparing private jets, business executives were busy asking, “How do you make money off AI?” Marketplaces’ Lily Jamali is joined by Christina Farr, a health tech investor at OMERS Ventures, for her take on these stories.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds means that for the first time, people can invest in funds that include bitcoin with no crypto wallet required. Demand for the original cryptocurrency is only expected to grow, and bitcoin mining operators are in position to satisfy it. Two years ago, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali visited one in upstate New York. Stacks of computers burned through tons of power to generate new bitcoins, she reported. Texas is now a preferred hub, and Ben Hertz-Shargel of the consultancy Wood Mackenzie says the SEC’s move will be felt there.

While Marketplace’s Lily Jamali was at CES last week in Las Vegas, she took her first ride on the Vegas Loop, built by Elon Musk’s the Boring Co. In 2013, Musk floated the concept of a hyperloop as a way for people to travel long distances at superfast speeds via pods in vacuum-sealed tubes. The Vegas Loop, as Lily found out, is not that. Developing actual hyperloop technology is hard and costly. Just ask Hyperloop One, a startup that recently shut down after a decade of trying. Lily recently spoke with Bloomberg’s Sarah McBride about Hyperloop One’s demise and what it means for the tech sector’s larger ambition to create hyperloop transport systems.

One consequence of climate change is more frequent and severe droughts. And that has water-stressed communities looking for new sources of drinking water. Today, Marketplace’s climate podcast “How We Survive” and host Amy Scott take a look at how technology can help.

Last year, the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging found that 1 in 3 adults between 50 and 80 years old said they felt isolated. Enter ElliQ, the robot companion created to alleviate loneliness in older adults. She’s programmed to be inquisitive and empathetic and is designed to sit in your home and keep you company. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Dor Skuler, CEO and co-founder of Intuition Robotics, about why he thinks a robot is the right tool to address loneliness.

On the show today, tech investors are among the 100,000-plus people who’ve descended on Las Vegas for this year’s CES. They’re looking for the next big thing in tech and trying to make sure they don’t throw money at the next big dud. Plus, CES showcases the latest in age tech — products meant to make getting older easier, more comfortable and less lonely. But first, artificial intelligence is a big theme at the gathering this year, and the technology is becoming a regular part of people’s work lives. That’s according to a new survey from Tech.co. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing director at Collab Capital, and Katie Roof, reporter at Bloomberg, for their take on these stories.

We’re a few days into CES now, and amid the demos, launches, meeting, greeting, keynotes and all the walking, there’s one thing on a lot of people’s minds: sleep. So, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali stopped by the National Sleep Foundation’s booth to meet some folks there thinking about sleep. She spoke with Biquan Luo, co-founder and CEO of Lumos Tech, whose company makes what looks like a regular sleep mask, but has embedded LED lights. It’s designed to help recalibrate a user’s sleep schedule.

CES is many things — including a gadget fest and a glimpse into the kind of technology we might be using a month or a decade from now. CES also hosts one of the biggest auto shows on the planet, which is why it’s worth noting that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler aren’t here this year. The United Auto Workers strike ended just a few months ago. General Motors, specifically, is still regrouping after the implosion of its robotaxi startup Cruise. Meanwhile, Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance is under pressure from regulators. The idea of reaching fully autonomous driving — what’s known as Level 5 in the tech sector — is starting to feel out of reach. And maybe that’s OK. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Trevor Curwin, director of strategic partnerships at Sheeva.AI, an automotive payments company, from the CES floor about the troubles and outlook for the auto industry’s tech ambitions.

This week, more than 100,000 people from around the world — including staff from “Marketplace Tech” — are gathered in Las Vegas to talk tech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show. CES this year features more than 4,000 exhibitors, from small startups to tech giants like Amazon, Intel and Sony. There’s so much to see in so little time, so Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES, about what to watch for at this year’s event.

Last June, President Joe Biden flew to Silicon Valley to tout the massive federal investment in clean energy made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act. For a long time though, women have been largely shut out of clean tech jobs. And an investigation by the nonprofit newsroom The Fuller Project, reported by Kate Gammon, found that last year, women filled just 32% of green energy jobs, up just 1 percentage point since 2008. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with senior editor Aaron Glantz about The Fuller Project’s sometimes graphic findings.

On the show today, shares of Apple touched a seven-week low this week after Barclays downgraded the company. What does the dreaded “sell” rating say about expectations for the Cupertino tech giant? Plus, telling AI from reality might get easier in 2024 thanks to tools that can help with that, and a preview of other personal tech to watch for in the year ahead. But first, Tesla CEO Elon Musk set an ambitious goal at the beginning of 2023 — sell 2 million electric vehicles by the end of the year. The company came pretty close to that sales goal with 1.85 million deliveries; that, compared with 73,000 EVs sold by Ford (if you round up). However, Tesla did fall behind China’s BYD as the EV sales leader for the first time. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, for her take on these stories.

A former Harvard misinformation researcher named Joan Donovan recently filed a whistleblower complaint against the university. In it, she accused officials of bowing to tech giant Meta when she was ousted from her position following a $500 million donation from the charity of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Harvard denies Donovan’s accusations, but the fallout spotlights the influence Big Tech can have on academic institutions. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, about how industry funding can come with strings attached.

For reporters covering Facebook, getting the real story has only become harder since the release of the “The Facebook Files” in 2021. The Wall Street Journal series, based on documents provided by whistleblower Frances Haugen, exposed the inner workings of the company now known as Meta, from its lax rules for VIPs to internal research on Instagram’s impact on teens. Jeff Horwitz, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, writes about the challenge of covering the company in his new book “Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Horwitz about how he’s covered Facebook and Meta and how Meta’s platforms have changed over the years.

Growing up a closeted child in the rural Midwest, Charlie Sprinkman always hoped he could one day connect with others in the queer community. Now, as an adult, he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he manages a team at a consumer packaged goods company. In his spare time, he combines skills from his day job with a knack for tech to put queer-owned businesses that he’s visited across the U.S. onto a digital map he’s created, called Everywhere Is Queer. What started as a small project last year, has now gone global.

Artificial intelligence can feel abstract, so we’ve come to depend on certain narratives to try and make sense of it all. Some of the language we use to describe AI and our interactions with it is rooted in religious ideas. Are you bracing for the apocalypse? Have you been blessed by the algorithm or consulted with a Robo Rabbi lately? The deification of AI, whether it’s done consciously or not, is something Beth Singler studies as a professor of digital religions at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Singler about religious tropes in the narratives we consume and share about AI.

It wasn’t all that long ago when “the Metaverse” was being pushed hard in certain corners of the Big Tech universe. What was it? It wasn’t always clear — something about a virtual but realistic place where, we were told, we’d be hanging out with friends, holding office meetings and even buying property. Fast forward to today and not many people are talking about it much anymore. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Ed Zitron, writer and CEO of EZPR about what happened to the hype.

Next year marks 15 years since Bitcoin’s launch. 15 years is a drop in the bucket in historical terms, but literally a lifetime for teenagers. Yanely Espinal, host of Marketplace’s “Financially Inclined” podcast, has been talking to teenagers about crypto and she says they have so many questions. She spoke with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about how teachers are trying to figure out how to handle crypto-curious students.

In 2023, we said goodbye to a service you might not have known was still around — DVD delivery from Netflix, now a giant in streaming. With a collection of more than 100,000 titles available for delivery in those red, paper envelopes, the DVD service retained some utility even years into the company’s transition. But Netflix pulled the plug on the service in September. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Slate writer and editor Sam Adams about what we lost with its demise.

Growing up on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana, Michael Running Wolf was especially aware of the importance of language. For decades, it was illegal under U.S. law to speak Native languages in schools. So in regard to learning them, generations of Indigenous children went without. Running Wolf grew up to become a computer scientist, landing a job working on Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa. A few years ago, he started to wonder how he might get something like Alexa to speak Cheyenne and other Indigenous languages. That has become his lifelong mission.

The thing we call “the cloud” might sounds harmless, but that seemingly abstract place where the details of your digital life get stored takes a heavy toll on the environment. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, a postdoctoral researcher in the Fixing Futures training group at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, about his research on cloud data centers and their effect on the health of the planet.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for Bytes: Week in Review. On the show today, a trio of legal stories dominating Big Tech coverage. As OpenAI and Microsoft stare down allegations of copyright infringement, 11 nonfiction authors, including some Pulitzer winners, have joined a lawsuit against both companies. Plus, Apple pauses sales of two of its latest Apple Watch models. But patent problems might not put much of a dent in the company’s holiday haul. First, though, Google settled a 2021 antitrust lawsuit brought by 36 states and Washington, D.C., in September. This week, we learned that Google is paying $700 million as part of that settlement. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Wired senior writer Paresh Dave, who explains what prompted the states to file suit in the first place.

More than a million electric vehicles were sold in the U.S. this year, but despite that some automakers announced a slowdown in EV production this fall. As more drivers make the switch to electric, the availability of public places to juice up those cars hasn’t exactly kept pace. Back in 2021, the federal government set aside $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of chargers across the country. But the project has barely broken ground in the two years since. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Marketplace reporter Meghan McCarty Carino about the issue, which she’s been following as both a reporter and an EV driver. She said relying on public chargers has only become harder.

By one estimate, “lab-grown diamonds” make up a $14 billion market. And the world’s largest jewelry maker, Pandora, is betting that that market will only grow. Pandora says it will stop selling mined diamonds and is expanding its lab-grown diamond range. The brand says growing diamonds in a lab is more environmentally sustainable than mining, and also happens to be more affordable, thanks to cost-effective production methods. The BBC’s Leanna Byrne has more on how lab-grown diamonds are made and who’s buying them.

When Google unveiled its answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT this month, Gemini, the pitch was: AI that can run efficiently on everything from data centers to your smartphone. But it came with a caveat for users in the UK and the European Union: you can’t use it there, for now. After the EU’s recent passage of the AI Act, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Andrea Renda of the Center for European Policy Studies. He says Google is trying to convince European lawmakers that Gemini complies with the continent’s tough privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Renda says the GDPR is likely why Gemini hasn’t made it to Europe, yet.

The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries without a national paid family leave program. As a result, offering those benefits has been left up to individual states and employers. Thirteen states and Washington, D.C., currently offer paid family leave programs, but they’re not always easy to navigate. Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Moms First, says this complicated system means workers lose an average of $10,000 in wages by taking that leave without being paid. That’s why her organization released an AI chatbot to help people in New York navigate their state’s paid leave program.

On the show today, Epic Games won its antitrust lawsuit against Google this week. What it means for the players and why the rest of Big Tech is watching. Plus, Netflix releases viewing data for its entire streaming catalog for the first time. What did we all watch? But first, it took 37 hours of negotiations for the European Union to pass what’s being called the world’s most ambitious law regulating artificial intelligence. Now the hard part: hashing out the details. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, for her take on these stories.

Warning: This episode includes sensitive content about the sexualization of children. For several months now, reporters at The Wall Street Journal have been looking at the algorithms that recommend content on Meta’s platforms, specifically Facebook and Instagram. They’ve found that those algorithms promote child sexual abuse on a mass scale to users who show sexual interest in kids. Meta argues that it uses sophisticated technology, hires child-safety experts and reports content to help root predators out. But the problem persists, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Blunt. She told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali what she learned by setting up test accounts, including some that followed young influencers on Instagram.

In software development, bugs in the code are inevitable. That’s why companies push out software updates so often. But there is a specific kind of bug that is especially worrisome, something called a “zero day.” It’s a bug no one knows about — not even the software company — so it hasn’t been patched and is vulnerable to hackers. Dina Temple-Raston, host of the podcast “Click Here,” has more on this story.

Since 1974, an international standard has governed the assignment of two-letter identification codes to every country and territory on Earth. When the internet came along, those codes were used in website domain names, and it didn’t take long before outside companies started using them too,  paying premiums for some particularly marketable codes. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with journalist Amy Thorpe about the profitable domain name marketplace.

Remember Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign from 2006? They featured actor Justin Long as the hip Mac computer personified in conversation with a noticeably less cool John Hodgman playing a PC. Seventeen years and plenty of tech releases later, it seems the stereotypes in those ads never really went away. Take, for example, a recent TikTok trend in which women respond to the question, “He’s a 10, but he has an Android phone. What’s his new rating?” For some, the answer is 1 or 0. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brian Chen, personal tech columnist at The New York Times, about “green bubble shaming.”

Remember Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign from 2006? They featured actor Justin Long as the hip Mac computer personified in conversation with a noticeably less cool John Hodgman playing a PC. Seventeen years and plenty of tech releases later, it seems the stereotypes in those ads never really went away. Take, for example, a recent TikTok trend in which women respond to the question, “He’s a 10, but he has an Android phone. What’s his new rating?” For some, the answer is 1 or 0. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brian Chen, personal tech columnist at The New York Times, about “green bubble shaming.”

On today’s Tech Bytes: Google launches its AI tool Gemini into the public arena — finally. Plus, ousted congressman George Santos becomes a star on Cameo. But first, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the music streaming giant is cutting 17% of its workforce. Here’s the thing, though: The size of Spotify’s user base is actually growing right now. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at Reuters Breakingviews, for her take on these stories.

If you use the internet, you have undoubtedly been asked to consent to cookies. They remember our log-in information and also track things like what we’re reading and buying. Trying to avoid cookies can feel pretty pointless and exhausting to the point where privacy experts have named the phenomenon “consent fatigue.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Matt Schwartz, policy analyst for Consumer Reports, about how we got here.

For years, Facebook, now renamed Meta, has offered a code called pixel to businesses. By embedding pixel on their websites, those businesses can collect information on users, then target them with ads on Meta’s social media platforms. The investigative news website The Markup has been looking into how some of the personal information pixel gathers is shared back with the tech giant. Meta says its policies make clear that advertisers should not send sensitive information about customers through its business tools. But Colin Lecher, co-author of a new Markup investigation, is reporting that students are among those the pixel code tracks.

Last week, a Virgin Atlantic passenger jet traveled from London to New York powered 100% by sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF.  The low-carbon fuel came from feedstock that included used cooking oil and waste animal fats. Critics call the flight a gimmick, and to be clear, right now SAF makes up a tiny slice of the fuels airlines use to get us places. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Louise Burke, an energy analyst and vice president of business development at Argus Media, who says that could change.

When Section 702 became law in 2008, the intelligence community argued collecting phone calls, texts, and emails of people outside of the U.S. could protect against terrorism. But the communications of many Americans have also been collected, all without the required warrants. Now, Section 702 is set to expire at the end of the month. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of liberty and national security at the Brennan Center for Justice, about what members of Congress are considering as they decide whether to extend Section 702.

On today’s Tech Bytes: apologies, profanity and accusations of blackmail. It’s just another week in the life of Elon Musk. Plus, ultra-fast-fashion retailer Shein confidentially files for an IPO and seems to be trying to bolster its image.  But first, one year ago this week, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public for the first time. Within five days of its launch, ChatGPT already had one million users. From writing holiday menus to college essays to wedding vows, ChatGPT has been there.  Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter for The Information, for her take on the week’s tech news.

This time of year, companies tend to open their wallets and choose where they choose to advertise. Those ad dollars are the lifeblood of X, the former Twitter. In the last quarter of 2021, almost 90% of Twitter’s revenue came from ads. That business model was already showing signs of wear after when Elon Musk took over. Now, as the Israel-Hamas war rages on, a new controversial post by Musk has accelerated the flight of advertisers. New York Times journalist Ryan Mac spoke with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about how the fallout of fleeing advertisers could affect the platform.

This week, TikTok parent ByteDance said it’s retreating from mainstream video games altogether. Earlier this year, Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, a game that has had more than 400 million “unique registered users” since its 2017 launch, announced hundreds of layoffs as well. They’re just some examples of the wave of layoffs hitting game companies around the globe. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Los Angeles Times reporter Sarah Parvini, who covers the video game sector. In a piece just last week, she wrote that the industry is deep in downsizing mode.

From being your own boss to doing work you actually like, the perks of influencer life have drawn in plenty of creators to an industry valued at $250 billion. Take Sid Raskind, whose goofy lifehacks have earned him millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram. Still, Yanely Espinal, host of the podcast “Financially Inclined,” told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that younger would-be creators should understand what it takes to make it.

Despite half the world’s population being female, there are still few technologies on the market to help manage the symptoms of menopause. Why is there a reluctance to invest in “menotech,” and is that changing? The BBC’s Elizabeth Hotson looked into the menotech products on the market and how the industry is evolving.

This week, the shakeups and confusion at OpenAI have come to a conclusion. Sam Altman returns to his position as CEO at OpenAI after its board fired him, which upset most of the company’s staff as well as others invested in OpenAI’s work in the generative artificial intelligence sector. Plus, Ryan Vogt resigned as CEO of the driverless tech startup Cruise, following a series of traffic collisions and accidents. On top of all that, Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, pleaded guilty to money laundering violations. What do venture capitalists think about all these disruptions and where will their money go now? Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, for her take on those stories.

For the most part, it’s not too hard to get access to movies from the last decade or even the last century. But if you want to experience a video game from before, say, the ancient era of 2010? Good luck. A new report from the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network finds that 87% of those older games are “critically endangered.” They’re not commercially available to the public unless fans have dozens of different old systems to play them on or travel to an archive in person and play them there. In other words, the roots of this hugely influential artistic and cultural medium are in danger of being lost. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Phil Salvador, library director for the Video Game History Foundation, about the report.

Do you remember what your dream job was as a kid? We’re guessing that “YouTuber” was not on the list. Well, turns out vlogger/YouTuber was the top career choice for almost 30% of 8-to-12-year-olds who were surveyed a few years back. And across the country, camps and afterschool programs are cropping up to teach them how. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz, who visited a content creator camp in Texas, where children edit video, write scripts and, generally, get a head start on becoming internet pros.

It’s been a chaotic few days for the folks at OpenAI, including now-former CEO Sam Altman. To recap, on Friday the company’s board announced it had let Altman go, citing a lack of confidence in his “ability to continue leading OpenAI.” Several staff members then resigned and hundreds of others threatened to do the same if Altman wasn’t reinstated as CEO. That option is pretty much moot now that Microsoft — a major OpenAI investor — has hired Altman to lead a new AI research team along with former President Greg Brockman, who resigned in solidarity. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Reed Albergotti, tech editor at Semafor, about what the dramatic ouster was really all about.

By now you’ve heard that the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried is over. What was the verdict for the founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX? Guilty on all seven charges, including fraud, money laundering and campaign finance law violations. Bankman-Fried will be sentenced in the spring. So how is the world of bitcoin and the blockchain faring now that it’s most famous ambassador will likely end up behind bars? Marketplace’s Matt Levin spoke with Laura Shin, a journalist who covers crypto and host of the podcast “Unchained,” about how people in the cryptocurrency world have been reacting to the SBF trial and what crypto enthusiasts are choosing to focus on next.

On today’s Tech Bytes, our review of the week’s biggest headlines, Meta strikes a preliminary deal with Chinese videogame maker Tencent, giving the company a chance to return to China 14 years after Facebook was banned there. We also talk about the ransomware attack on a major Chinese bank, and how the Biden administration thinks American companies should respond to cyber extortion. But first, a look at the recent revelations about Google and Apple’s complicated relationship. Earlier in its federal antitrust trial, Google said it paid Apple $18 billion a year to be the default search engine on iPhone web browsers. The government said that’s $18 billion worth of evidence of anticompetitive behavior. This week, a witness for Google accidentally disclosed the company was sharing 36% of ad revenue it made from Safari browser searches with Apple. Whoops! Marketplace’s Matt Levin is joined by Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at Reuters Breakingviews, for her take on these stories.

The soundtrack to the modern workplace sounds a lot like a cacophony of familiar pings and notification sounds from digital communication tools like email, Slack, Zoom and Teams – all of which are supposed to make us more productive. But all too often they can feel overwhelming, interfering with, you know, actual work. On this episode of Marketplace Tech, Matt Levin speaks with “Marketplace” reporter Kristin Schwab about how a small business owner in Nevada who was struggling to keep up with all those pings, dealt with her situation and shares a few tips on how to not get overwhelmed by all those notifications.

Back in August, the autonomous vehicle industry was riding high. Fast-forward three months, and the California DMV has suspended the robotaxi company Cruise from operating anywhere in the state. Federal regulators have also opened a probe into multiple incidents involving Cruise cars. Andrew Hawkins, transportation editor for The Verge, has reported on the long-awaited autonomous vehicle revolution for years. In an interview with Marketplace’s Matt Levin, he explained the trust issues and other potholes in Cruise’s path, starting with a grisly accident in San Francisco.

Every tech company needs a good origin story. The startup garage, the dorm room and the hacker house are firmly embedded in American tech mythology. For hacker-entrepreneurs in Mexico, the border with the U.S. looms large. A subset of them hope to one day cross it and pitch their big idea to venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. One way there is to work the hackathon circuit in Mexico. That’s the subject of MIT anthropologist Héctor Beltrán’s new book “Code Work.” Beltrán details how coders gain currency in the field by participating in hackathons. Mexican politicians get something out of them too. The events are frequently sponsored by the government, with big promises of funding and support. But the prize, all too often, is a handshake and photo-op with a public official, and maybe a thank-you letter, but no real investment.

In just a few short years, shopping by livestream has become all the rage in China. Think QVC online and on steroids. Influencers, brands and retailers have swarmed apps like WeChat and Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — to hawk everything from makeup and clothes to cars and beef jerky.  Viola Zhou and Caiwei Chen, reporters at Rest of World, have been writing about this $500 billion market and how it’s changing in a stagnant Chinese economy.

It’s Friday! Which means it’s time for our week-in-review show: Marketplace Tech Bytes. Meta announced this week that starting in 2024, Facebook and Instagram will start labeling political ads that use images generated by AI. But no… it’s hardly an AI crackdown. Plus, YouTube goes to war with ad blockers. A spate of uninstalls ensues! But first, WeWork, the co-working space provider, files for bankruptcy. What happened? And what’s next for the one-time golden child of Silicon Valley? Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, for his take on these stories.

“Stay in Oakland!” was the plea from many a diehard Athletics fan in the stands of the Oakland Coliseum this past baseball season as the team planned its move to Las Vegas. Some potential hurdles to a move remain unresolved, including a vote by Major League Baseball team owners next week on whether to allow it. Even if you don’t follow baseball, you may know the story of how, more than two decades ago, the cash-strapped A’s pioneered the use of high-tech data analysis in the sport. which came to be known as moneyball. Michael Lewis wrote a book about it. Brad Pitt did a movie about it. For more on how the A’s changed the game, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali called up Keith Law, senior baseball writer for The Athletic, who explained that the team found an edge by looking at what some would call nerdy stats, like on-base percentage.

Tuesday marks one month since the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking hundreds of hostages. Israel has responded by bombarding the Gaza Strip and killing more than 10,000 people there, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The Israeli government has shut off power and fuel supplies to the more than 2 million people, mostly Palestinians, in Gaza. This weekend, Gazans suffered the third internet and phone blackout since Israel declared war on Hamas. Just over the border in Egypt, journalist Mirna El Helbawi has been working to enable people in Gaza to stay online and connected to the rest of the world. She’s part of a small group collecting donations of so-called eSIMs, which let users activate a cellphone plan on a mobile network without needing an actual SIM card.

Remember when President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok? He called attention to the risk that American users’ data could fall into the hands of Chinese authorities who have ties to the app’s owners. A judge blocked the ban, but even if he hadn’t, experts say so much of our personal information is available to buy from run-of-the-mill data brokers. That includes information on Americans serving in the military, which can have big consequences for national security. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Justin Sherman, senior fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, about a new study he led in which his team tried buying just that kind of data.

This week, electric vehicle sales are in a slump. Last year, the competition among EV buyers was fierce, with consumers paying premium prices to drive one off the lot. But despite federal tax credits aimed at making them more affordable, the red-hot EV market isn’t so hot anymore. Plus, a year into ads on Netflix, the company is reporting that 15 million monthly active users are watching, and rewards for binging your favorite shows are in the works. But first, we’ll dive into the U.K.’s AI Safety Summit at historic Bletchley Park this week. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, for her take on those stories.

According to the FBI, email phishing attacks accounted for nearly $51 billion in losses over the past 10 years — and the number is only expected to grow with the introduction of artificial intelligence. Dina Temple-Raston from the “Click Here” podcast followed one company that is doing something new to fight the growing threat of scam emails: fighting AI with AI.

It’s been about seven months since leaders in tech signed an open letter calling for a temporary pause on artificial intelligence development. The gist was that the risks of advanced AI are too great for developers to keep tinkering with the technology in the absence of proper safeguards. That pause ultimately did not happen, and for some researchers, the core concerns in that letter still exist. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Jonas Schuett, research fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI, about a recent paper he co-authored that has a different take on the question of pausing development.

In 2017, then-MIT graduate student Joy Buolamwini shared the challenge of getting facial analysis software to notice her. “Hi camera, can you see my face? You can see her face. What about my face?” she asks the program as she stares at her webcam. It couldn’t “see” her until she wore a white mask. The reason, argued Buolamwini, who is Black, is because of algorithmic bias. Fighting it is one goal of the executive order on AI unveiled Monday by the Biden administration. Buolamwini, author of the new book “Unmasking AI,” told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali the executive order is a step in the right direction.

It was declared the winner of the search-engine wars way back in 1998. Fortune magazine said the company was poised for much bigger things. That company was, actually, Yahoo. As it turned out, that prediction didn’t age well. Of course, Google is the real winner of the battle for search engine dominance. How it got there is the subject of the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against it. Google has just started mounting its defense as the 10-week trial nears its end. Much of the case hinges on the question of default settings on tech devices. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with her colleague Matt Levin about the role of those settings in the government’s argument.

This week, Marketplace Tech is introducing a new regular Friday segment called Bytes: a week in review, where we’ll dive into the major news stories of the week, giving you the context and information you need. And what a week it’s been in the tech industry! Disarray in Congress disrupts plans to deal with deepfakes ahead of the 2024 election. Also, the White House prepares an executive order on artificial intelligence, set for release as soon as next week. But the biggest tech headline of the week? Dozens of states are suing Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta for allegedly harming the mental health of its young users with “addictive” features aiming at keeping kids on their various social media sites at the risk of their well-being. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios for her take on those stories.

Here in the U.S., big tech is having a good earnings season as companies release their quarterly report cards this week. This, after a year marked by layoffs, with many tech workers going through the first industry downturn of their careers. China’s tech industry has been even more exposed. The world’s second largest economy is struggling. Turns out, a long resume isn’t always helpful to those thrown out of work, as a result. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak, who explained what’s being called the “curse of 35.”

Last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) got more than 10,000 tips about minors extorted in sexting scams. The number is even higher so far this year. And what authorities are noticing is that in a lot of these cases boys are the target. It often starts with direct messages on social media. Flirting leads to requests for explicit photos. And as soon as they hit send, the person on the other end threatens to share the photos unless they get paid. Freelance reporter Chris Moody wrote about what’s being called “sextortion” for the Washington Post. A warning: this conversation includes a mention of teen suicide.

As recently as August, Airbnb was doing brisk business in New York City, with more than 22,000 listings there. Two months and a citywide crackdown later, that number has fallen to just above 3,000, a decrease of more than 80%. Local Law 18, which took effect last month, requires hosts of short-term rentals on Airbnb, Vrbo and similar sites to register with the city and live in the property they’re renting out. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Amanda Hoover, a staff writer at Wired, who’s been following the fallout from the new law.

The technology known as CRISPR is considered one of modern biology’s biggest breakthroughs. It allows scientists to edit genes, similar to how you cut and paste text in a word processor. More than a decade after pioneering CRISPR, Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, is applying it to big problems, like chronic disease and climate change.Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently met up with Doudna at Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute. It’s a cluster of lab stations, researchers and very loud refrigerators where CRISPR is used to edit microbiomes.

Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have lost their lives since Hamas gunmen staged their surprise raid on Oct. 7. In the wake of the attack, Israel’s defense forces have called up more than 350,000 reservists, about 4% of its population. The country’s booming tech industry could be affected more than most, given that so many younger Israelis work in the sector. Fast Company contributing writer Issie Lapowsky recently interviewed several of them, including an Israeli tech lawyer named Yitzy Hammer.

The talk of late at the Federal Communications Commission is whether to restore net neutrality. When the Barack Obama administration put those rules in place in 2015, the idea was to ensure that internet service providers — or ISPs — like Verizon and Comcast gave consumers fair access to the web and didn’t favor sites and services they controlled. But that mandate was repealed two years later under then-FCC Chair Ajit Pai, chosen by then-President Donald Trump. He argued that net neutrality would disincentivize companies from building their networks in low-income, urban and rural areas. Critics of the repeal argued that rural America’s ability to access the internet would be hurt. After the federal repeal, some states adopted their own net neutrality regulations while others didn’t, which provided a pretty great data set for researchers wanting to know: What would getting rid of net neutrality mean for internet access in rural areas? 

The word “bacteria” doesn’t exactly evoke positive images, but scientists at Cornell University recently discovered a novel way to replicate and use a bacterium from Oneida Lake in New York state. It’s called Shewanella oneidensis, and it has a special affinity for the rare-earth elements — such as so-called lanthanides, metals that are important for clean, renewable energy technology. The bacteria can be used to process rare-earth metals through a method called biosorption, which is considered safer and less taxing on the environment than current means of extraction. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the findings with Buz Barstow, a professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell and a lead researcher on the project.

If you asked for an extension on last year’s taxes, the bad news is the filing deadline was yesterday. The good is if you got it in, refunds are expected to reach you faster than they have in recent years. The notoriously clunky technology behind the IRS is getting a massive update, thanks to a $60 billion cash infusion from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The IRS’ technology was considered cutting edge in the 1960s, but Erica Neuman, assistant professor of accounting at the University of Dayton, tells Marketplace’s Lily Jamali the IRS needs all the IT help it can get.

When you think of the early days of video games, the Fairchild Channel F console might not be the first brand that comes to mind. The Fairchild Channel F was released in 1976, before the more famous Atari released its console. It was also the first system to use individual game cartridges, thanks in large part to Jerry Lawson, a Black engineer at Fairchild. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Anthony Frasier, CEO of ABF Creative and host of a podcast about Jerry Lawson called “Raising the Game,” about Lawson’s life and achievements.

Chinese automaker BYD is now the most popular EV in China and could soon beat Tesla as the No. 1 EV globally. As the Chinese auto market moves to electric, the playing field is getting crowded.

Whether it’s for travel, meals or event tickets, it’s hard to deny the allure of a good deal. And providing discounts through fraudulent means is a thriving business online. Once mostly relegated to the far reaches of the dark web, fraudsters are offering questionable deals to consumers on mainstream social media sites and messaging apps. That’s according to the online fraud prevention company Sift. Part of the scam is what is called an account takeover or ATO. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brittany Allen, a trust and safety architect with Sift, about why ATOs are increasing.

They say it’s harder to get into than Harvard: Y Combinator, YC for short, is “startup school” for tech founders. It takes applications twice a year. Being among the 230 startups accepted out of 24,000 means getting a half-million-dollar investment and access to mentors who’ve already made it. Airbnb, Reddit and DoorDash are on the alumni list. For most of its 18-year history, Y Combinator has been based in Mountain View, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. Recently, though, its center of gravity has moved about 40 miles north to San Francisco. YC opened a new office in June and now considers the city its headquarters. Garry Tan took over last year in a role once held by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Tan wants founders to be nearby, at least during the first three months they’re in the program. He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali why during a walk through the city.

Last weekend, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, people around the world flocked to Twitter — now X — for up-to-the-minute information. What they found was a site crawling with misinformation: images captured months or years earlier in unrelated attacks, inaccurate claims about other countries entering the conflict, even a fake White House press release announcing billions of dollars in new U.S. aid to Israel made the rounds. And X’s owner, Elon Musk, promoting accounts known for spreading lies and hate didn’t help. The signal-to-noise ratio on X is worse than ever, said David Clinch, a founding partner of the social media intelligence agency Storyful and co-founder of Media Growth Partners. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Clinch about what X users should remember when scrolling through the platform for news on the Israel-Hamas situation.

Almost one year after FTX collapsed, founder Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial for fraud. Crypto’s value has mostly recovered; users hope its reputation will too. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Vicky Huang, a crypto reporter at The Wall Street Journal, about how the trial is affecting perceptions of the industry.

The lucrative NBC sitcom “Cheers” featured a washed-up baseball-player-turned-bartender, a spunky waitress and a bunch of regulars who hung out at the bar. By the end of its 11-season run in 1993, the show was getting 26 million viewers a week.Back then, the public could get a lot of information about how our favorite shows performed. But for streaming in 2023, that data is harder to come by. It was a sticking point in the five-month Hollywood writers strike. Members of the Writers Guild of America have until next week to ratify a new contract with studios that includes access to data like total hours streamed. But even that metric isn’t enough, Brandon Katz, a strategist at entertainment consulting firm Parrot Analytics.

Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park is often referred to as the main street of venture capital. Funding from these influential firms can launch a startup into the big time — sometimes unicorn status. But just 2% of venture capital goes to all-female teams. That figure is even lower for Black women and Latina founders. A bill just passed by California lawmakers, SB 54, offers a first-in-the-nation push to gather the statistics on who’s getting all that highly sought-after cash. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until next week to sign it into law. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with reporter Hanisha Harjani of The Fuller Project about how it would work. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

The beauty industry is getting bigger and more lucrative, but beauty brand Olay says that with about 80% of beauty products going unused, there’s an ugly side to that growth. Startups in Sweden and Finland hope technology can reduce cosmetic waste by changing the way we shop.

A couple of weeks back, the news broke that a school district in Mason City, Iowa, was using ChatGPT to implement Iowa’s ban on books that include descriptions of sex acts. One book flagged was Buzz Bissinger’s classic “Friday Night Lights.” The thing is, that book includes no such descriptions, according to the author himself. Although the district reversed course, it’s an example of how more government officials are using artificial intelligence at work, in some cases leading to restrictions on tools like ChatGPT. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with journalist Todd Feathers, who covered this recently in Wired.

The humble keyboard is the unsung hero of our tech lives. It’s the thing that almost every great modern book or screenplay or even Instagram caption was first written on. And yet, very few people are writing about it. Designer and writer Marcin Wichary sought to change that with his new book “Shift Happens.” In it, he chronicles the sometimes contentious history of the keyboard. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Wichary about his research, beginning with the very first typewriters.

There’s an entire industry built around making money off personal information that’s gathered online. Companies known as data brokers collect it, then sell it to other parties. California tried to tackle this problem a couple of years ago, giving consumers the right to ask that companies delete their information. But actually doing that is tedious. Consumers have to make the request one company at a time. A bill passed by California lawmakers this month aims to change that by allowing one request to apply to all data brokers. SB 362, also known as the Delete Act, would additionally require brokers to register with the state. At this point, the legislation needs Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature to become law. Jessica Rich, a senior policy adviser for consumer protection at the law firm Kelley Drye, laid out the stakes of the issue for Marketplace’s Lily Jamali.

In making the case for the Human Brain Project back in 2009, neuroscientist Henry Markram noted that 2 billion people are affected by some kind of mental disorder. It was time, he said, to explore fundamental questions about how the brain works. The collaboration that resulted involved hundreds of scientists across several nations. This week marks the end of Europe’s ambitious but also at times controversial initiative. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Miryam Naddaf, a reporter for the publication Nature, about what the project’s researchers have accomplished.

According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states, “Amazon is a monopolist.” They say Amazon uses strategies that prevent sellers on its online marketplace from lowering prices on other platforms and compels them to use Amazon’s logistics service to be eligible for Amazon Prime. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Neil Chilson, the former chief technologist at the FTC and currently a research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, about the FTC’s lawsuit. He said Amazon’s argument will likely hinge on the amount of value they’ve created for consumers and sellers.

We’re going on Week 3 of Google’s high-stakes trial over allegations that it bought its way to dominance in internet search. The Department of Justice and several states allege that the tech giant has maintained a lucrative monopoly through exclusive contracts with browser companies and phone makers like Apple and Samsung. Google has countered that it’s dominant in search because it offers the best product. Covering this trial has been a complicated task. Part of the challenge is that Google and other companies involved have moved to shield documents from public view. That applies to some testimony too. Leah Nylen, an antitrust reporter for Bloomberg who’s been present throughout, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about the trade-offs involved in these confidentiality decisions.  

It’s impossible to quantify the volume of data generated by citizens around the world. Make no mistake, though — data has become a commodity to the companies that monetize it. At the same time, governments are making laws around how to protect it, who can access it and even where to store it. These choices are guided by how leaders think data can advance their national interests, according to Gillian Diebold at the Center for Data Innovation, who just wrote an analysis on the subject. She spoke with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about data policies in China, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Singapore and India and how they compare.

When ChatGPT came on the scene in November, it sent schools across the country into a panic. Some districts immediately started setting rules around how students could use artificial intelligence programs in their schoolwork. Others moved to ban them altogether. All this happened while information about the good and the bad of AI’s foray into classrooms was still pretty scarce. Researchers at the Center for Democracy & Technology, based in Washington, D.C., gathered data to counter some of the hype. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed it with Elizabeth Laird, CDT’s director of equity in civic technology and a co-author of a report out this week.  

AI chatbots have gotten pretty good at generating text that looks like it was written by a real person. That’s because they’re trained on words and sentences that actual humans wrote, scraped from blogs and news websites. But research now shows when you feed that AI-generated text back into the models to train a new chatbot, after a while, it sort of stops making sense. It’s a phenomenon AI researchers are calling “model collapse.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Clive Thompson, author of “Coders” and contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and Wired, about what could be a growing problem as more AI-generated stuff lands on the web.

Earthquakes are the trickiest phenomena to detect ahead of their impact. California, for example, has the MyShake app, which aims to notify Californians seconds ahead of a quake. But aside from the public sector funding this type of lifesaving innovation, private companies are also racing to develop the tech for earthquake warning and alert systems. The BBC’s Will Bain reports.

We are a little more than a year away from Election Day, and voters have probably heard something about candidates’ views on the economy, foreign policy and other issues in the media daily. But today, “Marketplace Tech” is looking at what candidates are telling voters about their plans for the future of technology in the United States. How are they framing issues related to artificial intelligence, social media and the power of Big Tech? If you scroll through the websites of the leading candidates, tech might not seem very high on their priority list so far. But tech is definitely on the agenda — you just have to know where to look and what to listen for. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Dave Weigel, politics reporter for the news website Semafor, about how the contenders are defining and spinning tech to influence voters.

There was a time when the unveiling of the next-generation Apple iPhone was a very big deal. Today, there are still plenty of fans keeping tabs on the latest releases from Apple and competitors like Samsung and Google. But if you didn’t hear much about Apple’s hardware showcase in Cupertino, California, last week, it wasn’t just you. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Lauren Goode, senior writer at Wired and the co-host of Wired’s “Gadget Lab” and “Have a Nice Future” podcasts, about the event and what it revealed about the state of smartphones.

Saturday marks one year since the death of Mahsa Amini, the young woman who was arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s “morality police” for allegedly violating its strict dress code for women. She died in custody. Protests that started at Amini’s funeral quickly spread across the country. Iranians have depended on messaging apps and social media to share information and try to stay safe. But staying connected hasn’t been easy, according to Shaghayegh Norouzi and Reza Ghazinouri with the U.S.-based nonprofit United for Iran. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Norouzi and Ghazinouri about the online resources United for Iran has developed and the technology used by activists across the country.

Here on Earth, the satellites that make up Starlink look like a string of stars travelling across the night sky. More than 4,000 of them are circling the Earth in low orbit right now. They’re part of the private venture that’s the brainchild of billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals there so Ukraine could stay connected to the internet. But turns out Musk controls both the on and the off switch on that technology, giving him an outsized role in the conflict, according to Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s out with a story in The Atlantic on how that happened and what can be done about it.

If you’re a kitchen tech fanatic, the odds are good you’ve purchased or been gifted an Instant Pot. But Instant Brands, the maker of the Instant Pot, filed for bankruptcy in June. Susan Orlean, who writes Afterword, an obituary column in The New Yorker, said it seemed fitting to write an obit for the Instant Pot.

The European Commission has designated six of the largest tech companies on the planet as the “gatekeepers” of online services. You’ll know these names: Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Facebook parent Meta. Google and YouTube parent Alphabet. And, maybe you’re less familiar with this one: ByteDance, which owns TikTok. They’ve all got until March to comply with the continent’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to give users more choice. For more, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Sumit Sharma, a competition and antitrust senior researcher at Consumer Reports, who explained what the term “gatekeeper” refers to.

States across the country are considering “right to repair” laws. These laws require most electronics and appliance manufacturers to provide instructions and tools to consumers wanting to repair their products instead of paying company technicians for the service or, worst case, buying a replacement. It’s something that iPhone maker Apple has long been against, until last month, when the company suddenly announced its support for California’s bill. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Brian Heater, hardware editor at TechCrunch, about Apple’s change of heart and what it means for consumers.

When’s the last time you used Microsoft Bing or Duck Duck Go to search the internet? Yeah, that’s no accident, say the U.S. government and several states. Next week, an antitrust case they filed against Google goes to trial. The original complaint notes Google accounted for almost 90% of all search queries in the U.S. And Googling only got us so far on this one, so Marketplace’s Lily Jamali called on Rebecca Allensworth, an antitrust lawyer and law professor at Vanderbilt.

When Mustafa Suleyman co-founded the AI research company DeepMind more than a decade ago, his goal felt ambitious, even a bit far-fetched: to build a machine that could replicate human intelligence. Now, he says, rapid progress in the development of AI means that goal could be met within the next three years, and the implications of that milestone are huge. Suleyman explores those implications in his new book, “The Coming Wave,” which came out this week. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Suleyman, now CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, about a core theme of the book: the question of containment.

Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey banned them in 2019. Now, owner and Chair Elon Musk is officially bringing back political ads from parties and candidates to the company he renamed X, expanding its push into cause-based advertising. The move could boost revenue; some big brands have been less than eager to buy ads on the platform since Musk took over. X didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of taping, but it has said it plans to expand its safety and elections team ahead of the 2024 elections in the United States. That, of course, would come after deep staff cuts. For analysis, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali had a chat with Jonathan Lemire, host of “Way Too Early” on MSNBC and the White House bureau chief at Politico, and Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.  

We know that artificial intelligence will change the workplace, and in some industries more than others. Also, perhaps, in some countries more than others. Today we bring you the view from China. Marketplace’s correspondent there, Jennifer Pak, has been speaking to companies and workers in creative industries about this thorny issue. She recently visited a Chinese company that’s been playing with AI to generate animation. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Pak, who is in Shanghai, to explore how workers and businesses there are thinking about AI and work.

Worldcoin is using silver orbs to scan people’s eyeballs. The idea is to collect biometric data to verify whether an online account holder is indeed a human being. In some countries, the project is paying people in crypto for scanning their eyes, while in others, Worldcoin has been suspended from operating. The BBC’s Leanna Byrne went to a scanning site in London to try it out.  

The UK’s “Online Safety Bill” is on Parliament’s agenda as members return next week. Supporters promise it would make Britain the safest place in the world to be online, protecting especially kids from harmful content. But while acknowledging its intent, U.S. tech executives say it deals a major blow to privacy. Meredith Whittaker, president of the nonprofit encrypted messaging app Signal, is an outspoken critic. She’s concerned by a clause that lets British regulators mandate that citizens install surveillance software.

Just 3% of digital health venture capital investments in the United States between 2011 and mid-2020 focused on women’s health, and last year, women’s health startups raised a little more than $1 billion, not a lot in relative terms. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brittany Hawkins, co-founder and CEO of Elanza Wellness, who has been navigating these waters.

YouTube recently announced a partnership with Universal Music Group to launch a music AI incubator. Their goal is to come up with new artificial intelligence projects and protect artists. The venture comes after songs featuring AI versions of singers like Drake, Kanye West and Frank Sinatra got viral attention, raising questions around how copyright law applies to AI-derived music and who should be paid. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge and host of the Decoder podcast, about how the deal could breed innovation but also create serious problems.

According to the Pew Research Center, about one-third of Americans have at least one tattoo. Most get one to honor someone or make a statement. But a nanoengineer in Colorado, a tattoo artist to the stars and a former doctoral student have long-term hopes for smart tattoos with a health purpose. They’re starting with ink that can appear and disappear with different kinds of light.

Video games are about a lot more than having fun. They also give us narrative lessons and messages about the economy and culture — issues that often affect the people who make them. “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio has been reporting on this in a series called “Skin in the Game.” The series took him to Oakland, California, for a visit to a nonprofit group called Gameheads. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with David about how the medium is giving students at Gameheads an outlet to translate their personal experiences into stories.

This year could become the hottest one ever recorded. In reporting on the climate crisis, carbon dioxide gets most of the headlines. But molecule for molecule, methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas. It’s odorless and colorless, making it difficult to detect. While CO2 can linger in the atmosphere for centuries, methane lasts more like seven to 12 years. And because methane is so potent, the ability to quickly detect and fix leaks could have an immediate climate benefit. The nonprofit Carbon Mapper tracks greenhouse gas emissions by flying planes with imaging spectrometers over oil and natural gas hubs and other spots where leaks can cluster. But to scale things up, it’s working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on an instrument that can detect methane releases from space. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently spoke about the mission and its mechanics with JPL senior research scientist Rob Green at the lab’s campus in Pasadena, California, outside the “clean room” where the instrument has been developed.

It can be easy to overlook the people behind all the technology we use. But a startup based in India called Karya is putting them front and center, both in its method and its marketing. The company’s stated goal is to alleviate poverty for Indians living in low-income communities by paying them approximately $5 per hour, a wage that’s higher than the market rate, to create data. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Vivek Seshadri, Karya’s chief technology officer and co-founder, about how his company fits into the lucrative data collection business.

To contain the opioid crisis, health and law enforcement agencies have turned to technology to monitor doctor and patient prescription data. But experts have raised questions about how these systems work and voiced concerns about their accuracy and potential biases. Plus, some patients and doctors say they’re being unfairly targeted. Today, we hear from Sam Whitehead and Andy Miller of KFF Health News about the real-world complications this artificial intelligence is bringing.

The thing we call “the cloud” might sound harmless, but that seemingly abstract place where the details of your digital life are stored takes a heavy toll on the environment. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, a postdoctoral researcher in the Fixing Futures training group at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, about his research on cloud data centers and their effect on the health of the planet.

Warning: This conversation isn’t appropriate for all listeners. YouTube’s recommendation algorithm has always been key to keeping users on the site. Watch a cute cat video, and the platform spews countless more of the same. But that also applies to harmful content, which the YouTube algorithm sometimes serves up not just to adults, but also to kids. Well, this month, Google-owned YouTube said it’ll stop displaying recommended videos to some users who have turned off their watch histories. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed this with Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, an organization that “seeks to hold large technology companies accountable.” Paul said controls on the recommendation algorithm on the site’s homepage are vital.

Deepfakes are just one example of how disinformation-filled digital media are making the rounds as we creep toward the 2024 national elections. These efforts to manipulate voters with the help of artificial intelligence and other tech tools are being crafted by activists, propagandists and political campaigns. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Susan Gonzales, CEO of the nonprofit group AIandYou, about what the nation’s first “AI election” could look like.

Hollywood is a month into its first double labor strike since 1960. The Writers Guild of America hit the picket lines in May, and in July, screen actors represented by SAG-AFTRA joined them on strike. Both unions want higher pay, better residuals and protections from artificial intelligence. Yet as actors and writers fight to limit the use of AI, the film and TV studios are hiring for a growing number of AI-related jobs. For an update on where things stand in Hollywood’s labor dispute, Lily Jamali spoke with Lucas Shaw, managing editor for media and entertainment at Bloomberg News.

Warning: This episode contains references to sexual abuse and violence. Whether for a hookup or to find true love, 3 out of 10 American adults say they have used a dating app, according to the Pew Research Center. But an investigation out Wednesday from Mother Jones looks into how these apps can also incubate abuse, finding that companies like Grindr and Match Group have failed to protect some of their users from predators. At the heart of this story is this question: Is that the companies’ responsibility? The tech industry has long argued the answer is no, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability for content posted xx on their sites. Abby Vesoulis is the author of the Mother Jones investigation. Her story begins with Matthew Herrick, whose ex-boyfriend created fake profiles of him on Grindr.

If you drive an electric vehicle, you are familiar with the nagging fear that your EV will run out of battery power. A company in Sweden is trying to change that with technology that allows electric vehicles to charge while driving, with the power coming from the road itself. The BBC’s Adrienne Murray reports that it would be the first of its kind.

We’re quickly coming up on one year since ChatGPT was released to the public. In that time, it and other generative AI tools have placed artificial intelligence front and center in a larger discussion about the future of work, art, ethics and pretty much everything else. So, what do Americans think about AI now? The upshot is that many of you are checking the “somewhat concerned” and “mostly concerned” boxes on this one. And it seems like Democrats and Republicans are generally on the same page regarding the future of AI. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the question with Ryan Heath, global tech correspondent for Axios, who recently combed through several surveys to get a sense of the country’s current sentiment toward AI.

Almost three years later, the 2020 presidential election is hardly in the rearview mirror. Big questions remain about how algorithms spread polarizing content on the social media platforms that so many Americans turn to for news and information. For answers, academics across the country have been collaborating with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The result? Four studies that look at online polarization and ideological segregation among users on both platforms over three months during the 2020 election campaign. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with New York University’s Joshua Tucker, one of the academics who worked on these reports. He walked her through what he considers the top three findings.

The artists, producers, designers, and others who make your favorite video games have the technical chops to make it in the industy. But they also bring their personal stories and experiences to the job — and they’re able to take players along. Gameheads, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California, is teaching the next generation of developers how to do that, encouraging them to incorporate themes from their own lives, like gentrification and mental health, into the games they create. Lisette Titre-Montgomery is a veteran art director in the game industry and a Gameheads instructor. She shared how she got started and why she’s helping others break into the business of making games.

Artificial intelligence can feel abstract, so we’ve come to depend on certain narratives to try and make sense of it all. Some of the language we use to describe AI and our interactions with it is rooted in religious ideas. Are you bracing for the apocalypse? Have you been blessed by the algorithm? Have you consulted with a Robo Rabbi lately? The deification of AI, whether it’s done consciously or not, is something Beth Singler studies as a professor of digital religions at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Singler about religious tropes in the narratives we consume and share about AI.

Layoffs are shaking up the most exclusive corner of Silicon Valley. Bloomberg News’ Sarah McBride says what once was unthinkable in venture capital is now just another sign of the times.

Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation has plans to commercialize autonomous trucks by the end of next year. So far, the company seems to be on that path in Texas. Here in California, where the company is partly headquartered and has long incubated much of its technology, it’s a different story. The company’s home state may push back on its innovations with California State Assembly Bill 316, which would prohibit any self-driving trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds from hitting the road without a trained human operator behind the wheel. The legislation’s got the support of labor unions including the Teamsters, who argue it will save jobs and keep California’s roads safe. The bill could be headed to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk in the near future. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali made a visit to Aurora’s headquarters in the Bay Area and sat down with its CEO, Chris Urmson, and asked him how this bill could halt the company’s advances here in the Golden State.

The Joe Biden administration has begun work on a cybersecurity certification program for online devices and appliances that may be vulnerable to hacks or other invasive cyberattacks. Consumers can basically think of this U.S. Cyber Trust Mark as akin to a nutrition label, but in this case it tells you if your smart speakers, baby monitor or fitness tracker are secure. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Stacey Higginbotham, founder and editor of the Internet of Things newsletter, about why getting this program out soon is vital to strengthening national cybersecurity.

Executives of seven tech companies gathered at the White House last month and committed to voluntarily address the risks posed by artificial intelligence. Just days later, a subset of those industry players, including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, announced the formation of their own regulatory body called the Frontier Model Forum, which they said is focused on the responsible development of powerful AI tools.  The forum is set to have plenty of bells and whistles, including an advisory board and a public library of solutions to support “best practices,” but concrete targets to determine whether the oversight effort is working? Those are a bit more TBD. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and co-founder of Humane Intelligence and a responsible AI fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, about the pros and cons of this kind of group.

There’s a lot at stake in the artificial intelligence race, and although it may feel like it’s everywhere, the U.S. AI race is primarily playing out in just a few places — specifically, hubs that offer AI entrepreneurs advantages like capital, talent and more. That helps explain why so many AI companies, patents, job opportunities and so much else are concentrated in Silicon Valley and other very expensive, mostly coastal U.S. cities, said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Muro about that concentration and what it means for AI development going forward.

Every year, grade school students gather at Nasa’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to send science experiments into space. Now, these experiments have to be tiny, fitting into a 6×6 centimeter cube, which can either be flown into space in a research rocket or a scientific balloon. After the cubes are brought back to Earth, the students get together to analyze their experiments and see what happened while they were floating up there for 15 or so hours. This year, hundreds of students from the U.S., Canada and Colombia were in Virginia showcasing their experiments.

There’s a new large language model in town that threatens to out-open OpenAI’s ChatGPT. LLaMa 2, from Facebook parent company Meta, has capabilities roughly in line with big-name competitors. However, it’s also open source, meaning the model’s source code is available for anyone to study or build upon for free. OpenAI, Google and many other artificial intelligence innovators have opted to keep their latest models proprietary. A more open approach has obvious benefits for research and enterprise but can also be advantageous for the companies that put these tools out. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Tom Goldstein, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, about the advantages and disadvantages of the open-source approach.

It’s been just a few weeks since the new Threads app burst onto the scene, threatening to be the ultimate Twitter-Killer, or platform formerly known as Twitter-killer. But it’s not just an alternative to the former bird app Threads has promised, but an alternative model of social media. One that is decentralized and interoperable. So how is this model different than the classic flavor most of us are used to? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Arvind Narayanan, a professor of computer science at Princeton.

It sure feels like we’re on the verge of an artificial intelligence revolution in many workplaces. New tools like chatbots and image generators have taken the tech world by storm, but many businesses across the economy are still figuring out what exactly it means for them. That’s often where firms like Accenture come in. It offers business services and consulting. Last month, Accenture surveyed more than 2,300 C-suite leaders across industries and around the world on their thinking about integrating generative tools into their workflows. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Lan Guan, the global lead for data and AI at Accenture, who said the survey found almost universal enthusiasm.

Even the most impressive artificial intelligence today isn’t quite what we see in science fiction. The superintelligent humanoids of “Westworld,” the malevolent supercomputer in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the emotionally attuned operating system in “Her” are all more like artificial general intelligence, rather than just artificial intelligence. They’re machines that are capable of everything humans are, or even more. As far as we know, AGI hasn’t become a reality yet. But John Licato, a professor of computer science at the University of South Florida, tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that experts don’t always agree on where the tipping point is.

Most online services that children use are likely monetizing their data in some way, according to a new report from Common Sense Media. The nonprofit analyzed the privacy policies of more than 200 popular internet platforms and found that about three-quarters of them were sharing user data or lacked transparency about how they use personal data. Disclosing those details and offering users a chance to opt out is required in California under the latest expansion of the state’s landmark privacy law, which was sponsored by Common Sense. A recent court ruling extended the deadline to comply with the new privacy provisions to March 29. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, about how many companies’ current privacy policies can be misleading.

The movie “Oppenheimer,” about the making of the nuclear bomb, opened last week, and the subject matter has spurred an unavoidable comparison with artificial intelligence. Leaders at AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have explicitly framed the risks of developing AI in those terms, while historical accounts of the Manhattan Project have become required reading among some researchers. That’s according to Vox senior correspondent Dylan Matthews. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Matthews about his recent reporting on the parallels between AI and nuclear weapons.

We’ve taken a week off from our usual programming to research and report on the rise of artificial intelligence in the workplace. In our “AI on the Job” series, we looked into the ways this technology is automating some jobs, simplifying others, competing with human workers and creating entirely new careers.

All week, as part of our “AI on the Job” series, we’ve been reporting on the ways generative artificial intelligence tools like chatbots are changing how we work. Today: the careers this technology is helping to create.

In this episode of Marketplace Tech’s “AI on the Job” series, we’re digging into the ways artificial intelligence could be changing work for the better. Across sectors, AI is helping people do their jobs by making some tasks more efficient, eliminating other tasks altogether and even injecting a creative boost into their workflow.

In this episode of Marketplace Tech’s “AI on the Job” series, Meghan McCarty Carino explores whether generative AI technology has the potential to automate certain jobs in the near term.

In today’s episode of “Marketplace Tech’s” “AI on the Job” series, we look at how generative AI could influence the skills you pick up on the job and what skills become more — or less — valuable as more employers explore tools like chatbots.

You might have heard some of the talk about how new generative artificial intelligence tools, like chatbots and image generators, could upend work. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is diving deeper into the disruptions this technology is already bringing to workplaces — not in some speculative future, but right now. In our series this week, “AI on the Job,” we’ll explore the work that AI is automating, augmenting or creating entirely new markets for.

This month, “Marketplace Tech” is looking back at a movie that came out 10 years ago, but feels very current. Spoke Jonze’s 2013 film “Her” depicts a lonely divorced man played by Joaquin Phoenix who falls in love with something like an artificial intelligence chatbot voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Marco Dehnert, a doctoral candidate in communications at Arizona State University, about his research on the relationships between humans and machines. He said these relationships are becoming more common as AI advances.

For the most part, it’s not too hard to get access to movies from the last decade or even the last century. But if you want to experience a video game from before, say, the ancient era of 2010? Good luck. A new report from the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network finds that 87% of those older games are “critically endangered.” They’re not commercially available to the public unless fans have dozens of different old systems to play them on or travel to an archive in person and play them there. In other words, the roots of this hugely influential artistic and cultural medium are in danger of being lost. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Phil Salvador, library director for the Video Game History Foundation, about the report.

The moon may soon be open for business, and space startups in Colorado are seizing the opportunity. Colorado Public Radio’s Dan Boyce reports from a warehouse in Arvada, Colorado, where one startup is testing its moon rover, currently scheduled to land on the lunar south pole later this year.

The hot, new thing in social media is not really that new at all. And that’s kind of the point. The app Threads from Meta looks like a familiar blend of Twitter and Instagram. It’s attracted more than 100 million users in less than a week, pulling way ahead of Twitter alternatives like Mastodon or Bluesky, in large part because it’s part of an already established social media brand. You don’t have to start from scratch on Threads; just log in with your Instagram credentials and import all your follows with the push of a button. But there’s some baggage that comes along with that Insta network, said Shirin Ghaffary, a senior correspondent at Vox who covers social media. She talked about it with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

The 2013 movie “Her” depicts a near future world where a lonely divorcee, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. This month we’re taking a closer look at the Spike Jonze film and how it resonates 10 years later as we find ourselves in a real life AI boom. Production designer KK Barrett walks Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about how he imagined the world of “Her” as almost a counterpoint to the science fiction dystopias we’re used to.

Professional video gaming — otherwise known as esports — has grown into a billion-dollar industry in recent years. Esports tournaments now draw crowds of tens of thousands to watch players compete at games like Valorant and League of Legends, while top esports athletes earn millions of dollars. But for too long, like so many facets of the gaming world, this industry has been dominated by men. A 2019 report showed that just 5% of professional esports players were women, a statistic that seemingly hasn’t changed much in years.

This episode originally aired May 3, 2023. While it’s never been easy to get one of the coveted spots at big-name Silicon Valley firms, this year there’s an added wrinkle: The tech industry is reeling from mass layoffs. Many human resources departments and recruiting budgets have been slashed, which could put up even more barriers for candidates from underrepresented groups, said Ruthe Farmer, founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund, which helps low-income students get through college and get on track for a career in tech. That’s challenging even in the best of times, she told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

This episode originally aired on May 25, 2023. The internet is where so much of what happens in our world gets archived. But where does the internet get archived? There are projects around the world, like the Internet Archive, to try to preserve some content online. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kayla Harris, a professor and director of the Marian Library at the University of Dayton, about whether current archiving work is enough.

This episode originally aired on April 19, 2023. “Prompt engineering” for artificial intelligence is a new career field that’s rapidly gaining interest. In some cases, salaries are reaching $350,000. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Anton Korinek, economics and AI professor at the University of Virginia, about who will need these workers and how this role is likely to evolve.

This episode was originally published on Mar. 28, 2023. Digital tools like virtual therapy and meditation apps have made mental health care more accessible. But they’ve made data about the people using them more accessible too. That’s what Joanne Kim found while conducting research as an undergraduate student at Duke University. The final report was published in February. During her study, Kim identified 11 data broker firms willing and able to sell highly sensitive mental health data to her. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Justin Sherman, a senior fellow at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy who helped oversee the study, about how this data ends up on the market.

Amazon and Walmart. Walmart and Amazon. Separately and together, for better or worse, these megaretailers have transformed how Americans transact. It’s the subject of a new book: “Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart and the Battle for Our Wallets.” Author Jason Del Rey says that in recent years, the two have been almost mirror images, with Walmart chasing online sales while Amazon opens physical stores.

Politics is a game in which the truth often gets stretched. But new artificial intelligence tools are making it easy for anyone to bend reality into a pretzel. AI-generated video, still images and fundraising emails are already popping up on the campaign trail. There are fake photos of Donald Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, exaggerated dystopian Toronto cityscapes and a stock photo of a woman with a curious surplus of arms. The threat goes beyond the occasional extra appendage or incendiary but obvious deepfake, says Mike Hamilton, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Critical Insight. He spoke with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about AI’s power to enable election manipulators to finely target specific groups of voters with disinformation.

Behind the artificial intelligence tools that have become household names is an army of human workers teaching the bots to be smart. These aren’t the folks who testify before Congress or hype the latest updates on social media. For the most part, they’re gig workers spread across the globe who do seemingly random tasks for subcontractors of subcontractors to the big-name companies that make the news. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with features writer Josh Dzieza, who went inside the world of “data annotation” for this week’s New York magazine cover story in collaboration with The Verge. He said the people doing this work often are given little information about who or what it’s for.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) recently released its annual social media safety index. It scores the five biggest platforms — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter — on how well they’re doing protecting LGBTQ+ users from harassment and abuse. All five platforms received failing grades. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube did improve their scores slightly over last year but Twitter’s score sank, hitting a new low of 33%, according to Jenni Olson, GLAAD’s Program Director for Social Media Safety.

Concern about the harm social media can do to young people is growing. But to protect kids, platforms have to know who is underage. That’s why user age verification has become a focus for policymakers. Several states have passed laws that require it. But these policies require a range of trade-offs, according to a new analysis from Utah State University’s Center for Growth and Opportunity. Matt Perault and Scott Brennen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center on Technology Policy co-wrote that research. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed the costs and benefits involved in various age verification methods with the pair.

The chatbots are out of the bag, and educators are scrambling to adjust. Chris Howell, an adjunct assistant professor of religious studies at Elon University, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that as the year progressed he noticed more and more suspiciously chatbot-esque prose popping up in student papers. So rather than trying to police the tech, he embraced it. He assigned students to generate an essay entirely with ChatGPT and then critique it themselves.

The “creator economy” could grow to nearly half a trillion dollars in the next four years, according to Goldman Sachs. That buzzword describes the online ecosystem of people creating and monetizing videos, music, podcasts, newsletters, art and other forms of expression, usually on social media. But advertising and algorithms can be fickle mistresses. For the last decade, Patreon has enabled fans to directly support creators with paid digital subscriptions. Now the company is offering a free membership option and the ability to sell digital works. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Patreon CEO and co-founder Jack Conte about how these new services can help the creator economy grow.

In the U.S., employers are the main source of health coverage and, increasingly, benefits that encourage “wellness.” Many of them are provided in digital form, like meditation apps, virtual therapy or wearables that track our steps, heart rate or stress level. But with that web of digital benefits comes privacy concerns, according to a new report from the nonprofit Data & Society, titled “Wellness Capitalism: Employee Health, the Benefits Maze, and Worker Control.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino delved into the report with its co-authors, senior researcher Tamara Nopper and research analyst Eve Zelickson, both with Data & Society’s labor futures team.  

For a lot of us, most of our days are spent online, and the pandemic only increased that pace. That’s also true for the way we do business. Utilities, restaurants, health care providers, the government — they all want us to go to an app or a website to get stuff done. While this might be easy and convenient for people who don’t remember a world before the web, many older adults are left out by the move to digital. Reporter Ashley Milne-Tyte looks into the ways older adults are trying to catch up with tech and how some companies are responding.

When you think of the early days of video games, the Fairchild Channel F console might not be the first brand that comes to mind. The Fairchild Channel F was released in 1976, before the more famous Atari released its console. It was also the first system to use individual game cartridges thanks in large part to Jerry Lawson, a Black engineer at Fairchild. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Anthony Frasier, CEO of ABF Creative and host of a podcast about Jerry Lawson called “Raising the Game,” about Lawson’s life and achievements.

The French firm Thales is launching a credit card that talks. Not to embarrass users for their spending habits, but to make transactions more secure for people with a visual impairments. About 250 million people worldwide have some form of visual impairment, according to the World Health Organization, and in France they’re often targeted in fraud schemes because of their disability. The new Thales credit card connects users with a phone app that verbalizes transactions. In Paris, John Laurenson tagged along as one person tried it out.

Publishers of books, magazines and their digital incarnations have long hired artists to contribute unique visuals to their storytelling. It’s the kind of work Molly Crabapple cut her teeth on. Her illustrated journalism has been published by outlets like Vice, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. But she fears the format faces an existential threat from artificial intelligence image generators like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Crabapple recently wrote an open letter about her concerns in collaboration with the Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting. She talked about it with host Meghan McCarty Carino.

Whenever we talk about artificial intelligence, the problem of bias is never far behind. All kinds of insidious patterns can get embedded in these systems because they’re trained on data from our imperfect world. A new report from Bloomberg looks at bias in text-to-image generative AI systems like Stable Diffusion. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed the issue with the report’s authors, technology reporter Dina Bass and data visualization reporter Leonardo Nicoletti. They analyzed thousands of AI-generated images of people to determine what the world according to AI looks like.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog agency for the banking sector, recently warned the industry about the use of artificial intelligence chatbots. Previous iterations of chatbots, which operate like automated decision trees, have long been used in banks’ customer service operations. But these new generative tools like ChatGPT are so good at imitating human communication, banks may be relying on them more than ever. While they can incorporate huge amounts of data, AI chatbots are prone to “hallucinating,” or making things up. Also, they’re not equipped to handle complex questions that can be involved in banking services, according to Erie Meyer, chief technologist at the CFPB, who discussed these issues with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

Generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT have caught on like wildfire, largely because of their impressive capabilities, but also because they’re free, or nearly free, to use. But just because a service doesn’t charge users doesn’t mean it doesn’t have costs. In reality, sophisticated large language models cost a lot to build and maintain. AI companies will have to recoup that investment eventually, in one way or another. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke about the high costs of AI chatbots with Will Oremus, technology news analysis writer for The Washington Post. Oremus recently delved into how the financial aspect of AI development could influence the course of the technology.

The field of brain-computer interfaces is quickly advancing. Elon Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink, received approval from the Food and Drug Administration last month to begin to test brain implants in humans. Its rival company, Paradromics, is even further along in the process. Neurotechnology could be revolutionary for people with severe paralysis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or other disabilities that affect communication. But Sara Goering, a philosophy professor at the University of Washington, says it comes with ethical concerns. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Goering about those concerns, which include the potential monetization of information gleaned from a person’s cognitive core.

New generative artificial intelligence tools like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT can create stunning headshots, write flawless prose — even imitate someone’s voice. Basically, a catfisher’s dream. In other words, these tools enable a user to create a false online persona that in some cases can be used for financial gain. Catfishing and other online romance scams have become an increasing problem, especially on dating apps. Tinder, one of the most popular dating apps in the U.S., has stepped up its efforts to combat these scams in recent years, with features like a new video verification system to authenticate users’ identities. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Rory Kozoll, Tinder’s senior vice president of product integrity, about the company’s efforts to fight scams, strengthen trust and potentially deploy AI tools in support of Tinder’s and its users’ goals.

When asked to complete this joke, “Why did the chatbot cross the road?” OpenAI’s ChatGPT gave this response: “As an AI language model, it doesn’t have physical presence or the ability to cross roads.” A rather disappointing punchline, considering the chatbot’s long list of impressive capabilities. Writers Guild of America members have raised alarms about the use of AI in the scriptwriting process, but when it comes to killing a comedy set, these systems have a ways to go. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Tony Veale, an associate professor at University College Dublin, about what it means for AI to develop its own sense of humor.

The European Union is getting closer to approving the world’s most comprehensive artificial intelligence regulations. Here in the U.S. — well, at least we’re not defaulting on our debt, right? Fast-moving developments in generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have raised a slew of concerns over misinformation, copyright violation and job losses. But even the EU’s AI Act — years in the making — wasn’t crafted with this kind of general purpose AI in mind, these broadly accessible programs that have almost infinite applications. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Alex Engler, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies AI governance.

Last week, Amazon agreed to pay more than $30 million to settle two complaints brought by the Federal Trade Commission over allegations the company violated user privacy with its Ring video security system and Alexa audio assistant. The FTC said Amazon gave employees too much access to users’ private videos and left Ring systems open to hacking. The agency also said Amazon Alexa devices violated child privacy law by retaining kids’ voice recordings for years and that the company used consumer audio and video recordings to train algorithms without consent. Amazon, while agreeing to the proposed settlement, denied it broke any laws and said the issues had long since been addressed. Ring also released a similar statement. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Makena Kelly, a politics reporter at The Verge, about the nonmonetary penalties facing Amazon.

During the pandemic, many offices were vacated in favor of working from home. Now, cities are looking to reuse the buildings by converting them to housing units. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Steven Paynter, principal at Gensler, about an algorithm that assesses whether an office building would make for a successful conversion.

Powerful new artificial intelligence tools have a lot of people worried about being replaced. Remie Michelle Clarke, a voiceover artist in Dublin, says she’s already seeing it. Michelle Clarke did some voiceover work for Microsoft a few years ago, and since then, her voice has been licensed to third-party companies, including one called Revoicer, an AI company selling text-to-speech voices. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Michelle Clarke about the growing threat this technology poses to her businesses and the experience hearing her own voice doing gigs she didn’t book.

Last week, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned about the risks social media could pose to the well-being of children and adolescents. It’s a topic the American Psychological Association has also been researching. The organization recently released recommendations based on the growing body of research into how social media is affecting young people. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Mitch Prinstein, the APA’s chief science officer, about social media’s effects on identity, relationships, sleep and more.

Generative AI may help some workers become better and faster at their jobs, which could ultimately boost wages. That’s good news for workers, right? Not if employers roll out AI in a way that replaces workers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Anton Korinek, economics professor at the University of Virginia, on the long- and short-term impacts generative AI may have on the labor economy.

There’s a federal regulation requiring “quiet vehicles” — meaning hybrid and electric cars — to emit synthetic sounds. That’s because without noisy combustion engines, EVs produce no sound of their own at speeds under about 18 mph, which would make them dangerous to other road users, particularly visually impaired pedestrians. So those sounds are added on. We wanted to know why these cars sound the way they do, so we asked Danielle Venne. She’s the executive creative director at Made Music Studio and helped design the sound made by Nissan’s Leaf.  

For a lot of people, lessons about investing and personal finance are learned the hard way. Now, Marketplace has a new show on YouTube called “Financially Inclined” that aims to teach young people about money in a less painful fashion. It’s made in collaboration with Next Gen Personal Finance, a financial literacy non-profit, and hosted by Yanely Espinal, who says digital tools like computer games can help get inexperienced investors engaged.

The internet is where so much of what happens in our world gets archived. But where does the internet get archived? There are projects around the world, like the Internet Archive, to try to preserve some content online. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kayla Harris, a professor and director of the Marian Library at the University of Dayton, about whether current archiving work is enough.

Next year’s election is still 18 months away, but it’s never too soon to start thinking about security. Voting systems are a little different wherever you go and the tech has changed over the years — from paper ballots to electronic ones to something in between. Most jurisdictions in the U.S. now use hand-marked paper ballots, or paper ballots marked with an electronic interface, and counted with optical scanners or by hand, should the need arise. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Pam Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, who said that’s the gold standard for security. That nonpartisan organization recently published its recommendations for 2024.

The language models behind artificial intelligence chatbots aren’t just great at generating term papers, Fake Drake raps and get-rich-quick schemes. This technology could be transformative in the world of augmentative and alternative communication. AAC refers to all the ways people communicate besides talking. It’s typically used by people who — due to a medical issue or disability — experience difficulty with speech. Sam Sennott, an assistant professor of special education at Portland State University in Oregon, has spent much of his career researching the field. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Sennott about what he calls an exciting time for AAC.

Bitcoin believers gathered in Miami for what organizers say is the world’s biggest annual bitcoin convention, though it was quite a bit smaller than last year. It drew less than half of the 35,000 attendees who went in 2022. Of course, a lot has happened in the crypto world since then. A little disaster called FTX, a crypto-friendly bank failure or two. Not to mention the price of bitcoin has taken a dive, from around $40,000 during last year’s event to about $26,000 this time around. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with senior reporter Matt Levin, who was there to take the pulse.

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a win to Big Tech on Thursday, when it avoided weighing in on the limits of a key piece of tech law called Section 230. It’s a segment of the Communications Decency Act that shields internet companies from liability for their users’ content. In recent years, it’s become a target for both legal challenges and political attacks. Add to the mix artificial intelligence, which is raising new questions. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to former Congressman Chris Cox, who co-authored the law along with Sen. Ron Wyden back in 1996. Overall, he said, the law has held up after 27 years.

Artists worry AI will take away jobs. But for those who never went to fashion school, does it provide opportunities? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Nima Abbasi, partner at Maison Meta, about how the first AI fashion week allowed creatives without formal training to go head to head with experienced designers.

Autonomous vehicles are here, and they’re causing some problems. Reports over the past year show driverless cars occasionally getting glitchy in cities like San Francisco and Phoenix. Andrew Hawkins, transportation editor for The Verge, says driverless cars are in a confusing moment. Most of the time, they work remarkably well, until suddenly, they don’t. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Hawkins about the state of autonomous vehicles today and an industry beset by technological and financial problems.

Passwords are an enormous security risk for Americans, so big tech companies are looking at passkeys as a tentative solution for password breaches and lost phones. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Chester Wisniewski, a security expert as Sophos, about the risks and benefits of passkeys.

Google is bringing artificial intelligence to … like, everything. Last week, the company announced updates to its Bard chatbot and integrations into search, productivity tools, health care services and more. But plenty of people are calling for more caution with this technology, from the thousands of tech and science experts who signed an open letter calling for a pause in AI development to renowned former Google employee Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whom many consider the “godfather” of AI. Hinton recently left the company. Though he said Google “has acted very responsibly” when it comes to AI, he sought the freedom to “talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked James Manyika, Google’s senior VP of technology and society, about how the company is balancing concerns about the risk AI poses with its plans for developing the technology.

Google revealed a slew of new products this week at its annual developer conference, I/O. But it was artificial intelligence that stole the show, from new search integrations and updates to its Bard chatbot to an automatic translation dubbing service. Google is clearly going big on AI as it tries to fend off competition from Microsoft and OpenAI. It’s part of a strategy to be simultaneously bold and responsible, says James Manyika, Google’s senior vice president of technology and society. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Manyika about what that “bold” and “responsible” stance means in practice.

Sure, technology that supposedly reads human emotion has been on the scene for a while, along with concerns about its use. But now it looks like Apple may be getting in on the game. The tech titan is reportedly developing AI-powered mood tracking for Apple Watches. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Daniel Kraft, a physician-scientist and founder of Digital.Health. He says wearable emotion recognition devices could achieve something that’s been difficult to provide in mental health care: real-time response.

Disruptive technology is at the heart of the contentious negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and studios, networks and streaming services. Last week, those negotiations failed and the screenwriters went on strike. The WGA has pushed for guardrails on the use of new generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which are trained on vast amounts of human-made creative work and could, some fear, end up replacing it. It’s a concern that is popping up more and more across a number of different industries as the implications of this technology come into focus. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Virginia Doellgast, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who said the union’s efforts to contain the harm of AI echo past labor struggles with new technology.

The popularity of ChatGPT has exploded since the artificial intelligence chatbot was released to the public last fall. In just a matter of months, it’s gained more than 100 million users. It can write haikus, pass law school admissions tests and help you plan your dinner, but can it make you money in the stock market? It’s a prospect a lot of people are intrigued by, according to a new survey from The Motley Fool. The investment advice platform polled 2,000 Americans about their interest in using ChatGPT for picking stocks. Asit Sharma, a senior analyst with The Motley Fool, says the practice is already widespread. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Sharma about the survey and his analysis of the results.

It’s getting harder to believe your eyes and ears on the internet. Artificial intelligence tools can generate convincing images, videos and voices. Chatbots can spit out confident misinformation. And Twitter users for $8 a month can basically impersonate anyone they’d like on the site. The specter of an internet full of fakes has a lot of people worried about an epistemic apocalypse: a total breakdown of our ability to perceive truth and reality. It’s something Joshua Habgood-Coote, a research fellow at the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds in England, has written about. He talked to Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about it.

First, there was fake Drake. Now, counterfeit Kanye and bogus Bad Bunnys are all over the internet. It seems that artificial intelligence-generated music has arrived. Some examples are obvious forgeries, like Barack Obama performing “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen.” Others, like the fake Drake song, “Heart on my Sleeve,” that went viral last month are pretty convincing. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Dan Runcie, founder of the media research firm Trapital, about AI’s latest hit and how far this technology has come.

Many Americans have range anxiety when they contemplate buying an electric vehicle. But is the solution bigger car batteries or better charging and transit infrastructure? Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Thea Riofrancos, political science professor at Providence College, about how EV batteries impact the environment and what else can be done to create a no-emissions future.

Summer internship season is right around the corner. While it’s never been easy to get one of the coveted spots at big-name Silicon Valley firms, this year there’s an added wrinkle: The tech industry is reeling from mass layoffs. Many human resources departments and recruiting budgets have been slashed, which could put up even more barriers for candidates from underrepresented groups, said Ruthe Farmer, founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund, which helps low-income students get through college and get on track for a career in tech. That’s challenging even in the best of times, she told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

Mexico is in the middle of a tech boom as U.S. companies look across the border for hires after mass layoffs. Tijuana is right at the center, with a growing market for tech workers and engineers to be hired stateside.

Artificial intelligence is booming. Tools like ChatGPT are getting more capable at an impressive rate as companies race to plug them into new areas of the economy. But the burgeoning demand for AI computing power faces a big constraint: the graphics processing units, or GPUs, needed to train and deploy these models. These specialized, costly GPUs are almost entirely made by one company — Nvidia — at one manufacturer in Taiwan, according to Chris Miller, a professor of history at Tufts University and author of “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.”

Facial-recognition software is leading to wrongful arrests, but the secrecy around the use of the technology makes it hard to know just how often it happens. So far, there are at least five known cases in which police use of facial-recognition algorithms have led to mistaken-identity arrests in the United States. All five were Black men. Nate Freed Wessler is part of the team representing one of those men in a case against the Detroit Police Department. He’s also a deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology project. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Wessler about facial-recognition technology and why it leads to these outcomes.

When a chatbot spouts misinformation or defames someone, what tools do lawmakers and regulators have to rein it in? Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Elizabeth Renieris of Oxford University’s Institute for AI Ethics. Renieris said our existing legal frameworks are capable of doing the job.

It’s the new Googling yourself — querying your name with an artificial intelligence chatbot and seeing what it spits out. Many large language models like ChatGPT and Bard are trained on vast amounts of data from the internet, so they’ve encoded text about individuals, especially public-facing ones. But, as we know, they don’t always stick to the facts, and that’s particularly troubling when it comes to your good name on the internet. That’s why engineer Silver Keskküla founded the website Have I Been Encoded. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Keskküla about why he created the site.

Before ChatGPT took the world by storm, wowing users with its prose-writing prowess, most people knew chatbots as those annoying website pop-ups that offered basic and not always useful customer support. Even before chatbots could pass the Law School Admission Test, customer service was moving toward greater automation, often in an effort to cut costs. Human agents are an expensive and finite resource, causing those long, Muzak-filled waits and limiting service hours. So will the current artificial intelligence boom push humans even further out of the customer support game? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Christina McAllister, a senior analyst at Forrester who works on customer service research and strategy. She says: “Not so fast.”

Making data-driven decisions has, seemingly, never been easier. We’ve got pulse surveys, performance analytics, reviews, anecdotes on social media — all just a click away. And yet … all these inputs aren’t really helping us make better decisions. That’s according to a new study from the software company Oracle, which surveyed workers and business leaders around the world. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a data scientist and author who partnered with Oracle for the study.

Snapchat made its name with silly augmented-reality filters, or lenses, as it calls them. In recent years, it’s expanded into shopping, enabling users to try on clothing, jewelry and makeup in the app. The company, now called Snap, has started selling this technology to other businesses. Snap announced this week that it’s pushing AR tools into the real world, bringing AR mirrors to some Men’s Wearhouse and Nike stores in the U.S. ​Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino went to the company’s headquarters in Santa Monica, California, to try the tech out, and spoke with Carolina Arguelles Navas, Snap’s head of AR product strategy, and Brian Cavanaugh, director of project management and business development at Fishermen Labs.

Between mining for rare minerals, cooling data centers, and running computers for millions of hours, the climate impact of artificial intelligence is big and getting bigger. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Sasha Luccioni, the climate lead for the AI company Hugging Face, about the process of training an earlier version of ChatGPT, which emitted roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide as a gas-powered car driving over one million miles.

“Prompt engineering” for artificial intelligence is a new career field that’s rapidly gaining interest. In some cases, salaries are reaching $350,000. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Anton Korinek, economics and AI professor at the University of Virginia, about who will need these workers and how this role is likely to evolve.

Ah, Tax Day — a time when our relationship with the United States government can get a little strained, in part because the U.S. system for filing taxes can feel pretty antiquated. But now the Internal Revenue Service has a plan to improve that, thanks to an additional $80 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act that the agency will receive over the next decade. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with ProPublica reporter Paul Kiel about what those IRS technology improvements might look like. Kiel said some of the most effective tech upgrades would be relatively easy to implement.

Back in 2020, California voters approved a measure called Proposition 22 that allows Uber, Lyft and the like to classify their drivers as independent contractors, rather than employees. That means the companies can sidestep laws that would otherwise require them to deliver all sorts of job-related benefits. It’s been a bumpy legal ride, but so far Prop. 22 is prevailing in state courts. Sooo, what’s next for gig workers? “Marketplace Tech” features KQED reporter Rachael Myrow’s update on the situation.

New York City is gearing up to start enforcing a first-of-its-kind law that requires employers that use artificial intelligence tools in making hiring decisions to have those systems audited for bias. Since the law passed in 2021, the use of AI in hiring has only increased, Vikram Bhargava told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino. He’s an assistant professor of strategic management and public policy at George Washington University.

By now a lot of us are familiar with chatbot “hallucinations” — the tendency of artificial intelligence language models to make stuff up. And lately we’ve been seeing reports of these tools getting creative with bibliography. For instance, last week The Washington Post reported on the case of a law professor whose name showed up in a list of legal scholars accused of sexual harassment. The list was generated by ChatGPT as part of a research project, and the chatbot cited as its source a March 2018 Washington Post article that doesn’t exist. People have taken to calling these fantasy references “hallucitations.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Bethany Edmunds, a teaching professor at Northeastern University, about why this is happening. Edmunds says this kind of result is to be expected.

There’s a lot of excitement about how artificial intelligence is transforming health care, from diagnosing diseases to creating personalized treatment plans. But just because AI can do something, doesn’t always mean it can do it better than a human, according to Meredith Broussard, a journalism professor at New York University and author of the book “More Than a Glitch,” released last month. Yesterday we featured part one of our discussion with Broussard, about how AI can magnify social harms. Today we continue that conversation, this time about what it means to entrust machines with our health. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Broussard about how trust in machines is part of a broader tendency she calls technochauvinism.

Artificial intelligence is practically all anyone in the tech world can talk about these days, as many of the biggest names in the industry compete for dominance with ever more powerful AI. But recently, some experts called for a timeout in development efforts to evaluate the harms these tools could cause. Meredith Broussard, a journalism professor at New York University, says you don’t have to look far to identify some of those harms. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Broussard about her latest book, “More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech,” which was released last month.

Professional video gaming — otherwise known as esports — has grown into a billion-dollar industry in recent years. Esports tournaments now draw crowds of tens of thousands to watch players compete at games like Valorant and League of Legends, while top esports athletes earn millions of dollars. But for too long, like so many facets of the gaming world, this industry has been dominated by men. A 2019 report showed that just 5% of professional esports players were women, a statistic that seemingly hasn’t changed much in years.

We’ve been talking this week about the call to slow down artificial intelligence development. There are those who say we need time to mitigate its potential harms and those who think this discourse overhypes the technology. Others, like Will Rinehart, a senior fellow at Utah State University’s Center for Growth and Opportunity, argue that a pause now could do more harm than good. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Rinehart about the potential damage he feels could be caused by a temporary halt to the work.

The French Parliament has taken up a measure that would give courts the power to ban parents from posting photos of their kids online. This comes as a poll just published in France shows that for thousands of parents, sharing their lives with their children on social media has become a serious, sometimes even large, source of income. In Paris, John Laurenson reports on the rise of the parent influencers.

Last week, more than 1,000 scientists and tech leaders, including Elon Musk, signed an open letter calling for a pause in the race to develop more powerful artificial intelligence models. The letter channeled a certain dread that it seems many are feeling about this fast-changing technology. It also became a lighting rod for criticism from both AI boosters and skeptics. Gary Marcus is a signatory of that letter. He’s a professor emeritus of cognitive science at New York University and co-author of the book “Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Marcus about his reasons for signing the letter.

New Jersey is using player data to look for signs of addiction. Gamblers will get a notification or pop-up video to warn them when the time or money they’re spending  on a gambling site suddenly rises.  The state’s division of gaming enforcement is working with site operators to provide addiction resources.

Last week, more than 1,000 experts in science and technology signed an open letter to labs developing advanced artificial intelligence, asking them to pause the “out of control race” to train ever more powerful systems. The letter warns that these “non-human minds” might eventually outsmart us, risking the “loss of control of our civilization.” But such framing misses the mark, according to Emily M. Bender, a computational linguist at the University of Washington who is skeptical of “AI hype.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Bender about what she sees as the real dangers in these models, starting with the way they use language itself.

We’re so used to it by now — people sharing every little detail of their lives online. And when it comes to content about parenting, it’s basically a whole industry. You can find “momfluencers” and family channels for any style of parenting or worldview you can think of, to the point that there’s now a generation of kids who have grown up in the social media eye. And, as you might imagine. not all of them are thrilled about it. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Fortesa Latifi, features reporter for Teen Vogue, who recently dove into this culture and its effects on the children involved.

First to leave was Sheryl Sandberg, the longtime chief operating officer at Facebook and Meta known for her bestselling book about women in leadership “Lean In.” Last summer, she stepped down after 14 years. Then, last month, Susan Wojcicki, the only woman CEO in Big Tech, announced her departure from YouTube, a role she’d served in for nine years after joining Google in its earliest days. They’ve left a void of visible women at the pinnacle of the tech world. It’s a trend columnist Beth Kowitt recently wrote about for Bloomberg News. And she tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino the way women leaders in tech are often described gives us a clue about what they face as they rise to the top.

Earlier this month, OpenAI released its newest and most powerful chatbot, GPT-4, along with a technical paper summarizing the testing the company did to ensure its product is safe. The testing involved asking the chatbot how to build weapons of mass destruction or to engage in antisemitic attacks. In the cybersecurity world, this testing process is known as red teaming. In it, experts look for vulnerabilities, security gaps and anything that could go wrong before the product launches. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Aviv Ovadya, a researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center who was on the red team for GPT-4. He said this kind of testing needs to go further.

Digital tools like virtual therapy and meditation apps have made mental health care more accessible. But they’ve made data about the people using them more accessible too. That’s what Joanne Kim found while conducting research as an undergraduate student at Duke University. Kim identified 11 data broker firms willing and able to sell highly sensitive mental health data to her. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Justin Sherman, a senior fellow at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy who helped oversee the study, about how this data ends up on the market.

The artificial intelligence wars are in full swing, with companies like Microsoft and Google battling it out. Now Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox browser, is entering the fray. Last week, the company announced a new startup focused on developing what it calls “trustworthy” and independent AI, built on open-source software that’s free to the public. As with its other products, which are more focused on transparency and privacy, Mozilla aims to distinguish itself in a crowded AI field as a brand committed to the public interest. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Imo Udom, senior vice president of innovation ecosystems at Mozilla, to learn more.

The Federal Trade Commission is tasked with protecting U.S. consumers from unfair business practices, and in recent years it has set its sights on regulating Big Tech. The new Office of Technology will be at the forefront of such efforts. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Stephanie Nguyen, the FTC’s chief technology officer, who will also be leading the new office. She says the office’s work will be critical when you consider how tech has seeped into every corner of the economy.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a lot of us to stay at home without the chance to socialize in person. But technology allowed us to stay in touch. Social media platforms helped connect us with the outside world — there was Zoom and Houseparty, and remember Clubhouse? But many Americans still struggle with loneliness, even now as life has somewhat returned to normal. Younger Americans are twice as likely to feel lonely than seniors, according to research from Cigna. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Kimberly Adams, senior correspondent at Marketplace and host of American Public Media’s series “Call to Mind.” In a recent episode of that show, she explored what role technology plays in people’s lives when they’re struggling with loneliness. And Adams says loneliness is something researchers have been looking into for decades, way before the pandemic.

TikTok’s CEO heads to Congress Thursday to defend the app against concerns it poses a national security threat. Pressure has been building from both the White House and Congress to force the Chinese-owned company to sell TikTok to an American company or face a nationwide ban. And while TikTok has never been in more political hot water, over on the app it’s still all viral pasta recipes, dogs demanding a “cheese tax” and not a whole lot of paranoia about data privacy. Researchers and TikTok creators alike are taking note of the disconnect.

Every week it seems the world is stunned by another advance in artificial intelligence, including text-to-image generators like DALL-E and the latest chatbot, GPT-4. What makes these tools impressive is the enormous amount of data they’re trained on, specifically the millions of images and words on the internet. But the process of machine learning relies on a lot of human data labelers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Sarah Roberts, a professor of information studies and director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA, about how this work is often overlooked.

Almost every service we use on the internet is basically a platform for advertising, especially search engines. Advertisers pay to get their sites at the top of search results, have their businesses show up on digital maps or populate their products at the top of shopping carousel pages. The search engine companies are not only paid, but get data about what users want, which they can then turn around and use to sell more advertising. But how does all this work if, as chat-based artificial intelligence permeates web search, the results become less like a big list and more like a one-on-one conversation? That’s where it looks like Microsoft and Google are headed with their Bing and Bard chatbots. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Garrett Johnson, assistant professor of marketing at Boston University, about how this new approach could really shake up the online ad space.

Are you keeping up with those other two banks that both start with an “S” and failed the same week as Silicon Valley Bank? Silvergate Bank announced March 8 that it was shutting down of its own accord and regulators took over Signature Bank on Sunday. All three of these institutions were known for catering to a specific clientele. For SVB, it was tech startups. For Silvergate and Signature, it was cryptocurrency companies. So what does the collapse of two of the crypto-friendliest banks mean for that industry? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino talked about it with Laura Shin, a crypto journalist and host of the “Unchained” podcast.

During the chaos last weekend after Silicon Valley Bank was taken over by federal regulators, but before they guaranteed customers access to their deposits, there was panic in the tech world and pleas for the government to step in and help thousands of businesses that could have been crushed. But cries of victimhood from the tech sector were often met by the internet’s smallest violin, and the government’s actions to stabilize the situation were sometimes derided as a “billionaire” bailout for privileged tech bros. Sarah Kunst, a general partner at venture capital firm Cleo Capital, talks to Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about Silicon Valley’s image problem.

Microsoft’s Bing chatbot has displayed some strange, sometimes inappropriate responses. Could training in ethics help? Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, about the ethical concerns he sees increasing around artificial intelligence.

Did you hear that giant whooshing sound? That was the collective exhale of tens of thousands of startup founders, workers and investors after federal regulators assured customers of the failed Silicon Valley Bank that they would have access to all of their deposits. Most of the bank’s 40,000 customers are tech startups, which spent much of the weekend bracing for the worst: that their money would be tied up or lost for good. That’s off the table now, but there’s still an SVB-sized hole in the tech landscape, according to Natasha Mascarenhas, a senior reporter at TechCrunch. She spoke to Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about how this one bank became so embedded in the startup scene.

It’s getting easier and easier to talk to machines, from digital voice assistants like Siri and Alexa to the latest generation of AI chatbots. Natural language processing technology has made it possible to engage in pretty humanlike conversations with some forms of artificial intelligence. But can a bot ever really “get” us? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Aniket Bera, an associate professor of computer science at Purdue University, who is trying to teach emotional intelligence to artificial intelligence.            

The 95th Academy Awards on Sunday is sure to feature plenty of glitz, glam, awkwardly cut-off speeches and artificial intelligence. The technology is becoming a bigger and bigger part of filmmaking, in ways that not everyone is thrilled about. It’s something Joshua Glick, a visiting associate professor of film and electronic arts at Bard College, wrote about recently for Wired. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Glick about the many ways Hollywood employs artificial intelligence.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Joanna Stern, a technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, about her experience with Bing’s AI-powered search bot. Stern searched test questions about what to make for dinner, and the results were helpful, though not entirely accurate to the query. Also, how does Bing compare to the Siris and Alexas of the world?

It seems very meta — a tool seemingly straight out of science fiction writing its own science fiction stories. But it’s not all fun and games for the online magazine Clarkesworld, which had published short fiction sent in by writers in the sci-fi and fantasy community. Editor Neil Clarke said last month that the magazine was closing down submissions because it had been inundated with material generated by artificial intelligence.

Cities from New York and Washington, D.C., to Knoxville, Tennessee, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, are studying a new way to address noise pollution by installing what looks like an army of radio reporters on the streets. They’re commonly referred to as noise cameras. When a loud car passes by — typically one exceeding 85 decibels — these noise cameras snap a photo of the car’s license plate and a ticket is mailed to the driver. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Erica Walker, a noise researcher and epidemiologist at Brown University, about her skepticism of this new surveillance system.  

Social media influencers are on lots of platforms: Instagram, YouTube and, more and more these days, TikTok. Amazon and Walmart are getting help from content creators to keep their brand present on TikTok, all while the creators become influencers and earn money in the process.

It’s been just over a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and we’ve been looking at the role technology has played, from government apps repurposed for crowdsourced reconnaissance to wide-scale cyberattacks. But space-based technology, largely from private companies, is also making a difference in Ukraine. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Miriam Kramer, senior space reporter for Axios, about how satellites hundreds of miles above the Earth are bringing visibility and transparency to events on the ground.

So much of the internet today rests on the bedrock of a federal law that shields tech companies from liability for the content users post online. Everything from the AOL chatrooms of yore to modern social media likely wouldn’t exist without Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. The idea is internet platforms aren’t acting like traditional publishers in creating content; they’re merely hosting it. But new generative artificial intelligence tools like DALL-E or ChatGPT that generate images or text are kind of different, says Matt Perault, director of the Center on Technology Policy at UNC Chapel Hill. He spoke with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about the implications of these tools falling outside Section 230 protection.

Earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris was in South Carolina touting the Biden administration’s push to expand affordable high-speed internet there with programs funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Tens of millions of Americans still don’t have access to broadband internet, and the problem is particularly acute for people with disabilities, according to the Urban Institute. Jon Schwabish, a senior fellow at the institute, spoke to Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about the findings.

Legislators across the U.S. use the software LegisPro to assist in drafting bills and tracking amendments, but they have largely stayed away from the ethical concerns that generative AI programs might raise. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Mohar Chatterjee, a computational journalist at Politico, about how this software is used by legislative bodies and what some of its limitations are.

Meta has jumped on the blue badge bandwagon. Last week, the company announced a verification service for Facebook and Instagram at a price of $11.99 a month, per app. It’s part of a trend of social media platforms turning to user fees instead of relying just on advertising dollars. They used to say that if you’re not paying for the product, the product is you. But if you’re now paying for social media, what exactly is the product? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Shirin Ghaffary, a correspondent at Vox, about the benefits and trade-offs of the blue badge.  

When Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, many security experts braced for an unprecedented escalation in cyberwarfare in addition to the physical assault. For years before the large-scale invasion, Ukraine was hit by massive cyberattacks that disrupted financial systems, transportation, energy and politics — disruptions that were expected to only intensify. But things haven’t exactly played out that way, according to Adam Meyers, chief of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.  

This week marks a year since Russia began its devastating invasion of Ukraine, and throughout that time, technology has shaped the conflict, from satellites beaming internet service from space to the mobile phones in people’s pockets. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke to Roman Osadchuk, a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, who is also based in Ukraine, about how mobile apps have become an essential lifeline there as citizens navigate the daily realities of war.

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how we work and how we lose work. Not just chatbots that are coming for human jobs, but software that can determine which employees get pink slips when companies decide to downsize. Whether any employers used algorithms to conduct layoffs in recent months has been a topic of speculation, though none have disclosed it. But Capterra, a business-oriented tech review platform, recently surveyed 300 leaders in human resources, 98% of whom said they would rely on software and algorithms to reduce costs during a recession. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Brian Westfall, the author of that Capterra report. He said HR is much more data driven today than it was during the Great Recession 15 years ago.

Social media companies and other big technology firms have been under fire: President Joe Biden called for stricter regulations during his State of the Union address; FBI Director Christopher Wray has raised national security concerns about TikTok; and lawmakers are considering age restrictions for young social media users. Despite this, public trust in Big Tech companies is up, a new survey from The Center for Growth and Opportunity found. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke to Taylor Barkley, technology and innovation director for the CGO, about the surprising results.

This episode originally aired on March 11, 2022. Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has disrupted – and ended – many lives and destroyed homes, infrastructure and whole communities. But at the beginning of the war, the cultural heritage of Ukraine was also at high risk. Some Ukrainian museum websites went offline as the servers hosting them lose connections or are destroyed in attacks. To prevent that information and cultural memory from disappearing entirely, around 1,000 archivists, programmers and librarians have volunteered to form a group called Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online or SUCHO. They’ve been recording and archiving these websites before they go offline. Quinn Dombrowski is an academic technology specialist at Stanford University who’s been working on this project.

Many large property owners use rent-pricing software to figure out what to charge their tenants. And that practice has come under scrutiny after an investigation last fall from ProPublica into the software company RealPage and its rental pricing algorithm. Several lawsuits have accused RealPage of colluding with landlords to artificially inflate rents and limit the supply of housing. The Department of Justice is also investigating. Marketplace’s Amy Scott spoke with Heather Vogell, a reporter at ProPublica who has been following the developments since her initial investigation on RealPage’s algorithm came out.

We’ve reported on the mass layoffs in tech that have been happening since last fall. And that has many in the industry worried about what that means for diversity in tech. There are now indications a slowdown in hiring could affect industry efforts for more diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, according to Textio, a company that helps create job ads. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Christie Lindor, a diversity strategist and CEO of Tessi Consulting, who warns the tech industry in particular should be careful about cutting these roles.

It’s been a little over a week since the U.S. military shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over the coast of South Carolina. Since then, the United States has downed at least an additional three unidentified crafts in North American airspace. The balloon saga has put a spotlight on foreign espionage operations, but Javed Ali said the practice is nothing new. Ali is a former senior national security and intelligence official, as well as an associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan. He spoked to Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams about what we can glean from this string of incidents about the technology and practices used in modern international espionage.

This month marks a year since Russia invaded Ukraine. The toll has been devastating — cities turned to rubble, staggering numbers of deaths — and like every war, this one has often turned on technological advances. It can be a grim experience to delve into the dark side of innovation, but we wanted to look beyond traditional notions of military might and consider how technology off the battlefield is helping Ukraine fight back. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about the crucial advantages tech has provided in such arenas as cybersecurity.

This week brought the opening salvos of a new battle of the bots. “It’s a new day in search. In fact, a race starts today,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella when he introduced the new and improved Bing, now bolstered by ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot the internet can’t shut up about. Just a day earlier, Google announced Bard, its own AI chatbot-powered search tool. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Chirag Shah, a computer science professor at the University of Washington. He said AI chatbots process language more intuitively than older search models and could transform how people access information.