There’s a movement to make it possible to repair our gadgets ourselves instead of having to send them back to the company that makes them or, you know, just get a new one. The “right to repair” movement in consumer electronics has made real gains in recent years. Several states, like California, New York and Oregon, have passed legislation requiring it. And it looks like Apple’s newest iPhone — the 16 — has made strides in that department. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kyle Wiens, CEO of the online repair guide iFixit, about the iPhone 16’s improved repairability.

A content creator who goes by the username Mrs. Frazzled recently noticed something strange happening on her Instagram account. With more than 370,000 followers, her videos sometimes score millions of views. Except, it seems, when she talks about the election. Mrs. Frazzled sensed she was being shadowbanned by Instagram, so Geoffrey Fowler, a tech columnist at The Washington Post, investigated. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Fowler about what he found.

Trying to vote when your disabled can present a series of obstacles but technology can help, even if integrating technology into our election system has its risks. Back in 2020, several states changed their voting rules with more mail-in, early, and remote voting options which increased turnout among disabled voters. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager at the National Disability Rights Network, about finding the right balance of tech integration into our elections in order to empower more disabled voters in the U.S.

Artificial intelligence, according to its boosters, could help us unlock solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems, like climate change. But in the meantime, it’s become a key tool for fossil fuel companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron to maximize the extraction of emissions-producing oil and gas. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to freelance reporter Karen Hao, who recently wrote in The Atlantic about how Microsoft has actively courted the fossil fuel industry.

Web crawlers scan and catalog sites all over the internet and, in the AI era, use that data to train chatbots. We’ll talk about why The New York Times is trying to put a stop to crawlers from the AI company Perplexity. We’ll also discuss the record share of venture capital dollars flowing into the AI sector and the difficulty of attracting investment for startups without those two magic letters. Plus, the ups and downs of SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, for her take on all this for our weekly segment “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

Vice President Kamala Harris sat for her first interview on Fox News Wednesday as the Democratic presidential candidate continued her media blitz ahead of the November election. And while it’s generating plenty of headlines, these kinds of big interviews just don’t hold the power they used to, according to Nick Quah, a podcast and culture critic at New York Magazine who’s been following the candidates’ interviews on the alternative media circuit. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Quah about how Kamala Harris’ appearance on more internet-native shows like the podcast “Call Her Daddy” or Donald Trump’s appearances on various “bro-centric” shows like Logan Paul ‘sYouTube channel represent a notable media shift compared to previous elections.

After years of hype, Tesla finally debuted a robotaxi called the Cybercab last week. CEO Elon Musk has been making and breaking promises about Tesla’s autonomous vehicle for years. So, did the debut of the Cybercab finally deliver? Andrew Hawkins, transportation editor for The Verge, tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino what the Cybercab unveiling means for Musk and for Tesla.

Online misinformation about Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and about the relief response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have surged in recent weeks, including false narratives of aid being withheld from victims for their political beliefs and aid being stolen by undocumented immigrants. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Ethan Porter, professor of media, public affairs and political science at George Washington University, about why there’s been so much misinformation about these natural disasters and FEMA’s relief response.

TikTok has a lot going on legally these days. Last week, it saw a fresh round of lawsuits alleging the short-form video app harms children. And then there’s the federal law that could ban the app if ByteDance, its China-based owner, doesn’t divest by January. TikTok has sued to block that law. Oral arguments in TikTok Inc. v. Merrick Garland were heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in September. The company is joined by eight TikTok creators as plaintiffs in the case, and one of them is Talia Cadet. She has nearly 140,000 followers on TikTok, where she produces lifestyle videos focused on her love of books and travel. She talked with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about the case.

TikTok is facing yet another legal challenge. This week, attorneys general from 13 states plus Washington, D.C., sued the short-form video app, alleging that it harms children. We’ll be digging into the latest lawsuits on today’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” our roundup of the week’s top tech headlines. Like the so-called Godfather of AI who is sharing the Nobel Prize in physics. Plus, the U.S. government is weighing what to do about Google after its search business was ruled a monopoly earlier this year. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to break down these stories.

The new kid on the block of social media, Meta’s Threads, hit 200 million active users in August. When it launched in the summer of 2023 as a rival to the platform formerly known as Twitter, Meta said the app would eventually be integrated into the so-called fediverse. This “federated universe” is the most prominent example of a decentralized social network in which users can join any affiliated platform and interact with content from all the others. Recently, Meta took some steps to integrate Threads into this ecosystem, and Will Oremus, tech news analysis writer for The Washington Post, has been following the developments.

A lot of personal data – stuff like your home address, phone number, marital status and more – is out there on the internet. Anyone can buy it from sites like Whitepages, PeopleFinders or Intelius, which aggregate data from public records and social media. You can contact each of these “people search” sites and request they take down your information, but it’s a bit of a game of whack-a-mole. Naturally, a whole industry of data-removal services has sprung up. For a price, they promise to do the dirty work for you. But do they deliver? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Yael Grauer, a researcher at Consumer Reports, who recently looked into the efficacy of the data-removal industry.

Until about a decade ago, independent cybersecurity researchers in the U.S. weren’t allowed to examine voting machines for potential vulnerabilities. But that ban was essentially lifted in 2015. Two years later, DEF CON — one of the largest hacker conventions — decided to invite hackers, cybersecurity researchers and election officials to find those flaws during its annual Voting Village event. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Catherine Terranova, executive director of Voting Village, about how they balance the well-intentioned work of finding vulnerabilities before bad actors do and the problem of misinformation around the security of voting machines.

It’s been more than 15 years since the digital currency bitcoin was launched, going from a fringe phenomenon in the dark corners of the internet to an asset traded on Wall Street. But the identity of bitcoin’s creator, known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, has remained a mystery wrapped in a cryptographic enigma. Now, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback may have cracked the case. His last HBO series “Into the Storm” uncovered the origins of the QAnon conspiracy theory. In his new documentary, “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” Hoback sets out to answer the elusive question: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? To prevent any spoilers, we’ll keep his conclusions secret.

Investors are once again pouring money into biotechnology startups. But this time, it feels different from the heyday of 2021. We’ll be digging into the latest data for today’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” our roundup of the week’s top headlines, including some you might have missed. We’ll also talk about a private equity deal with the country’s biggest digital pharmacy platform. But first, OpenAI closes a historic funding round. The maker of ChatGPT raised another $6.6 billion — valuing the company at $157 billion, double its worth earlier this year. Our regular contributor Christina Farr, managing director with Manatt Health, joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino to discuss the news.

All those fancy artificial intelligence systems need a lot of data centers to run, and those data centers need a lot of energy. One estimate from the Electric Power Research Institute suggests that current data center electricity consumption in the U.S. will more than double by 2030, making up about 9% of all energy use. But the AI sector is coming up against the big energy-hungry tech innovation of yesteryear: crypto mining. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Reuters reporter Laila Kearney about the scramble to power up in both industries.

Today we’re talking about voting tech and the push in some areas to move away from machines and go back to hand counting ballots. A legal battle is brewing in Georgia over a new rule requiring ballots be hand counted on election night to ensure the tally matches electronic records. Arizona has added a similar requirement. The issue has become particularly mired in misinformation in recent years, with some election deniers questioning the security of the tech used in our elections. While some may believe hand counts are more accurate, the number of jurisdictions across the country relying on them on election night has been steadily dropping. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Pam Smith, president and CEO of the nonpartisan organization Verified Voting, about why the practice of counting ballots by hand is waning.

This week, we’re talking about how teenagers are using artificial intelligence tools like chatbots and image generators, often without the knowledge of their parents and teachers, according to a recent report from the nonprofit Common Sense Media. Monday we heard about that research from Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of the group. And now we want to home in on a specific piece of what he said: “If you look back at the advent of social media, about 20 years ago, we pretty much blew the regulatory side of that, but also the educating teachers and parents part of that. And we left kids on their own.” So we called up Nathan Sanders, an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, who has written about the overlapping risks of AI and social media.

As soon as ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, it became clear that artificial intelligence was going to send massive shockwaves through education. And, as with any new technology, young people were likely to adopt it more quickly. Well, now we have some data about that phenomenon. A new report from the non-profit Common Sense Media shows seven in 10 teenagers from ages 13-18 are using generative AI in some way. And Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino it’s not all about cheating.

It’s perhaps not a big surprise, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a very optimistic take on what his company’s technology could mean for the world. He shared his vision of a near future transformed by ever-advancing artificial intelligence systems in a much-discussed blog post earlier this week. Plus, Meta revealed more of its AI plans at its big developer conference including another go at celebrity chatbots. But first, X, formerly Twitter, finally released a new transparency report. It’s the first one since 2022, when Elon Musk bought the platform. And it’s full of data on reported abuse, harassment, how many accounts were suspended and more. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed these topics and more with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, on this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission made history this month with the first-ever commercial spacewalk. It seems space travel is no longer reserved for highly trained government astronauts, but increasingly open to anyone with the funds (and the courage) to try it. But before we all go strapping on our spacesuits, Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, says we need to be clear-eyed about the risks. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Impey about those risks and the rewards that might make them worth it.

The infrastructure that enabled Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence boom is not located in California, but rather in northern Virginia. How did the region become the data center capital of the world? And what does it mean for tech companies, the local economy and residents? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino has the story.

There have been a lot of rumors and misinformation recently about voter registration and voter list maintenance, adding confusion to what experts say are secure processes. And while election officials regularly update voter lists, it’s become increasingly important that individuals also keep their voter registration information up to date. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Josh Visnaw,  project manager at a Harvard University initiative called VoteFlare, about the challenges of maintaining accurate voter lists and how VoteFlare is trying to help.

You might say online gambling has been on a winning streak since a Supreme Court decision in 2018 cleared the way for states to allow sports betting. It’s now legal in 30 states and its influence is hard to miss: online sportsbook companies like DraftKings and FanDuel are on billboards, commercials even college campuses, many of which have made deals with sports betting companies. Yanely Espinal, host of Marketplace’s “Financially Inclined” podcast, recently covered this topic on her show and she explained to Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino how these online betting companies are reeling in younger users.

This week, Meta announced teen accounts with a slew of new safety features. We’ve also got Apple news to talk about — no, not the latest iPhones or watches, but new functionality for AirPods that basically turns them into hearing aids. First, though, are we ready for artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that could match or exceed human capabilities? It could be a mere one to three years away, according to testimony at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday. A number of AI insiders spoke, including former Google and OpenAI researchers and Georgetown’s Helen Toner, who explained the stakes. “That technology will be at a minimum extraordinarily disruptive and at a maximum could lead to literal human extinction,” she said. “So I would argue that a wait-and-see approach to policy is not an option.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, for her take on all this for our weekly segment “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

In this tense election year, polling is top of mind. But collecting polling data has become harder. It often relies on people actually answering the phone and then speaking frankly to a pollster, both of which are becoming less common. The result has been data that is less predictive, and repeated misses in recent elections have made the public much more skeptical. Polling, it seems, needs an update for the digital age. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Bruce Schneier, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, who says AI can help.

A federal appeals court heard arguments Monday in a case that pits the First Amendment against national security. TikTok sued to block a bipartisan-backed law that will ban the Chinese-owned app in the U.S. by January 19 — unless it finds a U.S. buyer. This week, the government argued the app gives China access to Americans’ sensitive data, as well as the ability to spread propaganda. While TikTok argued it’s been unfairly singled out and that a sale isn’t the only way to address security concerns. TikTok touts 170 million users in the U.S., and that includes both candidates for president. A group of U.S.-based creators have also joined as plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Anupam Chander, professor of law and technology at Georgetown University, walked Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino through the arguments in the case.

The bipartisan NO FAKES Act, aimed at regulating deepfakes created with the aid of artificial intelligence, moved forward in the House of Representatives last week after it was introduced in the Senate in July. But in the absence of federal rules, several states have already stepped in. Last month, California became the third to back legislation regulating digital replicas. The home of Hollywood follows Tennessee, which earlier this year passed a ban on unauthorized deepfakes known as the ELVIS Act, and Illinois, which enacted a similar law last month. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Steve Brachmann, a freelance journalist specializing in intellectual property law, to learn about how these bans work.  

Late last month, the CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram was arrested in France. Authorities there have charged Pavel Durov with being complicit in illegal activities conducted on the platform due to a lack of content moderation. A recent report from the research group Cybersecurity for Democracy shows some of that activity is finding its way onto other platforms. Senior Fellow Yaël Eisenstat looked at advertisements on Meta platforms that linked back to Telegram, and found that a majority were promoting channels with potentially illegal activities.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for our weekly review of some of the big stories making headlines in tech. First: No, you’re not having déjà vu all over again. Google really is back in court this week for its second antitrust trial of the year. Plus, a startup in Silicon Valley wants to make AI data centers more sustainable by putting them underwater in the San Francisco Bay, but regulators have questions. And Taylor Swift announced she is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in this year’s presidential election. She took to Instagram on Tuesday night to publish her stance, citing artificial intelligence-enabled misinformation as a driving force. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, for his take on this week’s tech news.

The cryptocurrency industry has been fairly quiet recently, with the scandals around the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX and its former chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, fading from the headlines. But behind the scenes, the industry has become a bit of a power player in the 2024 elections — funding political ads, endorsing House and Senate candidates and raising millions of dollars, according to a recent report from the nonprofit group Public Citizen. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Axios reporter Brady Dale, author of the Axios Crypto newsletter, to learn more.  

Over the last couple of years, the tech industry has slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them in recruiting and other departments working to improve diversity. Companies like Meta and Google, which earlier set ambitious hiring and investment goals, have pulled resources from those efforts. As a result, many nonprofit groups set up to train and recruit underrepresented workers are struggling to stay afloat. One prominent person in the field is Lisa Mae Brunson, founder of the nonprofit Wonder Women Tech. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked her how things have changed.

Among the trends of mis- and disinformation spreading ahead of the 2024 election is the narrative that large groups of noncitizens are illegally voting. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Danielle Lee Tomson, a research manager with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, about how this narrative is affecting the November election. This conversation is part of “Marketplace Tech’s” limited series “Decoding Democracy.” Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.

On Friday, a Boeing Starliner spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station to return to Earth without its crew. NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore stayed behind due to uncertainty about the safety of the Boeing craft. The duo will instead hitch a ride back on a SpaceX mission set to arrive at the ISS in February. It’s another win for the Elon Musk-owned company, which has come to dominate rocket launches in the U.S. But NASA’s reliance on SpaceX now is a bit of a reversal, according to Steven Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict and Governance program.

If you’re an Apple fan, you probably didn’t miss the speculation surrounding the upcoming iPhone 16 launch event next week. Many expect the tech giant to reveal more about how its artificial intelligence will be integrated into its new hardware. We’ll be digging into that on this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review. Plus, airlines are upgrading their Wi-Fi, so you might be able to take a Zoom meeting on your six-hour flight. But first, Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider has agreed to block Elon Musk’s social media platform in Brazil. X has been banned in the country since last weekend, and now Starlink has agreed to enforce that ban for its roughly quarter-million internet subscribers in the country. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Wall Street Journal senior personal technology columnist Joanna Stern or her take on this week’s tech news.

Warning: This episode mentions suicide. If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). There seems to be growing momentum for efforts to protect kids from online harm. In June, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a warning label on social media for children, and more recently the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act with bipartisan support. On the show we’ve heard from lobbyists and advocates on different sides of the issue. Today we speak with Kristin Bride, for whom the debate is personal. In 2020, Bride’s 16-year-old son, Carson, died by suicide after being cyberbullied on the social media platform Snapchat. Since then, Bride has become a vocal advocate for social media reform because, she says, even the most vigilant parents can’t always protect their kids.

Depending on whom you ask, a bill passed by California lawmakers last week could either save us from imminent AI doom or strangle innovation in Silicon Valley. The bill, SB 1047, is one of the first significant attempts to regulate artificial intelligence in the U.S. It’s supported by some high-profile voices in tech like Elon Musk. But critics say the regulation could stifle growth in Silicon Valley. On the show today, Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is taking a closer look at the arguments for and against SB 1047 with Chase DiFeliciantonio, a reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle, who has been following the bill’s journey through the Legislature.

Dark patterns are everywhere on the web. These are design tricks that manipulate users in some way and prompt them to give up information, money or just more of their time. A recent study from the Federal Trade Commission found three-quarters of all subscription apps and websites use at least one dark pattern, and a majority use multiple such tricks. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Yanely Espinal, who covered the topic in this week’s episode of “Financially Inclined.” She said some common dark patterns include advertising that doesn’t look like advertising, online forms that come with check boxes pre-selected and something called confirm shaming.

Generative artificial intelligence can write essays and solve complicated math problems, but can it tell a decent joke? The BBC’s Megan Lawton says comedians who performed at this year’s fringe festival in Scotland are putting AI to the test.

This week: a report from venture capital firm SignalFire seems to show that despite all its problems, San Francisco is still the place to be for tech startups in the artificial intelligence space. Plus, why Meta is scrapping plans for a superpremium mixed-reality headset and aiming for a lite version instead. But first, the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France has sent shock waves through the tech world. Durov is facing a number of criminal charges. French authorities allege he is liable for illicit activities conducted on the encrypted messaging platform, including child sex abuse and drug trafficking, essentially because of a failure to moderate content. The case highlights longstanding tensions in the tech world between public safety and free speech. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on this week’s tech news.

U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed that Iran was behind the recent cyberattack on former President Donald Trump’s election campaign. Using an approach called spear phishing, hackers sent personalized emails to campaign staff containing malware that allowed them to access private information and then leak it. Déjà vu, right? Javed Ali, a former senior counterterrorism official and a professor of practice at the University of Michigan, says Russia created the blueprint for this kind of attack. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked him for his reaction to Iran adopting the strategy.

By now you’ve probably heard that generative artificial intelligence has the potential to supercharge the spread of disinformation in this election year. But with 68 days until Election Day, we haven’t seen the kind of widespread AI misinformation campaigns that experts warned about. Instead, as Will Oremus pointed out in a recent analysis for The Washington Post, we’ve seen a whole lot of silly AI-generated memes. He told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that the most recent examples are coming from one particular presidential candidate.

The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, passed in 2022, would be among the most sweeping pieces of legislation to protect kids from online harms — if it hadn’t become tangled up in court. The law has two basic requirements: first, that tech companies analyze and report on whether their products are harmful for children; second, that they minimize how much data they collect from those under 18. Earlier this month a federal appeals court found that first part likely violates the First Amendment, and upheld a lower-court decision blocking that part of the law. But it vacated an injunction on the second component, the part dealing with data privacy. The decision could point a way forward for similar laws, many of which have also run into legal challenges, Aaron Mackey, free speech and transparency litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

The social media platform X recently launched a new artificial intelligence feature for premium users: Grok-2, an AI model that can also generate images. And the outputs are a bit less censored than you might see with other similar tools. Experimenters online have been able to generate images of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris brandishing guns, Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette and some far more disturbing tableaus. Grok claims to avoid images that are pornographic, excessively violent or intended to deceive and added it’s cautious about representing content that might infringe on existing copyright. But the guardrails certainly seem to be on the looser side, in keeping with owner Elon Musk’s hands-off approach to content moderation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Adi Robertson, senior tech and policy editor at the Verge, about Grok-2 and what she found while she tested the AI’s limits.

On today’s show: Google deals with another legal headache. A federal appeals court revived a class-action lawsuit that had been dismissed concerning privacy violations by its Chrome browser. Plus, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has partnered up with another media brand, Condé Nast. But first, we can’t ignore the biggest happening of the week — the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the party formally nominated Vice President Kamala Harris for president with the help of big names in entertainment. Rapper Lil Jon revving up the presentation of the Georgia delegation’s votes was just one viral moment that came out of the convention. What didn’t come out of the gathering, though, were clear indications of the Harris campaign’s tech policy platform. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, about what that platform might look like.

New faces are mingling among the party faithful and the swarm of journalists at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. In a bid to reach younger, more online voters, the DNC invited 200 content creators to cover the convention. One of them is Malynda Hale, who’s been sharing her experience with her more than 50,000 followers on Instagram. Creators like her, she said, have their own part to play at the event. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Hale how it’s been going at the convention.

Earlier this year, the U.S. surgeon general called for a warning label minors on social media, and a growing number of states are requiring online age verification for certain sites. Now, many platforms are adding a safeguard that comes with its own set of trade-offs: facial scanning. These systems use artificial intelligence to analyze visual clues, sometimes in conjunction with a government-issued ID, to keep those it deems too young from accessing a site. In the process, they collect all kinds of identifying data, and like any tool, these are susceptible to errors. In this case, errors could potentially bar adults from parts of the internet. Tech reporter Drew Harwell recently wrote about the proliferation of these systems and the risks that come with them for The Washington Post. He told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that they’re getting hard to avoid for internet users.

On July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-Ray Telescope was launched into space aboard the shuttle Columbia, the first such mission to be commanded by a woman astronaut. The Chandra telescope differs from the Hubble telescope, which observes visible light. Or, the James Webb telescope, which captures frequencies in the infrared range. Chandra detects high energy X-rays. But NASA budget constraints could leave the mission going dark in coming years. To learn more about the Chandra Observatory, Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino called its program manager Megan Lin.

When Apple introduced its Screen Time report, it promised the feature would  empower users to manage their device time and balance the things that are really important. But is it actually doing that? Caroline Mimbs Nyce, a staff writer at The Atlantic, recently wrote about why she thinks Screen Time is the worst feature Apple has ever made. She told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that it sometimes feels like Screen Time is doing more guilt-tripping than empowering these days.

It’s Friday which means it’s time for Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review. On today’s show, Instagram is known for pretty pictures but a new report shows it lets a lot of ugly and abusive comments remain on the platform. Plus, Door Dash has dominated the food delivery race. Now it looks like Uber may be catching up. But first, the social media platform X relies on advertisers, so why is it going to war with them? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discusses all of this week’s biggest tech stories with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information.  

Last month, senators from both sides of the aisle formally introduced what could become the first U.S. federal law regulating deepfakes. It’s called the No Fakes Act — short for the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act. It comes on the heels of controversies like the one involving the OpenAI voice assistant, which may or may not have sounded a little too much like actress Scarlett Johansson. GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee helped draft the bill, saying: “The No Fakes Act is vital for these entertainers. It protects their name, image, likeness, their vocal recordings.” The legislation has been applauded by many in creative industries, said Moiya McTier, senior adviser at the Human Artistry Campaign, a group advocating for stronger guardrails on artificial intelligence.

Generative artificial intelligence has made it possible to mimic someone’s voice and generate a script for that voice in real time. The tech, of course, is already used to scam and defraud people, but what if you just had it make a bunch of calls on your behalf? That’s what journalist Evan Ratliff did for his new podcast, “Shell Game.” He trained AI audio clones, gave them phone numbers and sat back as they took on customer service agents, family members, therapists and even a few scammers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Ratliff — and briefly with one of his AI agents — about his takeaways from producing the show and whether the clones succeeded in tricking people into thinking they were who they said they were.

Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, died last week at the age of 56. As a kid, she wanted to be an artist. As an adult, she discovered the “art of technology.”

Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” has shattered records, crashed websites and broken the hearts of fans vying for tickets. The BBC’s Sam Gruet says AI could help fans purchase tickets for a fair price and without the risk of fraud.

On today’s show: Olympians have taken to social media to celebrate, sometimes to trash talk, but also to discuss their mental health. And Google pulled a controversial Olympics ad featuring its Gemini artificial intelligence tool. But first, what the stock market sell-off could be saying about the AI boom. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discusses all of this with Christina Farr, author of the health tech newsletter “Second Opinion,” who says there’s growing chatter that AI has gotten a bit overinflated.

Who will win the election? What will the vote margin be? Will Donald Trump post on X before November? People can place bets on all these real-world questions — and more — on prediction markets. And these online platforms like PredictIt and Polymarket are increasingly being looked to as crystal balls in this chaotic election, promising real-time political insights and the chance to make a few bucks. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Chris Cohen, the deputy site editor of GQ, who recently wrote about his experience getting in on the action of what appears to be a prediction market “gold rush.”

More than 20 years ago, executives at rival auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s were found guilty of coordinating a massive price-fixing scheme. Leaders from the companies held covert meetings, where they set identical commission fees. Today, active antitrust cases show that the ways in which companies might conspire are changing. Algorithms can replace secret meetings, but U.S. regulators say it’s still collusion, whether it’s a human or a bot pulling the strings. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Joe Harrington at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School about how antitrust law holds up against new technology.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a photo of two little girls in the parking lot of a California Taco Bell went viral. They were doing their schoolwork on laptops in that inconvenient location because the restaurant provided free Wi-Fi, which they didn’t have at home. The girls came to symbolize the digital underclass that’s emerged since the rise of the internet. There are millions of American kids like them, says Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her analysis of the digital divide is contained in her new book, “Digitally Invisible: How the Internet Is Creating the New Underclass.”  

Large language models go through a lot of vetting before they’re released to the public. That includes safety tests, bias checks, ethical reviews and more. But what if, hypothetically, a model could dodge a safety question by lying to developers, hiding its real response to a safety test and instead giving the exact response its human handlers are looking for? A recent study shows that advanced LLMs are developing the capacity for deception, and that could bring that hypothetical situation closer to reality. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali speaks with Thilo Hagendorff, a researcher at the University of Stuttgart and the author of the study, about his findings.

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta is expanding AI offerings across its products, even as the company gets rid of AI features that haven’t quite landed with consumers. The bottom line? CEO Mark Zuckerberg says “Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year.”Then, the Wall Street Journal’s senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern shares surprises and regrets on her journey as an electric vehicle owner. But first, this week in Congress, the Senate passed the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, also known as COPPA 2.0, and the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, in a rare bipartisan vote — 91 senators voted in favor, with just three opposing these measures, which aim to reduce harm to kids on the internet.

There’s always been something aspirational about the term “smart home.” It was coined by a residential builder association here in the U.S. back in the mid-’80s, long before the inventions we now think of as hallmarks of the smart home. Today, 42% of American households with internet own at least one smart home device, according to the market research firm Parks Associates. In her new book, “Threshold: How Smart Homes Change Us Inside and Out,” Heather Suzanne Woods of Kansas State University asks whether that’s a good thing.

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, can be a lifesaving technology for patients whose organs have failed. It works, essentially, by performing the functions that a healthy person’s lungs and heart would normally do. While using the machine, many recipients of ECMO treatment can walk, talk, even ride a stationary bike, but they can’t leave the hospital with the machine, nor can they survive without it. In a recent article in The New Yorker, emergency physician and writer Clayton Dalton described these patients as “caught on a bridge to nowhere.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Dalton about the complicated ethics of this technology.

Companies competing in the chatbot wars are using something known in the industry as “the Pile” to train their large language models. It’s a trove of open-source data made up of text scraped from all around the internet, including Wikipedia and the European Parliament. Annie Gilbertson, investigative reporter for Proof News, recently took a deep dive into the Pile and discovered something else: a dataset called “YouTube Subtitles.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Gilbertson about her investigation and how YouTube creators feel about their content being used without their consent.

It’s a rare issue that can bring the political parties together in Congress, and the need to regulate social media companies ranks high on that very short list. Two industry veterans want Congress to create an agency that sets safety and privacy rules for platforms — and enforces them. The status quo, they argue, is like letting airlines fly without Federal Aviation Administration oversight. The idea comes from Anika Collier Navaroli and Ellen Pao. Pao, an attorney and now CEO of Project Include, pushed to ban revenge porn on Reddit during her tenure as interim CEO. Navaroli, an attorney and senior fellow at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was involved in Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, when she was a senior policy expert there. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Navaroli and Pao about their proposal.  

On the show today: The ascent of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic Party ticket has stirred the KHive. We’ll look at what the Harris memes mean, in case you just fell out of a coconut tree. Plus, why Waymo is suing alleged vandals of its vehicles in San Francisco. We ask, why now? But first, cookies are here to stay — for a while, anyway. Google is backtracking on its plan, announced in 2020, to do away with the files that advertisers use to track us online. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired magazine, about why.

Back in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, the world’s first comprehensive law for people with disabilities. It was seen as making up for an area in which the Civil Rights Act of 1964 fell short. “The stark fact remains that people with disabilities were still victims of segregation and discrimination, and this was intolerable,” Bush said. Now, the legislation passed at the dawn of the internet age is being adapted to ensure digital access for everyone. That means ensuring access to captions on web videos to support deaf Americans and the ability to resize text so people with low vision can read it. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with consultant Nicolas Steenhout, who explained how the Department of Justice is updating the rules.

What if receiving a medical diagnosis was as simple as shopping online? The growing home diagnostics industry says it can be. At-home testing was widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic, but more health tech companies also offer DIY kits that test for food allergies, fertility and thyroid function, among other things. Some medical experts are wary of this on-demand model, but health tech investors say it can make health care more accessible. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Chrissy Farr, author of the Second Opinion newsletter, and Anarghya Vardhana, a partner at the Maveron venture firm, about the prospects of the industry and how it affects relationships between patients and doctors.

Last Friday felt like something out of a Y2K nightmare after the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, pushed a software update to all its clients — including health care systems, banks and the federal government — that ended up crashing computer systems worldwide. The fallout is still being felt, particularly in the travel sector, as airliners try to reschedule canceled flights while trying to get everything back to normal. It’s also become something of a reminder that the internet and a lot of the online services we rely on are delicate. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Kate Conger, a reporter at The New York Times who recently wrote about this with her colleague David Streitfeld.

Online sales in the U.S. surpassed $14 billion during Amazon Prime Day last week, according to Adobe Analytics. Amazon’s heft and promotional power continue to drive sales, even for rivals, during the shopping jamboree. But in Europe, an important market for the e-commerce giant, lawmakers have become increasingly sensitive to Amazon’s relations with its rivals, as well as its partners and customers. They’ve requested that Amazon hand over information about its product recommendation algorithms, along with data on ads, by Friday. It’s part of compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of tech regulations that took effect in recent years. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed it with Theo Wayt, who covers Amazon for The Information.

A new Senate report finds Amazon Prime Day is prime time for warehouse injuries. Plus, Starbucks is teaming up with Mercedes-Benz to supercharge electric vehicle infrastructure. But first, several Silicon Valley billionaires have thrown their support behind former President Donald Trump in his quest to reclaim the White House, thanks in part to his pick for vice president, Sen. J.D. Vance. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, a managing partner at Collab Capital, for her take on these stories in Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

FBI officials are still looking into what motivated the 20-year-old gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday. As of this episode, investigators have yet to publicly share any conclusions about his reasons for the attack, which killed a rally attendee and injured the former president and two others. But the lack of information didn’t stop misinformation from flooding online channels. Marketplace’s senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams, speaks with Molly Dwyer, director of insights at PeakMetrics, and Lisa Fazio, associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, about the false narratives surrounding the shooting and how to separate fact from fiction in the aftermath of a violent event. This conversation is part of “Marketplace Tech’s” limited series “Decoding Democracy.” Watch the full episode here or on our YouTube channel.

Pop quiz: What’s a policy supported by political rivals in California and Florida? The answer is banning cellphones in school. Florida is among a handful of states that have restricted mobile devices in the classroom. California has not, though Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed the Legislature to act. The policies are intended to reduce distraction and mitigate addiction and other mental health concerns attributed to phone use. But Liz Kolb, a clinical professor of education at the University of Michigan, tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino it’s not that simple. Pop quiz: What’s a policy supported by political rivals in California and Florida? The answer is banning cellphones in school. Florida is among a handful of states that have restricted mobile devices in the classroom. California has not, though Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed the Legislature to act. The policies are intended to reduce distraction and mitigate addiction and other mental health concerns attributed to phone use. But Liz Kolb, a clinical professor of education at the University of Michigan, tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino it’s not that simple.

In recent years, we’ve seen a surge of state laws and policies affecting trans people. Half of states have banned or restricted gender affirming care for minors, with some adding restrictions for adults. The ACLU is tracking more than 500 bills that have been introduced across the country. The enforcement of such laws, as with recent bans on abortion and related reproductive care, have raised concerns about tracking people’s digital footprints. So much of daily life is conducted online, and there are currently no federal data privacy protections. KB Brookins, a writer based in Austin, Texas, wrote about a personal experience that drove home concerns about their trail of digital data.

Sandwiched between some blockbuster Supreme Court rulings last month came a decision — or more so, a non-decision — that is reverberating through the tech world. NetChoice, big tech’s lobbying arm, challenged a pair of laws in Florida and Texas that sought to restrict how social media platforms moderate content. The high court kicked both cases back to lower courts with some added commentary. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Lauren Feiner, senior policy reporter with the Verge, who wrote about what this means for future attempts to regulate tech.

The Republican Party officially adopted former President Donald Trump’s 2024 platform this week. The GOP is now taking a friendly approach to cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, with plans to roll back regulation of both. Plus, Meta’s Threads platform celebrates its one-year anniversary this month. But first, the Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on the popular messaging app NGL. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on this week’s tech news.

The internet is full of all manner of unsavoriness that is surely corroding our minds and societies. But the kind of rot we’re talking about here is link rot — the disappearance of online content when links turn into “404 Page Not Found.” A recent study from Pew Research suggests almost 40% of all webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible. That includes important government links, citations on Wikipedia and hyperlinks in news articles. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently talked about this with Clare Stanton, product and research manager at Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab, who also works on a webpage preservation project, perma.cc.

About a third of adults under 30 regularly get their news on TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center. And in this election season, the messages from young, left-leaning creators on the short-form video app are pretty different from last time around. In 2020, a coalition of influencers united to back presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign, and historically high youth turnout helped propel him to a win. But after almost four years of the Biden presidency, the TikTok tide has turned, according to Taylor Lorenz, online culture columnist at The Washington Post, who recently wrote about this shift.

The overnight success of ChatGPT helped turn Sam Altman, CEO of its maker, OpenAI, into one of the most powerful people in tech. At a conference hosted by Bloomberg last summer, Altman was asked why we should trust him with so much power, and in response, Altman said, “You shouldn’t.” And yet, throughout his career, Altman has managed to win the trust of Silicon Valley’s kingmakers with ease. In the latest season of Bloomberg’s podcast “Foundering,” journalist Ellen Huet tries to understand Altman’s rise to power. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Huet about what she learned.

Big-budget video game producers and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union representing voice-over actors and motion-capture stunt workers, have been negotiating a new labor contract since last September. And union leaders say those talks have stalled due to concerns over generative artificial intelligence. (Note: Several Marketplace employees are also represented by SAG-AFTRA under a different contract.) Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Associated Press reporter Sarah Parvini, who recently wrote about the negotiations. She explained how consent is a key concern.

We’ve reached the midyear mark for 2024, so for our weekly review show, “Tech Bytes,” we are breaking format and taking stock of the past six months in tech with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked her what she thought was the most underreported story of the last six months. And what was the biggest flub? We’ll get to those, but we’ll start Curi’s pick for the most impactful story of the first half of the year.

Streaming giants Spotify and SoundCloud were both founded in Stockholm, and over the past two decades the Swedish capital has developed a reputation as a European hub for companies blending music and innovation. So why does this small Nordic city punch above its weight in music tech, and are start-ups still able to thrive there after a rocky few years for the global economy? The BBC’s Maddy Savage reports.

For the millions of residents and visitors who commute in and out of the areas daily, billboards in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area have long been a way to see where the state of tech is at the moment — and where it’s headed next.

Yesterday, we explained San Francisco’s fraught relationship with the tech industry. Tech workers weren’t always welcome in the eyes of many other residents, and when the COVID-19 pandemic began, a lot of them left, taking their dollars with them. But on a recent Thursday evening, organizers of a block party downtown were trying to bring people back. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Manny Yekutiel and Katy Birnbaum about their efforts to revive the city’s downtown.

Cities across the country are still trying to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic changed how and where many of us work, leaving big holes in downtown office districts. San Francisco, once teeming with tech workers, is no exception. But few cities have suffered the sustained reputational damage that San Francisco has. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently visited the city to meet with Heather Knight, The New York Times’ San Francisco bureau chief. Knight, who has been covering the city for more than two decades, offered her take on San Francisco’s image problem, economic situation and tech culture.

In the past week or so, Nvidia’s stock finally encountered the law of gravity — what goes up must eventually come down, at least a little bit. And we look under the hood of artificial intelligence companies that aren’t necessarily making headlines. Plus, the Supreme Court ruled against Republican-led states that accused the federal government of coercing social media companies into suppressing content. But first, major music labels, including Universal, Sony and Warner, are suing two startups that produce AI-generated music. The labels accuse Suno and Udio of using copyrighted works scraped from the internet to train their AI models. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali speaks with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, for her takes on these stories in this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

It feels like eons ago, but during a town hall on violence in America in 1994, then-President Bill Clinton took to MTV to reach the nation’s youth. Clinton’s openness to MTV and what The New York Times called “other unconventional media” had helped pave his path to the White House two years earlier. Fast-forward to today, and even reluctant politicians use TikTok to reach younger voters — President Joe Biden is no exception. His first post came just ahead of this year’s Super Bowl. We invited Marketplace’s senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams, and Joshua Scacco, professor of political communication and director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy at the University of South Florida, to discuss the evolution of political messaging with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali. Scacco said Clinton’s MTV moment informed how future presidents, including his successor, George W. Bush, have engaged with Americans.

This week, we’ve been taking stock of how tech has both helped and harmed Americans trying to get abortions in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. After the Dobbs decision, some experts warned consumers that menstrual tracking apps would provide a means of surveilling abortion seekers. There was even a social media campaign on what was then Twitter advising people to delete their period trackers. But it’s turned out that the threat to privacy isn’t limited to those apps. Other digital data can actually be more likely to reveal an illegal abortion. That’s according to Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that everyday consumer apps generate sensitive data that can be used for abortion surveillance.  

After the U.S. Supreme Court took away the federal right to abortion two years ago, telehealth has helped provide ongoing access, including to people in states where abortion is now banned. That was our subject Monday. Now we are looking into apps that link patients with abortion providers. Julie F. Kay, executive director at the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that digital privacy protections are far from equal across these services.

Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court ruled that abortions are not constitutionally protected in the U.S., a decision that would draw protests across the country. Since then, 14 states have outlawed abortions. Still, some people in those states have been able to cut through barriers to get abortions via telehealth, according to a recent report from the research project #WeCount. Usually, this requires a virtual visit with a telehealth care provider. The provider assesses the patient and gets their information, then can mail them mifepristone and misoprostol, which aid in ending a pregnancy. The Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone in a ruling this month, which means it can still be prescribed and mailed to patients. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the increase in telehealth abortions with Ushma Upadhyay, professor of OB-GYN and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a coauthor of the #WeCount report.

Big Tech subscription services are once again in the crosshairs of the Federal Trade Commission, nonprofits with links to OpenAI are becoming less transparent, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is urging Congress to require warning labels on social media. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali speaks with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired magazine, for this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review

Picture this: The year is 2014. The song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams is playing on every top 100 station, and the Ellen DeGeneres star-studded Oscars selfie has just “broken Twitter.” As all of this is happening, a bunch of content creators in certain corners of social media are about to start making a whole lot of money. Culture reporter Steffi Cao recently wrote in The Ringer that 2014 was the year that shaped the internet we know today. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to her about what happened online 10 years ago.

Shortly after the Union won the Civil War in 1865, a union major general issued an order: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” June 19, known as Juneteenth, has long been celebrated by African Americans. But in 2020, in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Juneteenth took the internet by storm. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brandon Ogbunu, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, who wrote about that moment for WIRED back then. He revisited what was happening at that time a year before Juneteenth became a national holiday.

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently visited the headquarters of Nautilus Biotech to meet with Parag Mallick, the company’s founder and chief scientist, who is also a magician and an associate professor at Stanford University. Since 2016, Mallick and his team have been building a machine that they say will revolutionize biomedicine by unlocking the secrets of the “dark proteome.”

Brazil has densely populated low-income communities living on the outskirts of many cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Ordering online shopping just isn’t an option for residents as these towns don’t have an official address, but that may be changing. The BBC’s Ben Derico reports.

Ride-hailing company Uber has lost its challenge to the California law that requires gig companies to provide employment rights to workers. We’ll have more about the legal and political saga on this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review. Also, X — formerly Twitter — has made user “likes” private, marking another change to the platform’s identity and functionality since Elon Musk took over the social media company. But first, they’re calling it Apple Intelligence. That phrase was used about 60 times Monday during Apple’s annual developers confab. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal. She attended the Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California, this week as Apple execs talked through the company’s entry into the AI race.  

Back in 2020, Microsoft made an ambitious pledge to go carbon negative by 2030. But that plan is encountering some headwinds, according to its latest sustainability report. It showed Microsoft’s carbon emissions have increased by 30% since it made that pledge four years ago and comes a reminder of the significant environmental cost of the AI boom. Just how significant? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Emma Strubell, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who co-wrote a paper about the specific energy demands for common uses of this technology.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have been courting Latinos this election season. Relatedly, perhaps, this voting bloc has emerged as a target for disinformation. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Marketplace senior Washington correspondent Kimberly Adams and Roberta Braga, founder and executive director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, to learn more about Spanish-language disinformation in the 2024 campaign. This conversation is part of “Marketplace Tech’s” limited series “Decoding Democracy.” Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.

Back in January, a U.S. Senate committee probed executives from Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord about social media’s effect on kids. During a heated exchange with Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood, turned and apologized to families of victims who were sexually exploited on social media platforms. No federal legislation on the issue has become law, but some states are taking the lead. New York just passed two laws aimed at regulating social media, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta is pushing similar legislation in his state. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali sat down with Bonta to ask about what his state is doing to protect social media’s youngest users.

The network of online communities known as Reddit has millions of weekly active users. They post on “subreddit” forums like r/WhatShouldICook — a place where people just talk about their dinner plans — and r/ShowerThoughts, where participants share what they’re thinking during routine tasks. The co-founder and CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, is a fan of r/Daddit, being a father himself. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Huffman at Reddit headquarters in San Francisco, where they talked about the company selling stock and its recent licensing agreements with the likes of Google and Open AI, which use Reddit content to train their large language models.

It’s cornered the market for boomers. Now, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta hopes to make Facebook once again a favorite social media app for young adults. Plus, the Wall Street Journal reports E*Trade is considering whether to give the boot to user Roaring Kitty, who helped ignite the 2021 meme stock craze. In case you missed it, yes, the craze is back. But first, there’s yet another open letter on AI. This whistleblower letter comes from more than a dozen current and former employees at major AI companies. They warn of the risks posed by the technology being developed. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on this week’s tech news.

Telling truth from fiction online has become a lot harder since the AI boom kicked off a year and a half ago. An estimated 40 deepfake detection startups say they have a solution, but so far none can deliver 100% reliable detection. One organization taking on the challenge is TrueMedia.org. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Oren Etzioni, its founder and longtime AI researcher, about what sets his organization’s system apart from the rest.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been exploring the cosmos for the past three decades, helping scientists understand how fast the universe is expanding and with that, its age. In December 2021, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope to further that research. The bonus: All those stunning images from outer space. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. He said the Webb telescope has confirmed what Hubble first pieced together: Our universe is expanding faster than first predicted.  

The Summer Olympics, which kick off in Paris next month, are set to bring more than 10,000 athletes and an estimated 15 million spectators to the French capital. Officials hope to keep sports at center stage, but behind the scenes, they’re preparing to fend off cyberthreats in high volume. In recent years, several Olympic host cities have faced and managed cyberattacks, but as Antoaneta Roussi, cybersecurity reporter at Politico, tells Marketplace’s Lily Jamali, this year could be worse.

Artificial intelligence has been used to help translate election candidates into hundreds of different languages — but also to create deepfakes of Bollywood stars and spread false news. The BBC’s Arunoday Mukharji reports.

In the early days of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot query required about 10 times the electricity of a typical Google search. And as people do more with generative artificial intelligence, we’re going to burn through even more power. Plus, the ’80s are back — on TikTok. A new dance trend is getting Gen X parents to show their Gen Z kids how they danced back in the day, to the tune of Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy.” Also this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that consulting and professional services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers is now OpenAI’s largest customer and the first reseller of ChatGPT’s enterprise tier, which is aimed at businesses. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, about these headlines for this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

A law signed by President Joe Biden last month would force TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or be banned in the United States because of national security worries. And it’s making a lot of small-business owners anxious. We hear their stories.

Sharon Lerner has been reporting on “forever chemicals” for the better part of a decade. These manmade compounds — known as PFAS for short — resist oil, water and heat, take an incredibly long time to break down in nature, and have been used widely in products like Scotchgard, Teflon and firefighting foam. Lerner has focused part of her work on understanding the flow of information inside manufacturers like 3M. By the 1970s, Lerner says, Minnesota-based 3M had established that they were toxic in animals and were accumulating in humans’ bodies. But who inside 3M knew? And what did they know? Reporting for ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news site, Lerner got a complicated answer after coming across a former 3M scientist named Kris Hansen. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Lerner about her recent investigation.

When it comes to combating election-related misinformation online, sometimes the real world is the best place to start, but it isn’t always easy. On this week’s installment of “Marketplace Tech’s” limited series “Decoding Democracy,” Lily Jamali and senior Washington correspondent Kimberly Adams discuss the personal side of misinformation, take questions from colleagues and hear from experts about best practices for talking with loved ones about this sometimes sensitive topic.

A team from the University of Glasgow in Scotland is developing a robot guide dog aimed at helping the visually impaired find their way around. They’re calling the AI-powered device the RoboGuide. The BBC’s Shiona McCallum brings us along on her visit with one of the robodogs and its handler, Dr. Wasim Ahmad.

Proceeding without permission is a time-tested practice in some corners of Silicon Valley. Well, it’s not working out so well for OpenAI. Actress Scarlett Johansson said this week the company approached her twice to voice a new AI assistant for ChatGPT-4o. She declined, only to find it had used a voice that sounds “eerily” like hers. Plus, on Capitol Hill, a House subcommittee held a hearing that could decide the future of Section 230, the provision that largely governs the internet today. We’ll explain why chatbots have entered the chat on Section 230’s future. But first, a new report by former tech company officials and academic researchers finds far-right extremist militias are once again organizing on Facebook ahead of November’s presidential election. They recommend platforms ramp up content moderation to avoid fueling political violence. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, for her take on this week’s tech news. Our May fundraiser ends Friday, and we need your help to reach our goal. Give today and help fund public service journalism for all!

Ever since NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars three years ago, it’s been collecting rocks and soil from the red planet. The plan was for NASA to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars to bring those samples back to Earth, but the agency has now scrapped those plans thanks to a ballooning price tag and extensive delays. With no way of getting to Mars on its own, NASA is hoping to hitch a ride with private space companies to finish the mission. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Kenneth Chang, science reporter at The New York Times, about NASA’s difficulties on Mars and its partnerships with the private sector. Our May fundraiser ends Friday, and we need your help to reach our goal. Give today and help fund public service journalism for all!

The internet today is largely governed by 26 words in the Communications Decency Act, signed on Feb. 8, 1996, by then-President Bill Clinton. “Today, with the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with our future,” he proclaimed during the signing of the act. The web has changed a bit since then. But Section 230 of that law has not. Today, social media companies routinely use Section 230 to protect themselves from liability over what users post. Now, an internet scholar wants to change that. Will Oremus wrote about him for The Washington Post. Our May fundraiser ends Friday, and we need your help to reach our goal. Give today and help fund public service journalism for all!

There was a time when pollsters went door to door to figure out what people were thinking. Gallup did that for almost 50 years, before switching mostly to telephones by the mid-’80s. Phone polling was cheaper but still reliable. That is, until the cellphone came along. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup, about the complexities of reaching people to get their views. His company stopped doing presidential horse-race polling in 2012, but still asks Americans for their views on the sitting president and topics ranging from immigration to inflation. Our May fundraiser ends Friday, and we need your help to reach our goal. Give today and help fund public service journalism for all!

If you drive 45 miles north of Little Rock, Arkansas, you’ll come across a facility packed with thousands of computers trying to “mine” the next bitcoin. The popular cryptocurrency’s value recently shot past $60,000 per bitcoin. Mining those bitcoins is a lucrative operation, and several crypto mining outfits have moved to the state since the passage of the Arkansas Data Centers Act last year, also known as the “right-to-mine” bill. Similar bills giving crypto mining operations protections from local regulations have popped up a couple of states. But it turns out residents don’t particularly welcome many of these operations. And Arkansas recently changed course and restored to municipalities the ability to regulate crypto miners. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently spoke with Gabriel Dance, senior deputy investigations editor at The New York Times, about the crypto mining situation in Arkansas. He explained what the biggest complaints have been since these mining operations moved in. It’s your last chance to double your impact during our May fundraiser — the Investors Challenge Fund is matching donations up to $25,000 today! Give right now!

On this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for a heap of new spending on artificial intelligence research. We’ll look at where the proposed $32 billion annually is likely to go. And some of the biggest players in AI tried to outdo one another this week. OpenAI said it’s giving ChatGPT an upgrade and a personality while Google is trying to remake search with its AI model, Gemini. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, financial analysis columnist at The Information, for her take on these stories. Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.

The whole digital economy runs through hundreds of thousands of miles of communication cables no bigger than a garden hose, deep on the ocean floor. So what happens when they break? And they do break, about once every other day, thanks to fishing trawlers or natural disasters. That’s when you call a repair crew of engineers, geologists, marine construction specialists and more who often spend months at sea repairing cables. This vital industry is largely invisible and facing some big challenges. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Josh Dzieza, feature writer and investigations editor at The Verge, who did a deep dive into the industry and those challenges. Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.

This week, media executives have been busy trying to impress advertisers at the annual “upfronts,” where major TV networks showcase their stars, new programs and the potential size of their audiences. It’s a show in its own right. “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon did his version of Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” at NBC’s upfront Monday. But this year, Big Tech is looking to cash in. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke about it with Reuters reporter Sheila Dang, who said ad spending on digital has surpassed that of traditional TV for the first time. The next $50,000 in donations to Marketplace will be matched, thanks to a generous gift from Dr. Joe Rush of Florida. Give now and double your impact.  

A couple of weeks ago, Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak noticed a video deepfake of the Hollywood actor Chris Evans on social media. The AI-generated Evans explains in Chinese how money is at the root of life’s problems. It’s part of a recent trend on mainland China, where deepfakes of foreigners give advice, discuss politics and sell goods online. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Pak about what’s behind the trend and later, the state of online misinformation in China. This conversation was part of “Marketplace Tech’s” limited series, “Decoding Democracy.” Watch the full episode here or on our YouTube channel.

Early in the pandemic, many big tech companies based in Silicon Valley exited California, fleeing the high overhead necessary to do business there. One city — Austin, Texas — was consistently tagged as the top destination. The Texas capital offered lower costs, especially in regard to housing and taxes. Another draw for companies: the state’s more lax approach to regulation. Well, after a massive influx, the “Texas miracle,” with Austin at its epicenter, is losing some of its luster. In recent weeks, Tesla, which moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2020, announced it’s laying off 2,700 workers there. And software giant Oracle, which relocated to Austin at about the same time, is moving its headquarters again, this time to Nashville, Tennessee. Last week, at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Austin Mayor Kirk Watson about the state of tech in his city.  

On this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review, OpenAI has unveiled its own deepfake detection software and is allowing a small group of disinformation researchers to use it. Speaking of artificial intelligence, Apple this week unveiled a new suite of iPads (just in case you forgot they still make those). The company announced its new iPad Pro will, among other features, run on an AI-powered processing chip. But first, a sales slowdown has hit electric car maker Tesla pretty hard of late. Now, the tech news site Electrek reports there’s been another wave of layoffs this week, directly affecting the company’s software, service and engineering departments. It also follows last week’s mass layoff of Tesla’s entire supercharger unit. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist with the Wall Street Journal, to unpack these stories. Support our nonprofit newsroom today and pick up a fun thank-you gift like our new Shrinkflation mini tote bag or the fan favorite KaiPA pint glass!

Today’s episode of Marketplace Tech is all about financial scams: how they work, what kinds of technology scammers use, and how to spot a scam before you fall victim to one. We’re passing the microphone to victims of scams to tell their stories and then breaking down how the scammers pulled it off with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Selena Larson, staff threat researcher at Proofpoint. Support our nonprofit newsroom today and pick up a fun thank-you gift like our new Shrinkflation mini tote bag or the fan favorite KaiPA pint glass!

Pinterest. It’s the platform best known for its viral recipes, fashion forecasts, DIY crafts and ideas for just about any wedding or birthday party theme you could think of. In a sea of outrage and division on social media, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready wants you to think of the platform as a sanctuary of positivity in the online universe. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently sat down with Ready and asked him about how Pinterest has changed since its launch.

Back in the pandemic depths of December 2020, when so many Americans were working, learning and performing essential daily tasks online, the Federal Communications Commission launched an emergency program to help low-income people connect to high-speed internet with a $50-per-month subsidy. That was extended with the Affordable Connectivity Program, which has provided $30 a month for internet service. An estimated 23 million households currently get the subsidy. But they won’t for much longer. Efforts to renew funding for the ACP have stalled in Congress and are expected to run out by the end of the month. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Kelcee Griffis of Tech Brew about her reporting on the ACP and the people who rely on it.  

The following content may be disturbing to some listeners. For years, child sexual abuse material was mostly distributed by mail. Authorities used investigative techniques to stem its spread. That got a lot harder when the internet came along. And AI has supercharged the problem. “Those 750,000 predators that are online at any given time looking to connect with minor[s] … they just need to find a picture of a child and use the AI to generate child sexual abuse materials and superimpose these faces on something that is inappropriate,” says child safety advocate and TikTokker Tiana Sharifi. The nonprofit Thorn has created new design principles aimed at fighting child sexual abuse. Rebecca Portnoff, the organization’s vice president of data science, says tech companies need to develop better technology to detect AI-generated images and commit not to use this material to train AI models.

This week: Startups are taking longer to go public or sell to a buyer. What does that say about the state of tech? Also, the dating app Bumble once courted women by letting them make the first move. We’ll explain why Gen Z is prompting Bumble to change things up. But first, discount retail giant Walmart announced this week it is shutting down its telehealth business, as well as its network of low-cost health clinics. There were 51 of those clinics scattered across five states throughout the country. They were part of Walmart’s big push into health care, announced in 2019. So what happened? Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Christina Farr, author of the health tech newsletter Second Opinion, for her take on this week’s tech news.

Just how capable is today’s artificial intelligence at beating humans at their own games? That’s one of the metrics tracked by an annual report put together by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, or HAI. And its latest AI Index report finds the tech is quickly gaining on humans. According to the report, AI now exceeds human capability not only in areas like simple reading comprehension and image classification, but also in domains that start to approach human logic, like natural language inference (the ability to draw inferences from text) or visual reasoning (the ability to deduce physical relationships between visual objects). Still, there are areas where the bots haven’t quite caught up. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Nestor Maslej, research manager at HAI and editor in chief of the index report, to learn more.

In October, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft, beginning a deep-space mission to one of Jupiter’s moons to determine if it’s capable of supporting life. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where the Clipper was built, to learn more about the mission and see the spacecraft before its shipped off to Cape Canaveral, Florida, later this month.

A massive general election is currently underway in India. It’s been described as the “largest democratic exercise in history.” And tech platforms are a big part of it. Many Indian voters get their information online, where misinformation and disinformation can spread quickly. That includes deepfakes of prominent public figures, like Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, spreading false information about who or which political parties they are endorsing. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific policy director and senior international counsel with the international human rights group Access Now, about how deepfakes and online misinformation have become a problem for voters in India. They also discuss a recent report from Access Now and Global Witness, an environmental and human rights nonprofit, about YouTube’s advertisement moderation standards in India.

Robotics company Boston Dynamics announced this month it is retiring its humanoid robot known as “Atlas.” The 6′, 2,330 lb robot was considered a quantum leap in robotics and was famous for parkour stunts and awkward dance moves. Debuting more than a decade ago in 2013, the Atlas robot was a part of a partnership with the Defense Department. It relied on hydraulic power, using pressurized fluid to generate movement. It could do tasks that can be challenging for humans like lifting heavy boxes and parkour. As the older Atlas lives out its golden years, Boston Dynamics has announced its successor – a smaller version of the Atlas bot that runs on electric power. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brian Heater, hardware editor at TechCrunch, for his take on what’s next and a look back on the original Atlas.

The noncompete clause is dead! American tech workers are poised to benefit from the Federal Trade Commission’s new crackdown on the agreements, which prevent a company’s ex-employees from working for its rivals for a specified time. Also, Tesla’s profits crashed 55%. As electric vehicle sales sputter, we wonder why more players are still speeding into the space. But first, TikTok’s top executive was defiant after the passage of a massive foreign aid package that included a directive to the company: Sell to a U.S. buyer or get banned. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, for his take on this week’s tech news.

When Jeff Bezos left Wall Street to start Amazon in 1994, the most common question he got was “What’s the internet?” Fast-forward to today, and Amazon is, of course, the country’s leading online retailer, as well as cloud services provider. In 2022, the company controlled almost 38% of the U.S. e-commerce market. Walmart, its closest competitor, had just over 6%, according to Insider Intelligence. In her new book, “The Everything War,” The Wall Street Journal’s Dana Mattioli documents the tactics she says have enabled Amazon to dominate.

Imagine you’re a national security official tasked with monitoring activity off the coast of your fictitious country. Suddenly, a large tanker ship in your area goes silent. Its location sensor is offline, and it’s not responding to radio communication. What do you do? It’s a question Francesca de Rosa, chief scientist for gaming at the Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation, poses in the Reliability Game, which she designed. It’s part of a genre known as “serious games.” De Rosa told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that while serious games can be fun, they’re really meant to prepare people to handle all kinds of situations.

A new wearable from tech startup Humane promises to bring an AI assistant to your lapel. It attaches to your jacket, sweater or shirt and operates with voice commands or a digital interface laser projected onto the palm of your hand. It sounds like the stuff of a sci-fi novel, but the reviews so far are not good. The panning of the Ai Pin comes after five years in development, $240 million in funding and partnerships struck with the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and Salesforce. So, what went wrong? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Victoria Song, senior reviewer at The Verge, what this device is supposed to be for.

Artificial intelligence has become a big part of medicine — reading images, formulating treatment plans and developing drugs. But a recent investigation by Stat News found that some insurers overrely on an algorithm to make coverage decisions for seniors on Medicare Advantage, a Medicare plan offered by private insurers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Casey Ross, who co-reported the story. He said an algorithm predicted how long patients needed care and coverage was curtailed to fit that calculation.

On this week’s show, the United Kingdom is cracking down on makers of sexually explicit deepfakes. We’ll look at what penalizing the practice could mean for the victims. Then, the creator economy has the attention of millions of subscribers, but also venture capital. Why content creators like Dude Perfect on YouTube and other startups are attracting so much investment right now. But we begin with Amazon. The e-commerce giant’s Just Walk Out technology lets shoppers scan an app when they enter a store so they can leave with their purchases without paying at a register. This week, Amazon said there’s growing interest in the technology among retailers outside its empire. Yet the company is reportedly reducing the use of Just Walk Out in its own brick-and-mortar stores. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on these stories.

When you think about gin, what tastes comes to mind? Pine? Maybe citrus or coriander? It can vary quite a bit because unlike some spirits, gin is very lightly regulated. Distillers can throw in all kinds of flavors and call the result “gin” as long it has some minimum requirements. In the U.S., gin is gin as long as the flavor is derived from juniper berries and alcohol by volume is at least 40%. In the European Union, the minimum ABV is 37.5%. But researchers in Edinburgh, Scotland, recently identified the exact elements that define gin using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscropy. Think of it as something like an MRI scan that lets scientists create a flavor “fingerprint.” The new technique could have big implications for this very old industry. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Eve Thomas, who wrote about it for Wired, to learn more.

When the chemical company DuPont unveiled Teflon in 1946, nonstick pots and pans seemed like a miracle. We now know their coatings contain “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, which don’t break down. These compounds are not only in cookware but in clothing, cosmetics and more — and they contaminate the water millions of us drink. Research shows there’s no safe level of exposure. As the EPA rolls out new limits on PFAS in drinking water, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, about the tech used to filter it.

President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by a razor-thin margin, flipping the state blue for the first time in more than 20 years. As a result, Arizona became a hotbed of election misinformation and conspiracy theories, as false claims of a stolen election led to protests outside voting centers, a GOP-backed ballot audit and threats against election workers. Now, with just over 200 days until the 2024 election, experts warn that artificial intelligence could supercharge misinformation and disinformation in this year’s race. So how are election officials in a state that has already been in the trenches preparing for another battle over facts? In this episode of “Marketplace Tech’s” limited series, “Decoding Democracy,” Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams look back at what happened in Arizona during the last presidential election and how the state became entangled in conspiracy theories. Plus, we hear from Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about how his office plans to combat AI-charged misinformation this year.

The programming language known as COBOL turns 65 this year. We couldn’t help noticing that’s right around retirement age, but COBOL is nowhere near retirement. It remains a mainstay of IT operations at U.S. government agencies, businesses and financial institutions. Yet the programming language, which is older than the Beatles, is no longer taught at most universities. Glenn Fleishman is a freelance tech journalist who has written about this aging slab of digital infrastructure. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked him whether our continuing reliance on COBOL is a problem.  

The Labor Department this week confirmed what a lot of Americans have been feeling: Inflation is kind of sticking around, and higher interest rates are likely to as well. We’ll look at what that means for venture capital, which was already slow to flow. Plus, the Joe Biden administration announced a $6.6 billion deal with Taiwan-based semiconductor maker TSMC to build a third production hub in Arizona. We take a look at the ongoing rollout of the CHIPS and Science Act, which makes it all possible. But first, Tesla has settled a lawsuit in the death of a software engineer who was killed driving a Tesla while using the company’s semiautonomous driving software, Autopilot. The suit put scrutiny on Elon Musk’s claims about the software. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing director at Collab Capital, for her take on these stories.

More than 99% of all species that have lived on Earth are now extinct — something humans have certainly had a hand in. There’s now an entire scientific discipline devoted to bringing some of these species back. If you’re picturing those cloning scenes from “Jurassic Park” right now, we get it. But “de-extinction” is not quite that. Beth Shapiro is the chief science officer at Colossal Biosciences, a bioengineering startup working on de-extinction. She explained to Marketplace’s Lily Jamali how the process works.

AI models are increasingly being used by the fashion industry, as they save time and money. Some models and agencies are fans, but others want to see more protection for the image rights of models. What does it all mean for the fashion industry? The BBC’s Sam Gruet reports.

We hear words like “safety” and “transparency” thrown around in the artificial intelligence industry, but they don’t always mean the same things to a tech insider that they do to the rest of us. Luckily, tech journalist Karen Hao wrote a helpful glossary of 50 AI ethics terms to help us make sense of what tech leaders really mean by the words they use. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with her about some of the double meanings on her list.

It’s been six months of war in the Gaza Strip since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The destruction and death have been profound, and nearly every aspect of life in the roughly 140-square-mile territory has been upended. The New York Times recently reported that the Israeli military is using facial recognition artificial intelligence to monitor Palestinians in Gaza. The government hasn’t publicly acknowledged it, but reporter Sheera Frenkel spoke to Israeli intelligence officers, military officials and soldiers who confirmed that the technology was being used for mass surveillance. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Frenkel about facial recognition’s role in the conflict, starting with the story of a Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha, who reportedly was arrested and beaten by Israeli forces.

Google has agreed to destroy billions of browser data records to settle a class action suit alleging that the tech giant misled users about how Chrome tracked them in “Incognito mode.” Plus, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart reveals that Apple discouraged him from interviewing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on his Apple TV+ podcast, “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” It’s a window into the “creative differences” that led to the abrupt end of the show last fall and the pressure creators face as Big Tech companies move deeper into “content.” But first, a federal internet subsidy for low-income households is about to expire. We’ll look at efforts to keep that program funded as the Federal Communications Commission moves to vote on restoring net neutrality rules. That policy, enacted during the Barack Obama administration and rescinded under former President Donald Trump, blocked internet service providers from favoring certain websites over others. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, discuss these stories for Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

Fake obituaries have become an online trend. They exploit tragedy for profit and have raised concerns about the reliability of search engines. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the problem with reporter Mia Sato of The Verge. Her investigation uncovered a network of websites generating this content using search engine optimization, or SEO, tactics. Sato also covered the story of Brian Vastag, a journalist who experienced this abuse when he read his own fake obituary along with that of his ex-wife, who did actually pass away.

The Chinese company ByteDance owns two versions of basically the same app. In the U.S. we have TikTok, used by an estimated 170 million people, while in China they have Douyin, home to more than 700 million active users. Despite having the same parent company, TikTok and Douyin function as separate worlds. Now, as TikTok simmers in political hot water, the differences between the two apps are under a microscope. To get to the bottom of what sets these sister apps apart, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Marketplace’s China correspondent, Jennifer Pak, about why ByteDance has this system in the first place.

It was an early attempt to use artificial intelligence in the 2024 presidential election: Ahead of January’s New Hampshire primary, a deepfake audio recording of President Joe Biden made it to some voters in the form of a robocall, encouraging them to save their vote. A political consultant named Steve Kramer said he orchestrated that call to show the dangers of deepfakes. Nevertheless, it caused real confusion. And there are a lot of deepfakes out there, including videos, that contend they are educational or parodies. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams discuss video deepfakes and whether the intent behind them outweighs their overall impact.

Right now, the federal government is piloting its response to Silicon Valley’s AI boom. It’s called the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, and it’s supposed to “democratize” access to AI by making gigantic and expensive AI models available to academic researchers. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, who is skeptical of the initiative’s goals. As Myers West explains, the issue with the NAIRR is the government can’t launch an AI program of its own without partnerships that are potentially lucrative for Big Tech.

In this week’s episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Lily Jamali chats with Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal’s senior personal tech columnist, who takes us on a road trip through New Jersey’s network of Tesla superchargers. Stern recently explored how drivers of non-Tesla electric vehicles can now use these stations via an adapter. It’s part of her larger look into the best ways to save money supercharging your EV. Also this week, we’ll get Stern’s take on what to expect at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which will kick off June 10 in Cupertino, California. But first, a look at a new law in Florida, the latest legislative attempt to address the potential harms social media can inflict on children. It prohibits kids 13 and under from creating accounts on popular platforms.  

It’s something government officials on both sides of the aisle are known to do: pressuring tech platforms to bend to their will, aka jawboning. But the line between persuasion and coercion, or even censorship, can get murky. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from two states alleging that the Joe Biden administration illegally coerced social media companies into blocking conservative content. Matt Perault, now with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center on Technology Policy, says that in his former job working in policy at Facebook, jawboning happened all the time.

When you look at the lawsuits aimed at blocking attempts to regulate tech, it’s usually not companies like Meta or Snap doing the suing. Oftentimes, it’s a group called NetChoice, which has emerged as Big Tech’s top lobbying force from Capitol Hill to the courts. Today, a conversation with NetChoice General Counsel Carl Szabo and Megan Iorio, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit focused on privacy. They occasionally agree, but very often they do not. Case in point: the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which requires websites that children are likely to visit to provide privacy protections by default. It was set to take effect in July, but so far, Szabo’s group has successfully blocked it in court. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali sat down with Szabo and Iorio and asked about how their groups interact.

The number of gamers in Africa has doubled in recent years, but many gaming platforms require users to pay for subscriptions or make in-game purchases. That’s a problem for users who don’t have credit cards, but as the BBC’s Mo Allie reports, some fintech companies think they have a solution.  

Crypto is once again big in the Philippines. It first took off during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021 with a now-defunct video game called Axie Infinity, where players earned money — often more than minimum wage — through non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Of course, the crypto winter soon followed with the implosion of FTX in 2022, but now crypto is back in a big way on the island nation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with reporter Eli Tan, who recently visited and wrote about the scene for The New York Times.

When a company pushes false claims about using artificial intelligence in its  business, that’s known informally as “AI washing.” It can feel like everybody’s doing it, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is cracking down on the practice. Plus, is the government’s communication with social media companies persuasion or coercion? The Supreme Court heard arguments this week in yet another case involving online speech. But first, the Department of Justice on Thursday announced that it’s bringing antitrust charges against Apple. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Reuters Breakingviews columnist Anita Ramaswamy about all of these stories for this week’s episode of Marketplace Tech’s Bytes: Week in Review.

Imagine that you could walk into one of the world’s great libraries and leave with whatever you wanted — any book, map, photo or historical document — forever. No questions asked. There is an argument that something like that is happening to the digital data of nations. In a lot of places, anyone can come along and scrape the internet for the valuable data that’s the backbone of artificial intelligence. But what if raw data generated in a particular country could be used to benefit not outside interests, but that country and its people? Some nations have started building their own AI infrastructure to that end in a bid to secure their “AI sovereignty.” According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, the potential implications and opportunities are huge.

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams discuss how deepfake images are leading people to second guess everything in the latest episode of our “Decoding Democracy” series.

More than two years after Reddit first announced plans to go public, a share offering is expected to hit the stock market this week. The social network boasts 260 million active weekly users and more than 100,000 active communities, according to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yet in its nearly two-decade history, Reddit has never turned a profit. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Elizabeth Lopatto, senior writer at The Verge, who says not everyone is on board with the company selling stock.

Roasting coffee beans was a market worth over $1 billion globally in 2022, according to Grand View Research, which projects that figure could double by 2030. Traditional roasters, powered by the fossil fuel natural gas, still dominate the market. These machines are big and bulky and kind of look like part of a train. But the makers of more compact electric roasters are piling into the business. And they have an edge, touting themselves as high-tech alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and cheaper to run than their old-school counterparts. The BBC’s Frey Lindsay has more on the story.

We’re at the end of the week, which means we’re serving up another episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review. Autonomous vehicle company Waymo has launched its driverless taxi service in Los Angeles. OpenAI has given CEO Sam Altman his board seat back. And a U.S. bill passed by the House of Representatives would force TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the U.S. version of the popular social media platform or be banned from app stores. Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, joined Marketplace’s Lily Jamali to discuss why policymakers have been pushing for action on TikTok for years.

On Wednesday, members of the House of Representatives proved they can agree on something. In a bipartisan vote, lawmakers passed a bill that would force TikTok to split from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban — the first for a social media app in the U.S. President Biden has signaled he’d sign the bill into law if it passes the Senate. Advocates argue that the Chinese government could use the hugely popular app to collect Americans’ personal data and threaten U.S. security. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, about the congressional action. He pointed out that a little something called the First Amendment could complicate the crackdown.

When President Barack Obama took office way back in 2009, he created a new role that promised to bring some tech know-how to his administration. Chief Technology Officer, or CTO, was, of course, a title borrowed from corporate America. Early on, the job focused on things like bringing broadband access to rural parts of the country and modernizing the way the federal government keeps records. President Donald Trump also had a CTO. Well, we are now deep into President Joe Biden’s current term in office and the president has yet to appoint a CTO for the United States. For more on why, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Cristiano Lima-Strong, tech policy reporter at The Washington Post, who’s been tracking developments on the position.

It’s been about a year and a half since ChatGPT hit the scene and changed the world of education, leaving teachers scrambling to adjust lesson plans and grading policies. Currently, only a handful of states are providing guidance on how AI should be used in the classroom. Just five have official policies, with about a dozen more in the works. Bree Dusseault at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University has been following all this.

Almost one in five lawyers are using AI, according to an American Bar Association survey. But there are a growing number of legal horror stories involving tools like ChatGPT, because chatbots have a tendency to make stuff up — such as legal precedents from cases that never happened. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Daniel Ho at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence about the group’s recent study on how frequently three of the most popular language models from ChatGPT, Meta and Google hallucinate when asked to weigh in or assist with legal cases.

Late last month, Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth, came under attack by an infamous hacker group called BlackCat. $22 million in ransom later, reportedly paid in bitcoin, and the problem is far from solved. Also this week: Max, previously HBO Max, announces a crackdown on password sharing — maybe it’s time to dust off the old DVD player. But first, Apple on Monday got hit with a massive fine from regulators in Europe. They say the company used its app store dominance to box out music streaming services competing with its own. What’s $2 billion to the tech titan of Cupertino? Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Chrissy Farr, a health tech investor at OMERS Ventures, for today’s episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes.

More than 260,000 people working in the tech industry were laid off last year, and some CEOs have put at least some of the blame on high interest rates. Policymakers at the Federal Reserve hiked rates at the fastest pace in modern history to beat back inflation. And when rates rise, borrowing money gets more expensive. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali sat down with Mary Daly, president and CEO of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, to discuss how the tech industry is navigating through this higher interest rate world and ask about her agency’s role in the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, one year later.  

This week marks the first anniversary of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the largest bank failure in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis. Today, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali revisits the SVB collapse with Anat Admati, an economics professor at Stanford University and co-author of the book “The Banker’s New Clothes.”

Audio deepfakes have become shockingly convincing in the last few years. A deepfake robocall impersonating President Joe Biden encouraging voters to stay home for the New Hampshire primary was one recent example of how far the technology has advanced. That’s why “Marketplace Tech” is launching a limited series called “Decoding Democracy.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali will be joined by other Marketplace reporters, experts and researchers to discuss what election mis- and disinformation is out there, how to spot it and how it impacts our democracy. In this first episode of “Decoding Democracy,” Marketplace senior correspondent Kimberly Adams joins Jamali to delve into the latest on audio deepfake technology and how to protect yourself from being fooled by one.

“Misinformation” and “disinformation” are often lumped together. They’re not the same, but they are very much connected. Say you hear that Christmas falls on Dec. 23 this year. If someone told you that thinking it was true, it’s considered misinformation. But when it’s spread with the intent to deceive, that’s disinformation, which can easily be amplified unwittingly by the folks in the first group. Audio and video generated by artificial intelligence is everywhere in this election season. So before you click Share, know that the tech used to create that convincing-but-often-false content is getting a lot better a lot faster than you might think. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with longtime misinformation researcher Joan Donovan, now a journalism professor at Boston University, to learn more.

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to dig into some of this week’s tech headlines in “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Good news for Nvidia, the top chipmaker for artificial intelligence applications. There are signs that the company’s product shortage is finally easing up, as more customers nab chips to power their AI ambitions. Plus, Apple reportedly hits the brakes on plans to create its own electric vehicle. But first, there was significant movement on data privacy policy. This week, the Joe Biden administration issued an executive order restricting the sale of Americans’ data to “countries of concern,” according to the White House. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on these stories.

“DRE” is the acronym in election-speak. It stands for direct-recording electronic voting machines … the kind that record votes directly into a computer’s memory, often with no paper trail. In an effort to boost security and ensure more reliable counting of ballots across the country, officials have been replacing them with voting machines that produce a paper backup. And there has been noticeable progress on this front. According to a recent report from the nonprofit organization Verified Voting and the Brennan Center for Justice, in 2016 about 22% of registered voters were in jurisdictions that used DREs. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 9% and could drop considerably further this year. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Megan Maier, co-author of the Verified Voting report, about replacing what’s left of these outdated machines and bringing that number down to zero.

A big part of Jennifer Granholm’s job as U.S. secretary of energy involves selling President Biden’s clean energy agenda and convincing Americans that it’s benefiting them. On Monday, she toured a facility near San Francisco operated by the company Cuberg, which is developing a lithium-based battery that’s less flammable than the ones we use today. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali talked with Granholm about how batteries like Cuberg’s fit into the administration’s sweeping climate policy.

The race to coin new words and phrases is on — on TikTok. They range from “first time cool syndrome,” to “the weekend effect,” and “dinner and couch” friend. Keeping track of all this can feel like a wild goose chase, to use an expression credited to William Shakespeare, who introduced countless words and phrases to the English language. But unlike the Bard’s phrases, TikTok slang doesn’t seem to have much staying power. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Rebecca Jennings, senior correspondent for Vox, on the TikTok “trendbait,” as she calls it — terms invented by content creators who seem like they’re trying a little too hard — and what’s driving it all.

The Supreme Court hears arguments on two state laws Monday — one in Texas and one in Florida — that seek to punish social media platforms over allegations they censor conservative speech. The legal force fighting these state laws is itself a group with conservative leanings called NetChoice, which has emerged as Big Tech’s top political lobbyist. And it’s going after social media crackdowns in blue states too, like the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which required that platforms put in stronger default data privacy protections for younger users. Wherever a social media regulation pops up, NetChoice, it seems, is there. Isaiah Poritz of Bloomberg Law has been reporting on the organization.

It was not that long ago that electric vehicle maker Rivian was drawing comparisons to Tesla. But flagging demand for EVs has not served the company well. Its earnings release this week made that much clear. Also, a look at why American venture capital firms appear to be pulling back from funding startups in China. But first, Amazon has come a long way since it was founded 30 years ago. Its next stop: the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It joins the market indicator Monday. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing director at Collab Capital, for her take on these stories.

AT&T is asking California regulators to be relieved of its obligation to provide basic landline phone service to anyone who wants it. “No customer will be left without voice or 911 service,” AT&T says, but Californians weighing in are, by and large, skeptical. Regina Costa, telecom policy director at the Utility Reform Network, an advocacy group, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that having a “carrier of last resort” matters.

Once a week, many of us get that dreaded screen-time report courtesy of our smartphones. But a recent study found keeping track of our average usage doesn’t actually help us control our screen time all that much. Caught in the loop of screen-time shame like so many of us are, New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill decided to actually do something about it. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Hill about her experience breaking up with her iPhone and replacing it with a flip phone, T9 texting and all, because she’d finally had enough.

As consumers, we’ve all been subjected to the “upsell,” or pressure to pay a little more for a product that’s slightly better. It’s one thing if you’re buying, say, a car or a piece of clothing. The ethical questions get a lot more complicated in health care. Some providers have started integrating artificial intelligence in diagnostic procedures, including screenings for breast cancer. The tools may be available for an additional cost, and questions about their accuracy have been raised. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Meredith Broussard, a journalism professor at New York University, about integrating AI into mammograms and her personal experience grappling with the tech.

We often think of music as a mostly auditory experience, but it’s also a physical one, especially for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Daniel Belquer — a Philadelphia-based technologist, composer and “chief vibrational officer” of Music: Not Impossible — has been studying the relationship between sound and sensation, and how that connection can make music more accessible. “Marketplace Tech” spoke with Belquer about how his vibrating technology is helping people experience music in new ways.

On the show today, Microsoft says groups affiliated with the governments of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are using AI tools to improve their cyberattacks. Also, Disney is investing $1.5 billion in Epic Games. Can we expect a “Frozen” / Fortnite crossover? We’re not sure yet, but what we can expect is regulatory scrutiny. But first, in Silicon Valley, where software normally gets all the glory, OpenAI’s Sam Altman is reportedly planning a big move into hardware by raising up to $7 trillion for a new AI chips project. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, for his take on this week’s tech news.

On our show last week, we had Sen. Amy Klobuchar share her take on the recent Senate hearing with tech executives. You remember the one, with the execs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, doing their best to stall in response to searing questions about how to keep kids safe online. Klobuchar told us that hearing may have actually moved the needle on that issue. She stressed to us that such events educate the public and help lawmakers get on-the-record pledges of support for specific bills from tech CEOs. In the absence of federal rules, a patchwork of state laws has filled the void. How’s that going? Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, gave Marketplace’s Lily Jamali the rundown.

Cuffing season is that time of year when singles hunker down with someone to keep them warm — temporarily. And Valentine’s Day more or less marks the end of it. So people are about to start flocking back to their dating apps. Adrianus Warmenhoven, cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that a lot of those apps are eager to vacuum up their personal data.

23andMe has seen its valuation plummet from $6 billion to close to zero, with the Nasdaq threatening to delist the company’s stock. Still, company leaders have high hopes for medical research and a pivot to biotech. Rolfe Winkler has been writing about what happened for The Wall Street Journal, and discussed the company’s financial woes and future roadmap with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali.

On May 24, it will be two years since 19 children and two teachers were killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Photojournalist Tamir Kalifa has spent much of the last year and a half documenting the lives of the victims’ families and friends in the wake of the tragedy. Last week he was awarded the American Mosaic Journalism Prize for that work. He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about how social media is helping the community deal with its grief and bolstering its push for gun control.

A week later and we’re still thinking about the hearing that saw half a dozen tech CEOs testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on keeping kids safe online. It left us wondering: Why do lawmakers hold these hearings then fail again and again to pass federal laws to keep Big Tech in check? One thing was clear: The importance of keeping kids safe online is one of the few things that a lot of Democratic and Republican senators agree on. Take for example the SHIELD Act, a bill co-sponsored by members of both parties. One of those members is Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali it’s hard to get bills like that through Congress given how much influence tech companies wield in Washington.

The business of minting cryptocurrencies here in the United States is growing bigger by the day. In January 2020, just 3.4% of the world’s bitcoin mining took place here. That figure ballooned to almost 38% in just two years. As we’ve talked about on this show, mining bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies burns through a lot of electric power. The Energy Information Administration has been interested in tracking this activity, sifting through articles in the media and company reports. But the federal agency has decided to start collecting information from cryptocurrency miners themselves about where they operate and how much energy they use. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Mark Morey, senior adviser for electricity analysis at the EIA, about the project.

Back in the 1970s, the Tennessee Valley Authority built what remains one of the largest energy storage facilities in the world: a pumped-storage hydropower plant. A pump takes water from the Tennessee River, shoots it up a giant shaft and holds it there until electric power needs peak during the day. At that point, the water is allowed to drain back down, spinning turbines that can generate enough power for a million homes. It’s almost like a gravity-powered battery as big as a cathedral … buried deep inside a mountain. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Robert Kunzig, a freelance journalist who recently wrote about this in depth for the publication Science. He says pumped-storage hydro is attracting a lot of interest, thanks in part to generous tax credits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

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, founder 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.

It’s been about a decade since a new generation of mobile apps brought online dating out of the shadows and onto our phones. They turned swiping — right or left — into a kind of romantic roulette. Dating apps have become the most popular way for couples to connect, but they’re also a multibillion-dollar industry that relies on keeping users hooked. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, co-host of the podcast “Land of the Giants: Dating Games,” a collaboration between The Cut, The Verge and Vox Media, about how dating apps have been “gamified.”

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot from OpenAI, has raised a lot of questions. Like, what could this mean for society? For art? For the future of human jobs? But one thing became immediately clear: Students are going to use it to cheat on their homework. That’s created a market for software that can detect text that was generated by artificial intelligence like ChatGPT. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Stephanie Hughes, Marketplace’s education reporter, about what teachers say the technology means for them.

During the Meta earnings call last week, Mark Zuckerberg said something that seemed to perfectly capture the vibe in tech as layoffs continue to climb. The CEO said the company was in a “phase change” and that 2023 will be “a year of efficiency.” For tech workers, it’s a striking contrast to a mythology that had been building for more than a decade: the conspicuously cushy tech job.

It’s hard to believe it’s been just a year since cryptocurrency ads made a splash in the Super Bowl, because a whole lot has gone down (and down and down) in crypto since then. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino got journalist and book author Jacob Silverman on the line to look back at the ads from eToro, Crypto.com, Coinbase and FTX in the 2022 “Crypto Bowl.” They might not have aged so well.

California has been a leader in consumer data privacy law. But those protections don’t mean much if they’re not being enforced. So, under a sweeping voter initiative that took effect this year, the state has created an agency dedicated to the task. It’s the first of its kind in the U.S., which, unlike Europe, has no comprehensive federal data privacy regulation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Ashkan Soltani, the executive director of the new California Privacy Protection Agency. He said one of his goals is to educate the public about their rights under the newly expanded California Privacy Rights Act.

Many of the biggest tech platforms, from Amazon to Facebook, follow a similar pattern of transformation, according to a recent essay from the author and internet activist Cory Doctorow. First, he says, these platforms court users with artificially low prices on products or an exciting way to connect with friends. Then, they hook sellers, like advertisers or third-party retailers, with promises of reaching a captive audience. Finally, Doctorow says, as companies try to maximize their profits, they end up ruining the experience on their platforms through a process he describes with a four-letter word we can’t broadcast or publish.

In January, the Joe Biden administration unveiled a new tool to help migrants seeking asylum at U.S. borders. An expanded smartphone app managed by Customs and Border Protection now allows asylum seekers to schedule appointments to enter the country. But since this function launched, thousands of migrants coming from Latin America have been scrambling to sign up, and many have encountered technical glitches in the process. KPBS reporter Gustavo Solis spoke with migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, as they tried out the new system.

Technology is making it easier and easier to create and disseminate visuals, from text-to-image artificial intelligence models and sophisticated deepfakes to simple memes retweeted with hashtags. Visuals are the lingua franca of the internet, but their potential to easily spread misinformation — particularly about health topics — make them especially dangerous to the public. That’s according to an article published last year in the journal Science Communication. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Andy King, an associate professor of communication at the University of Utah. King co-authored the commentary titled “Missing the Bigger Picture,” which discussed what makes visual misinformation unique.

Sales of electric vehicles have really picked up in the last year or so, but at just shy of 6% of all cars sold in the U.S. They’ve still got a long way to go before they hit mass adoption, like the long way to go to find a charger in many areas of the country. There are currently about 100,000 public chargers in the U.S. The federal government wants to reach about half a million chargers by the end of the decade, and the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes billions of dollars to help make that happen. Reporter Rae Solomon of KUNC in Colorado has this story about how rural areas fit into the electrification plan.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court announced it was putting off hearing a pair of highly anticipated cases that could fundamentally change social media as we know it The cases concern laws in Florida and Texas, pushed by conservatives in those states, which basically make it illegal for social media platforms to block or hide content – like say from a former president – even if the post violates the companies’ terms of service. Both laws have been blocked from taking effect while the rest of the country waits for the high court to weigh in. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, about why these cases could be consequential.

Amazon might seem anathema to small business, but the fact is, third-party sellers account for the majority of the e-commerce giant’s sales. These sellers range from independent artisans and designers to opportunistic resellers of products from big-box stores. A new report from the nonprofit Data & Society examines how Amazon is helping, hurting and generally transforming the small business retail model. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Moira Weigel, the author of the report and a professor at Northeastern University. She described the effect Amazon has on small businesses as a “trickle-down monopoly.” Need some Econ 101? Sign up for our Marketplace Crash Course and get weekly lessons to complete at your own pace!

A plant in Iceland recently became the first large-scale facility to remove carbon dioxide from the air on behalf of corporate clients paying to reduce their carbon footprints. The Climeworks operation uses a process called direct-air capture, or DAC. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Aniruddh Mohan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. He said the technology could be key to averting the worst of climate change.

The mea culpas from tech CEOs announcing massive job cuts have become a familiar refrain: “We hired too many people.” “We were much too optimistic.” “This did not play out the way I expected.” That’s a mashup of statements from Salesforce, Stripe and Meta. The tech industry continues to shed jobs: Google and Microsoft announced thousands of layoffs last week and Spotify this week. So, why did so many tech companies make the same mistake of overhiring? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Anup Srivastava, a Canada research chair and professor at the University of Calgary. He said going big during boom times is baked into the business model of the industry.

A California project that’s harnessing solar power to save water may seem a bit counterintuitive, given the dousing the state just received from a series of giant storms. But most of the state is still technically in a drought. That trend is expected to only intensify in the long term because of climate change, as warmer average temperatures increase evaporation. Take California’s vast system of open canals, which transport water across the state from reservoirs to agricultural lands and metropolitan areas. Scientists at the University of California, Merced, estimate that the waterways lose tens of billions of gallons of water to evaporation every year. A new project aims to shield the flows from the heat and sun by covering canals with solar panels while  helping the state meet its renewable energy goals.

Images created by artificial intelligence programs, like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E, are just about everywhere now, dazzling users with their ability to instantly create any image that can be dreamed up. The AI works by scraping billions of images from the internet, which are often created by artists who may not be thrilled that their life’s work is helping to build technology that could threaten their livelihoods. Steven Zapata, a designer, illustrator and art teacher in New York City, has concerns about what this means. It makes no sense, he told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino, that these machine-learning systems may go on to compete with the creators whose work the models trained on. He also believes that an ethical version of these artmaking systems can be developed and would be valuable.

To make housing more affordable in the U.S., we need more of it. Millions of additional units, by most estimates. This shortage of housing has a range of complex causes, but the high cost of construction — which rose even further thanks to pandemic-driven labor and supply constraints — is definitely not helping. An idea from the tech world holds the potential to make the building process more efficient: 3D printing. Startups have been experimenting with the technology in large-scale construction, and now there’s a push to take it mainstream. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with journalist Rachel Monroe, who took a deep dive into the topic in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

Now that so-called generative artificial intelligence models, such as DALL-E and ChatGPT, can create impressive visuals and formulate complex responses, will human artists, writers, radio hosts, and all sorts of creative and knowledge-based jobs, go extinct? Mark Finlayson, an associate professor of computer science at Florida International University, offered his perspective on this zillion-dollar question in a recent essay for The Conversation. Finlayson believes that these tools are likely to change creative work, but not always for the worse. He told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that he expects disruption as some people prosper in future work environments and others fail to adapt.

Like the Rolling Stones vs. the Beatles, “Star Wars” vs. “Star Trek” or cats vs. dogs, the question of gas stoves vs. electric has somehow become a character-defining one. The discourse was ignited last week by a member of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., who suggested his agency was considering a ban on gas stoves. He has since stepped that back a bit. But the debate continues to simmer. Electric partisans say their ranges are healthier for people and the environment, while gas stove lovers say flames are just better to cook on and resilient in power outages. So how do modern electric stoves work? And would we have the infrastructure to support them? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. He said there are a lot of misperceptions based on outdated models.

Artificial intelligence is commonly used in automated recruitment programs. It helps narrow down large pools of applicants using algorithms to match job seekers to open positions. But there are growing concerns that this technology is disproportionately excluding certain groups, like women, people of color or those who don’t have college degrees, even when they’re perfectly qualified.

TikTok is under a lot of scrutiny from federal, state and local governments. Congressional lawmakers recently banned the social media platform from most federal government devices. More than a dozen states, including New Hampshire, South Dakota and Texas, passed similar measures due to growing concerns about data security and privacy on the platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Joshua Scacco, associate chair of the University of South Florida’s department of communication. He said this blacklisting can make it harder for some, like researchers, to do their jobs.

Louisiana’s new law, HB 142, requires users in that state to prove they’re 18 or older before accessing sites that contain pornographic material. If a website’s content is a least one third porn, you have to show an ID. And the reason that’s possible is because Louisiana is one of the few states in the U.S. that allows residents to store government-issued ID digitally on their smartphone. This new law has many privacy advocates worried, and some researchers are warning about unplanned ripple effects of the law’s implementation. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Jordan Taylor, an internet and social media researcher and PhD student at the Human-Computer Interactive Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Sure, robot vacuums are convenient and they make for great cat videos. But these devices  have the potential to collect a lot of data from the private setting of our homes. Images of children’s faces, the layout of a house, even someone sitting on the toilet were all captured by iRobot vacuum test models in North America, Europe and Asia. Those photos found their way into a private Facebook group for Venezuelan gig workers, where they were then leaked to journalists at MIT Technology Review. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Eileen Guo, a senior reporter at MIT Technology Review, who has been investigating this.

CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, wrapped up Sunday in Las Vegas. There was a lot to process. The annual event showcased plenty of smart home technology, virtual reality gadgets, health trackers and even a tech friend for kids — a robot that recognizes facial expressions and moods. There was also a focus on energy, given the urgency of the climate crisis and the geopolitical events of the last year. Marketplace reporter Lily Jamali was at the convention looking into some of the latest technology in the energy sector. She spoke to Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about what she observed.

Some two months after Elon Musk closed his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter, we’ve seen information leaks, layoffs at the social media company, and that day everyone thought Twitter was going to shut down, but it didn’t. With reports of hate speech on the platform rising, many brands are eyeing Twitter cautiously, with some suspending their advertising altogether. But through the Twitter tumult, there’s a larger, deeper question brands are confronting: should they even be on Twitter in the first place?

CES is underway in Las Vegas this week. The annual consumer electronics event attracts tech companies large and small, along with developers, journalists and policymakers. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who covers smart home technology for The Verge, is attending the convention. She spoke with Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams about the new gadgets and the announcements being made in the smart home realm.

2022 was not a great year for crypto. It started with a bang as crypto ads went mainstream in the Super Bowl. And then the year ended with an implosion. Crypto hacks piled on scandals and sliding valuations, one company fell and then another, culminating with the spectacular collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who is now under investigation for fraud. So will this crypto winter start to thaw in 2023 or head into deep freeze? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with crypto journalist and host of the “Unchained” podcast, Laura Shin, about what she thinks is in store for the industry this year.

Deep inside a mountain, a full day’s hike from any road, in a dry, deserted part of West Texas, a foundation funded by Jeff Bezos is building a giant clock that’s hundreds of feet tall. It’s been called the Millennium Clock, the 10,000 Year Clock and the Clock of the Long Now. Like the Pyramids, Stonehenge and the Colosseum, its makers hope it will outlast our civilization and tick for 10 millennia. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Alexander Rose, executive director of the Long Now Foundation, which has been building the roughly $40 million prototype of the clock in Texas.

Trucking can be dangerous job – long, often tedious hours behind the wheel, the unpredictability of the weather and of course, other drivers. And yet, trucking is an essential part of supply chain. 72% of the nation’s freight gets from point A to point B in a truck, according to the American Trucking Associations. Most of those holiday gifts you might be enjoying right now got to you on a truck. So truck drivers are an essential part of our economy. The companies that hire and manage those drivers have started bringing a lot more technology into big rigs, including artificial intelligence and sometimes automation. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Karen Levy, author of “Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance” about how these tools are being used in the industry.

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are basically digital certificates of ownership, a virtual claim that an image, GIF or even a song belongs to you. And while some artists were initially happy to jump into this new space, others have been surprised or furious to find that people, not themselves, beat them to it. Last year, several musical artists publicly complained after the website HitPiece temporarily listed NFTs for their songs or albums without the artists’ permission. But does selling someone else’s art as an NFT break the law? Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Aram Sinnreich, a professor and chair of the communication studies division at American University, around the time of this dust-up. He said all this gets into a gray area, at least when it comes to existing copyright law.

It’s been a big year in tech: the race to build the metaverse, the rise and fall of NFTs, chaos in the crypto sector, amazing views of galaxies far, far, away and research breakthroughs that will change the way we live. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams and Marketplace Tech producers Jésus Alvarado and Daniel Shin discuss what stories they’ll be following in 2023.

This is the time of year when we hear a lot about predictions for the year ahead, but futurist Amy Webb is known for looking to the future year-round. Not just for 2023, but even further out to the technology that will drive meaningful shifts in how we live and experience the world. Webb recently co-authored a book with geneticist Andrew Hessel called “The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology,” where she explores the role synthetic biology will play in shaping our world. In the not-so-distant future, Webb said, it will play an even bigger role in our health, what we eat and even how we have kids.

Earlier this year, a report from Bloomberg said Grand Theft Auto 6 will be getting a female protagonist. It would be a notable change — there are far fewer playable female characters than male ones in video games. And for a long time, women have been typecast as damsels in distress, like Princess Peach from Super Mario, or as sex objects depicted with little clothing and exaggerated proportions, like Lara Croft from the 1990s Tomb Raider games. She’s an archaeologist who explores old ruins in teeny, tiny shorts and a tank top. This revisiting of an earlier episode of “Marketplace Tech” examines how the portrayal of women in video games has changed in recent years. 

This episode originally aired on May 19, 2022 2022 has certainly been a busy year for space news but it wasn’t all looking at what’s happening out there. Some of the news and research was about what’s happening on our own planet. Earlier this year, Congress held a public hearing on a topic that hasn’t been discussed openly in a congressional hearing in decades: unidentified flying objects. Yes, UFOs, or as the Pentagon is calling them, unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. The hearing follows a report from the director of national intelligence released in June of 2021 that said there were over 140 recorded sightings of UAPs. Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, has been following these developments. Below is an edited transcript of his conversation with Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams about the hearing.

As we wind down the year, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to look back at some notable tech trends and maybe predict a few, especially those in the ever-growing wearable tech market. Smartwatches are much more common these days, but “wearable” is starting to expand beyond the gadgets you strap to your wrist. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Victoria Song, a wearable technology reviewer for The Verge, who explained what’s on the horizon for this stuff in the coming year.

For some people, becoming a well-adjusted adult involves getting to know your inner child to help process old wounds or desires, and possibly gain insight into your needs and choices in life. But new technology may provide a more direct way to communicate with little you by using an artificial intelligence chatbot, informed by your own history, to play that role. That’s what creative technologist Michelle Huang did. She trained OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 on who her younger self was and started having conversations.

We have far too many examples in recent years of hate speech sparking riots, mobs and individual attacks. One group at particular risk is the transgender community. This year, at least 35 people in the trans community were “fatally shot or killed by other violent means,” according to the Human Rights Campaign. And a recent report from the HRC Foundation found highly organized online attacks against hospitals and health care providers in 21 states targeting facilities and doctors that provide gender-affirming care. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Erin Reed, a legislative researcher and a trans rights activist who’s been following these patterns for the last three years.

Teachers are a creative bunch. They have to be to come up with lesson plans and exams that help students grow their minds and prevent those same students from relying too much on technology to enhance their work or to cheat. Which is why the rollout of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has many teachers worried. The chatbot can answer almost any type of question, even if the answers aren’t always accurate. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Daniel Herman, an English teacher at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, California. He posed some of the essay prompts from his class to the chatbot and wrote about it for The Atlantic magazine.

Most of us interact with some form of artificial intelligence every day, whether it’s asking a smart speaker about the weather or being assigned shift work or served content by an app. But how many of us consider our relationship to those algorithms? Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Noelani Arista, an associate professor of history and classics and chair of the Indigenous studies program at McGill University. She collaborates with other Indigenous scholars to examine and develop AI models. Adams asked her about an Indigenous approach to these algorithms.

On this day in 1947, scientists at Bell Labs, owned by AT&T — which had a telephone monopoly at the time — tweaked a new gadget the size of a shot glass to produce, basically, amplification. It marked the invention of the transistor. My colleague David Brancaccio has been using the anniversary to tell the story of the transistor and how it led to the semiconductor revolution. Part of that revolution was getting the technology from Bell Labs in New Jersey to what eventually became Silicon Valley. One man who made that move across the country played a key role.

A government agency known for keeping its secrets has been attempting to be a bit more open when it comes to cybersecurity. Digital attacks are now a regular threat, not just the for private sector, like last year’s hack of the Colonial oil pipeline. They are also a threat for public infrastructure, like major ransomware attacks on hospitals and public schools. So the National Security Agency is expanding its work with the private sector, nearly tripling the number of industry partnerships to more than 300 in the past year, according to the agency’s 2022 Cybersecurity Year in Review report. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Rob Joyce, the NSA’s director of cybersecurity, about how the agency’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center is working with private companies.

After more than 60 years of work, scientists have made a breakthrough that could potentially change the future of energy. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department of Energy announced this week that they had successfully achieved energy-producing nuclear fusion that produced more energy than they put into it. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called it a huge achievement for science and for clean energy. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Carolyn Kuranz, an experimental plasma physicist at the University of Michigan’s department of nuclear engineering about how the experiment worked.

China recently eased some of its strict zero-COVID policies after unprecedented protests erupted in several parts of the country. For weeks, there were demonstrations against three years of constant PCR testing and reporting, travel restrictions and citywide quarantines, nonstop tracking and surveillance of citizens. Now, Chinese authorities are deploying some of the same tools they used to limit the spread of COVID-19 to track down demonstrators who have been speaking out against the government in public and online. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Marketplace’s China correspondent, Jennifer Pak, who’s been covering this story from Shanghai. Pak gave Adams a quick rundown of how the surveillance is being carried out.

Last week, officials in San Francisco decided to scrap a plan that would have allowed law enforcement to use robots in situations that may require “deadly force.” Specifically, according to the language of the ordinance that the city’s board of supervisors initially approved, when “risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available.” The plan was rolled back after a public backlash, but the technology is out there and it may be just a matter of time before it’s used by local police departments. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Ryan Jenkins, a professor of philosophy and senior fellow at the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. There’s a concern, he said, that the deployment of robots would lower barriers to the use of force, making violence a more common occurrence in police work.

Unions have come to the video game industry. They started small at just one indie developer about a year ago, then those efforts started to spread. Workers at some of the biggest names in the business have started organizing — at Activision Blizzard and recently at ZeniMax, a company owned by Microsoft. This sudden upswell is shaking up an industry that has long been known for grueling hours, low pay and a workforce that is not especially diverse. So how did the union movement go from 0 to 60, and where is it headed from here? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Nicole Carpenter, a senior reporter for Polygon, a gaming and entertainment news site. She recently wrote an explainer about unions in the industry. She said a turning point came in 2021 when California sued Activision for an alleged pattern of sexual harassment and discrimination, which set off a chain of investigations and lawsuits that brought the problems of the industry into the public eye.

Hurricane season is officially over. There were 14 named tropical storms this year, three of which made landfall as hurricanes on the U.S. mainland and Puerto Rico, including Hurricane Ian. The climate crisis, along with the boom in coastal development, have given hurricanes the power to cause more death and destruction. Marketplace’s Amy Scott spent a day with people who try to predict such disasters for our climate solutions podcast, “How We Survive.” She found out that climate change is making their job more complicated. This episode originally aired Nov. 16 on the “How We Survive” podcast.

Despite the bankruptcies, hacks and general foul mood in crypto, one metric is moving in the right direction. As we talked about earlier this year, ethereum — the world’s second-largest crypto network — made a move to reduce the energy used in the “mining” process for authenticating transactions on the blockchain. In September, ethereum switched from the so-called proof of work method, in which a bunch of miners compete to solve an authentication puzzle with giant banks of supercomputers, to a method called proof of stake, in which just one miner validates a transaction. That requires much less electricity. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Alex de Vries, the founder of Digiconomist, a website that tracks cryptocurrency energy use, about just how much less energy the ethereum network is consuming, based on a paper that De Vries recently published.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have solved a particularly challenging differential equation that dates back to the early 1900s. The explanation gets pretty technical pretty fast, but the point is that solving this equation enabled researchers to create a new type of artificial intelligence system that can learn on the spot and adapt to changing patterns, as opposed to traditional systems in which the machine learning is based on existing patterns or expected outcomes. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with MIT researcher Ramin Hasani, who said it’s called a liquid neural network, and it kind of works like a human brain.

Most websites have code running in the background to help the site run better and, of course, to target advertising. A recent investigation from “The Markup” found many tax-filing sites were sharing users’ financial data with Facebook using a code called Meta Pixel. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks to Simon Fondrie-Teitler, an infrastructure engineer at The Markup and co-author of this investigation.

Data regulators in Ireland fined Meta earlier this week for failing to safeguard the sensitive information of Facebook users. The tech giant was fined the equivalent of about $275 million for a 2019 data leak, when personal information from more than 500 million Facebook users was scraped off the site and then published in a hacker forum. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Adam Satariano, a tech correspondent for The New York Times based in London, who reported on this story. He says this recent punishment is just one of several fines the Irish government has imposed on Meta, and it’s part of a larger trend.

While Elon Musk has been celebrating a bump in users and app downloads since he took over Twitter, many longer-term users say they’re seriously considering leaving. Some are even holding mock funerals anticipating the site would break down. This week, Twitter users discovered the company is no longer enforcing its COVID-19 misinformation policy. But if Twitter actually fell apart, what would happen to the distinct spaces there, like what’s commonly referred to as “Black Twitter”? Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Shamika Klassen, an information science Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She co-authored a research article about Black Twitter last year. If you’re a regular listener of “Marketplace Tech,” thank you. We’d love to hear from you. You can drop us a line anytime at [email protected]. We’d also appreciate it if you took the time to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to the show. It really helps people find us, so thanks.

Earlier this month, the SS Sally Ride cargo capsule made its way to the International Space Station. The spacecraft was carrying hundreds of pounds of scientific experiments. One of them involves what’s called a 3D BioFabrication Facility, which can build human tissue and organs in space that scientists can’t make on Earth. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Rich Boling, vice president at Redwire, which manufactures the equipment for these experiments. She asked him about how 3D printing works when you’re printing something alive. If you’re a regular listener of Marketplace Tech, thank you. We’d love to hear from you. You can drop us a line anytime at [email protected]. We’d also appreciate it if you took the time to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to the show. It really helps people find us, so thanks.

Some of the country’s biggest advertisers are balking at the new Twitter under Elon Musk. A recent report from Media Matters for America found at least half of Twitter’s  100 biggest advertisers have either announced they will stop running ads on the platform or just seem to be stopping more quietly. But not all businesses can easily walk away. Take sex workers. A recent survey from the website Sex Work CEO shows that Twitter is incredibly important for adult content creators, helping them connect with fans, find new ones and promote their legal businesses. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with MelRose Michaels, the founder of Sex Work CEO. Michaels explained how adult content creators are responding to all the recent changes at Twitter.

Cyber Monday has become one of the busiest — and most lucrative — online shopping days of the year. The National Retail Federation estimates that almost 64 million people will be looking for deals today. But for shoppers with disabilities, it can be a lot harder to take advantage of sales and promotions online. A significant number of the biggest retail websites are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which lay out best practices to help make sites easier to navigate by people who are, for example, blind or hearing-impaired. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Josh Basile, community relations manager at tech accessibility company accessiBe, as well as a quadriplegic who uses assistive devices to help him navigate the internet, about how accessibility issues impact him when he shops online.

Actor and producer LeVar Burton is famous for many things. His iconic roles on “Star Trek” and the miniseries “Roots,” for instance. But many of us got to know him as host of the PBS show “Reading Rainbow.” His run with the show ended in the mid-2000s, but Burton is still promoting literacy for kids. He’s now the “chief reading officer” at ed-tech company Byju’s Osmo. Together, they’re launching a reading program for kids ages 5 to 7 that uses an iPad and the Osmo app’s artificial intelligence and speech recognition to help kids grasp the fundamentals of reading. That program is set to launch next month. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Burton earlier this year about the unique reading challenges facing kids today. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Earlier this month, the highly anticipated launch of the Orion spacecraft finally happened at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lift-off of that unmanned rocket was the first of a series in the agency’s Artemis missions, which aim to eventually establish a long-term human presence on the moon’s surface begin building a lunar economy including extracting precious metals and minerals to send back to Earth. But before sending humans, the agency has to test complex rockets, heat shields and life-support systems. And speed is of the essence. The U.S. and China are in a new space race to get humans to the moon. On this Thanksgiving holiday, we’re revisiting a conversation with Peter Garretson, a Senior Fellow in Defense Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. He spoke with Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams about how the stakes are different this time around.

Artificial intelligence is commonly used in automated recruitment programs. It helps narrow down large pools of applicants using algorithms to match job seekers to open positions. But there are growing concerns that this technology is disproportionately excluding certain groups, like women, people of color or those who don’t have college degrees, even when they’re perfectly qualified.

Every minute, people upload more than 500 hours of video to YouTube — cat videos, music videos, even videos of people recording their audio podcasts. And some of those clips include content the people uploading them don’t own, like clips of music from popular songs. YouTube, and its owner, Google, have an automated technology called Content ID that regularly scans for copyrighted material — including music — and flags it for copyright holders. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke about this with Marketplace’s Peter Balonon-Rosen, who explained why the system has some musicians frustrated.

It may be called the World Wide Web, but in some parts of the world, big chunks of the web are blocked or censored. One nonprofit designed an app to get around that censorship called Lantern. The organization says its user base in Iran has grown about 400% since the start of protests there two months ago and that as much as 13% of  Iranian internet capacity is running through the app. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with one of Lantern’s developers. Because of his work in countries with oppressive regimes, we’re using the pseudonym “Lucas” to protect his identity. He said Lantern is part of a strategy to create an “unbreakable” internet.

The crypto industry is in trouble — just look at the drama surrounding the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, which is looking worse every day. Add to that the huge drop in value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and the crash of stablecoin TerraUSD earlier this year. And now regulators and investors are wondering about the next shoe to drop. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, about what’s next for the crypto sector. And Allen is not exactly optimistic about crypto’s future.

There is no stopping natural disasters like hurricanes and fires. So one key to surviving a changing climate is making buildings more resilient. Amy Scott, host of “How We Survive,” visits a Florida lab focused on that challenge.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to release the first round of its updated national broadband map this week. It’s supposed to show more precise and detailed information on internet availability all over the country. Advocates have complained for years the old maps were full of inaccurate data, and getting those numbers right is a big deal because this new map will determine how the government spends the $42.5 billion in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Dustin Loup, program manager for the National Broadband Mapping Coalition, a digital advocacy group, about how the new map was developed, how the FCC will try to keep it updated and potential problems facing this updated version.

It’s been a wild ride these past two weeks with Twitter under the ownership of Elon Musk, including Musk showing up at Twitter headquarters with a sink and laying off half of the company’s global staff. Just about every day there’s a new headline about what’s happening in the company and on the platform: leadership changes, verification subscriptions rolled out and pulled back, threats to fire employees if they work remotely. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Alex Heath, a deputy editor at The Verge, who says Musk wants to change just about everything at Twitter, even if it’s messy.

The National Labor Relations Board is a federal agency tasked with making sure workers can organize to improve their working conditions, wages or form a union. But the NLRB says some employers are using technology to prevent or discourage workers from doing just that. The agency released a public memo on Oct. 31 saying it plans to protect employees from “intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated management,” practices the NLRB says are increasingly happening as the technology gets better and companies seek more oversight of their workers, especially with more people working remotely. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the agency and author of the memo, about some of the new surveillance methods that concern her.

Quantum computers are considered by many to be the next big thing in technology. The promise – in theory – is they could complete extremely complex calculations very quickly by harnessing what Einstein called the “spooky” nature of quantum mechanics. So while regular computers work with bits that are either 1’s or 0’s, quantum computers use “qubits” that can store combinations of 1’s and 0’s at the same time. This week, IBM announced it has developed the largest quantum processor in the world. It’s called Osprey and IBM says it has triple the processing power of its previous versions – a potentially huge leap. Marketplace’s Sabri Ben-Achour recently explored the multi-billion dollar race to develop quantum computers. He explained why some of the world’s biggest companies and governments are competing against each other.

The bad news just keeps coming. It started with hiring freezes, then moved to layoffs. A lot of them. Twitter, Lyft, Stripe, Salesforce and, of course, Meta are cutting thousands of jobs. It’s a turn of events that felt almost inconceivable a year ago, after a two-decade run during which the industry seemed unstoppable. But tech is notorious for booms and busts — and not just the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington who studies the links between technology and politics, about key similarities and differences between the tech sector’s current downturn and those of the past.

Good luck trying to escape political news this week. Election coverage is everywhere — on the airwaves and online. And every election cycle seems to reveal more and more about the growing, pivotal and sometimes controversial role of social media. Like in the run-up to elections and, like now, during the aftermath. Campaigns can use social media to boost voter turnout and build community, but others use it to try to mislead voters. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Pinar Yildirim, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies media, technology and information economics. She explained why the technology underlying these platforms can amplify misinformation and conspiracy theories.

People see and absorb a lot of election information — and misinformation — on the web. But we are not all getting the same information about politics and policymakers, and certainly not from the same sources. So understanding where people gather and communicate online can be crucial to understanding the political polarization in the United States, especially when some people are migrating to newer platforms that cater to specific political beliefs or content moderation rules. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Kate Klonick, a law professor at St. John’s University, who studies online communities and speech. Klonick says people decide where they “live” online these days based on the rules of the platform.

There are an estimated 38 million disabled eligible voters in the U.S., but many of them face unique obstacles when trying to cast their ballots. Federal and state laws require polling stations provide in-person accommodations, like machines with larger screen displays or text-to-speech interfaces inside voter booths. But individual polling places don’t always make it easy, says Mark Lindeman, Policy and Strategy Director with the nonpartisan organization Verified Voting.

Diagnosing and containing a disease outbreak, or the health effects of a disruptive event like a natural disaster, can be a huge task. A study out Friday from New York University suggests that a new machine learning model could improve health officials’ ability to respond to future pandemics and other public health crises. The research was done in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University and New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Daniel Neill, a computer science professor at NYU and the director of its Machine Learning for Good Laboratory, which released the study. He explains how this machine learning model works.

Starting today, Netflix users in the U.S. will have the option to sign up for a cheaper subscription. But, of course, there’s a catch. If you want to pay $6.99 a month, rather than $9.99 a month or more, your TV and movie binge sessions will be interrupted by ads, which runs counter to the original premise of Netflix and many other streaming services. But now, that’s changing. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Brandon Katz, an entertainment industry strategist at Parrot Analytics, who says Netflix needed to make a move like this.

The U.S. is experiencing a massive demographic shift as the baby boom becomes the senior boom. According to the Census Bureau, more than 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older in 2030. The tech industry is catching on. Big companies and small startups are increasingly developing products with older users in mind. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Keren Etkin, a gerontologist and creator of the blog The Gerontechnologist, where she writes and podcasts about the latest in age tech. Etkin said the idea that older people don’t “get” technology is just a tired stereotype.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok have banned deepfakes, which are realistic but fabricated or manipulated representations, often of public figures. Yet a TikTok video in which a fake Tom Cruise serenades the real Paris Hilton went viral. That video is one of dozens from the account @DeepTomCruise. The account has racked up almost 4 million followers with its digital simulations of the famous actor singing, golfing and, of course, laughing in a slightly too intense way. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Anjana Susarla, professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business. She said we can thank TikTok’s algorithm for keeping deepfakes alive.

It’s an uncertain Monday at Twitter because Elon Musk has taken over and started shaking things up. Last week, according to Bloomberg, he reassured employees that he did not plan to discard three-quarters of the staff, as he reportedly told investors earlier. But the self-described free speech absolutist has made no secret of his desire to make some personnel cuts, particularly around content moderation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Sarah Roberts, a professor and director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at the University of California, Los Angeles, who also worked previously on Twitter’s health research team. She said that while content moderation is often framed as a political issue, it’s much more than that. Warning: This interview references abusive online material involving children.

We’ve seen layoffs, hiring freezes and now some cold, hard numbers that show the tide is turning in the tech industry. After booming during the pandemic, big companies like Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta may now be feeling the pinch of a tighter economy. At least that’s the signal from a series of disappointing earnings reports this week. Apple was the exception, boasting record revenues, but sales of its new iPhone 14 were slower than expected. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Daniel Newman, principal analyst at Futurum Research. And he says companies that rely on advertising are taking the biggest hit.

It’s a world of big promises, big personalities and, lately, big failures that can seem inscrutable and often ridiculous. But cryptocurrency has moved into finance, tech, even sports arenas. And according to Bloomberg Businessweek, it demands to be understood. This week the magazine has dedicated an entire issue to what it calls “The Crypto Story: Where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Bloomberg opinion columnist Matt Levine, who wrote the article. He says crypto and the blockchain technology behind it started as a reaction to traditional banking, which, of course, relies on trust in institutions.

TikTok, with its quirky dances, is sometimes thought of as a Gen Z platform. Yet if you use the app, you’ve probably come across videos from distinctly older political candidates. Since 2020, the number of users on TikTok has increased by about 40%. And candidates have taken note. They post TikToks to reach younger audiences, make themselves seem likable and encourage people to vote.

Since the 2020 election, there’s been a lot of attention on, misinformation about and lawsuits over the technology many jurisdictions use in voting. It’s rare for a voting system in the U.S. to be “paperless.” Typically, these systems use a combination of high-tech and low-tech, like a voting machine that prints out a paper ballot with your electronic choices. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently discussed the shift away from paperless systems with Lawrence Norden, senior director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit law and policy institute.

Tractors, combines and other farm equipment have become computers on wheels. They are both bluetooth-enabled and connected to the internet which, as Dina Temple-Raston of the “Click Here” podcast explains, makes them incredibly vulnerable to hackers.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we did a lot of reporting on how the internet is everything, and how your access to it — or lack thereof — can shape how you learn, how you work and whether you can get ahead in this economy. But a recent investigation from The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom, suggests we’re still pretty far away from equitable access. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Leon Yin, an investigative data journalist at The Markup and one of the authors of “Dollars to Megabits: You May Be Paying 400 Times as Much as Your Neighbor for Internet Service.”

Of the estimated 62 million Hispanic or Latinx people living in the U.S. today, about 41 million of them are Spanish speakers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And as we get closer to Election Day, misinformation campaigns targeting this group are ramping up. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Brennan Suen, deputy director of external affairs at Media Matters for America, where he researches social media accountability efforts. He and his team recently looked at dozens of YouTube videos that he says are spreading misinformation about elections.

They have our Social Security numbers and probably our Amazon shopping lists. But should employers be collecting data on, say, our fingerprints, voices or retinas? After all, these things are unique physical identifiers. And if they were somehow stolen in a data breach, they’re not easily changed like a password. A legal case in Illinois provided one of the first tests to a state law that protects this type of data — the Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA. Last week 45,000 truck drivers won their suit against BNSF Railway for collecting their fingerprints without consent. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Alan Butler, executive director and president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research organization. He said Illinois is at the forefront of a growing movement to regulate biometric data.

In a world where so many of our tools and gadgets — security cameras, watches, refrigerators — are connected to the internet, shoring up cybersecurity is a collective effort. That’s why the Biden administration is proposing a labeling system for consumer products, sort of like a nutrition label. But instead of calories and fat, the label would tell you how secure that smart device is. This week the White House is gathering representatives from the cybersecurity sector, consumer product groups and manufacturers to get input on how to design such a label. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Jean Camp, a professor of informatics at Indiana University about why providing consumers this type of information is increasingly important as the Internet of Things continues to expand.

They seem to be everywhere now. Smart doorbells like Amazon’s Ring are catching porch pirates in the act and revealing nocturnal animal hijinks. But they’re also constantly monitoring delivery drivers who essentially work on our doorsteps. A new report from the nonprofit research group Data & Society explores how this “doorbell surveillance” is affecting delivery drivers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Aiha Nguyen, program director for Data & Society’s Labor Futures Initiative, on how the proliferation of these cameras is influencing delivery jobs that are increasingly being done by gig workers with few protections.

Platform- or app-based gig work has seen its share of ups and downs in recent years, and this week brought a new twist. The U.S. Department of Labor proposed a rule that would push companies to classify many gig workers as employees — with all the rights and benefits that entails. Platforms like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have pushed to keep workers independent contractors, saying it’s essential to their business models. So where could the gig economy go from here? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Arun Sundararajan, a business professor at New York University, who explained that gig work is now part of the fabric of our economy and how it should change to meet modern demands.

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but now it’s just science. Brain-computer interfaces are making it possible for people and other sentient creatures to control technology with their brains. Last year, Neuralink, the brain device company owned by Elon Musk, claimed it had trained a monkey to play the video game Pong using this technology. Now there are a number of private companies and academic researchers trying to improve this technology for broader use. AE Studio, a software development firm, works in this space. “Marketplace Tech” producer Daniel Shin recently visited its offices in Venice Beach, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, to test out a fun experiment — playing a video game with just his brain.

They say all politics is local, and targeted advertising makes it hyper-local. Campaigns have increasingly used troves of personal online data about voters to narrowly tailor political messages — sometimes in malicious ways. For example, providing false information about how to vote based on neighborhood, race or ethnicity. But this kind of microtargeting is getting trickier. Twitter and TikTok have banned political ads completely. And Facebook has added new limits on how and when political ads appear. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Samantha Lai, a research analyst at the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. Lai says the way social media platforms allow campaigns to microtarget users has evolved.

Layoffs. Hiring freezes. Falling valuations. The headlines coming out of the onetime land of the unicorns have been pretty unromantic lately. It’s a dramatic turn for an industry that has been all about growth. Over the last two decades, and especially the first couple of years of the pandemic, tech exploded as more of the world moved online. But that seems to be changing. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kari Paul, a tech reporter for The Guardian, who recently wrote about whether Big Tech is past its prime. Paul said that with the economy in flux, the tech industry is not immune.

Physicians and medical experts are starting to incorporate algorithms and machine learning in many parts of the health care system, including experimental models to analyze images from X-rays and brain scans. The goal is to use computers to improve detection and diagnosis of patients’ ailments. Such models are trained to identify tumors, skin lesions and more, using databases full of reference scans or images. But there are also potential biases within the data that could result in skewed diagnoses from these machine learning models. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke to María Agustina Ricci, a biomedical engineer who is pursuing a Ph.D. at the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires in Argentina. She has studied how the disparities between low-income and developed countries could worsen, or create, these biases.

Much of the social media ecosystem — love it or hate it — has been made possible by a federal law from 1996 called the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 of that law shields online publishers like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from liability for much of the content posted on their platforms. This week, the Supreme Court announced it will hear challenges to that law. One of the cases, Reynaldo Gonzalez v. Google LLC, questions whether Section 230 protects platforms that use algorithms to recommended content to users. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. He said there are a few ways the decision could go.

It’s a drama fit for a social media platform that loves drama. First Elon Musk was joining the board, then buying the company, then backing out, then getting sued. Now, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX appears to be back in, reviving his original offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion. It’s not clear yet what will happen to the court case over this whole deal, but for now it seems that Musk will be taking control of the social media platform after all. So, what might he do with it? And why the change of heart? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kurt Wagner, a tech reporter for Bloomberg News who’s been following the saga.

Since 1865 a special agency, now part of the United Nations, has had a major influence on global communication standards. The International Telecommunication Union, or ITU, ensures tech from the telegraph to the internet plays nicely across international borders. Last week, ITU member states elected a new secretary-general, Doreen Bogdan-Martin. She’s an American and has worked with the agency for decades. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Mallory Knodel, chief technology officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology about the ITU’s history.

Semiconductor chips are part of the technology we use every day — electric toothbrushes, mobile phones, computers. And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them in new vehicles. But since the COVID-19 pandemic began, chips have been in short supply, causing, for example, some automakers to pause production lines. Some big tech firms predict the shortage will last into next year and perhaps beyond. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Chris Miller, author of the new book “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.” He explains why this shortage happened.

Technology is one way farmers are managing labor shortages, and the rising costs of seed and fertilizer.  “Precision ag,” as it’s known, is being used to get the most out of limited resources. Emil Moffatt of WABE reports from a family farm in central Georgia.

For almost 200 years, the Braille system has turned the written word into raised bumps that blind people can read. But what about images? A device called an embosser pricks and crimps 3D dots and lines on paper to produce a tactile image, allowing people to perceive pictures through touch. Chancey Fleet is a technologist at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library in New York City. She’s Blind and teaches low-vision and blind patrons to print their own images.

Mathematics can be a subject that’s a bit unrelatable for some. Perhaps you recall sitting in a math class at some point wondering, “When am I ever going to use quadratic equations?” But a new book wants us to reconsider math as something that gives us fundamental building blocks for not just the technology we use every day, but also the natural world around us. That book is called “The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math.” Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with author Manil Suri about his book and what motivated him to write it for the mathematically uninterested.

The No. 1 social networking app on Apple’s U.S. app store right now is called BeReal, as in being your real self online. No filters, no carefully staged shots. The concept, and the format, are so popular, TikTok launched its own version — both on its home app and as a standalone — called TikTok Now. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Erica Bailey, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University Business School, who studies authenticity and marketing. On BeReal, Bailey said, you can only post once a day and only when you receive an alert, which can come at ANY time.

Last night NASA completed a first-of-its-kind mission to steer a spacecraft into an asteroid. The asteroid was not hurtling toward Earth, threatening to wipe out civilization, and the goal was not to blast it to smithereens, “Armageddon” style, but rather to give it enough of a bump to slightly change course. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, took aim at a small asteroid called Dimorphos, which is about 11 school buses wide. It’s orbiting a bigger asteroid called Didymos, about 7 million miles from Earth. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Nancy Chabot, DART mission coordination lead at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, about the mission.

Painters, musicians, writers — artists in virtually every medium — often struggle to make enough revenue to create their art because there are so many layers between them and the people who buy their work. We’re talking gallery commissions, record label contracts, even bookstore overhead costs. Increasingly, tech companies add another layer. And many argue that’s bad for the arts. Activist-journalist Cory Doctorow and law professor Rebecca Giblin addressed these issues in their book, “Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back.” It will be out Tuesday. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Doctorow about what chokepoint capitalism entails.

A Texas law banning social media companies from applying certain content moderation policies was recently upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 2021 law prohibits platforms from banning or restricting content based on the “viewpoints” of users. Now, tech companies will have to appeal to the Supreme Court if they want to avoid legal risk in the state. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke about this case on the show back in May, when the Supreme Court put the implementation of the law on hold while the case ran its course. Issie Lapowsky, chief correspondent at Protocol, helped Adams back then and joins her again for an update. She says tech companies are in a tough spot.

When Hurricane Fiona recently hit Puerto Rico, the storm brought wind, water and major flooding to the island. Local authorities are still assessing the damage, but so far we know that some people died, others lost their homes and just about everyone lost electricity. Unfortunately, we’ve been here before. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, billions of federal dollars went to Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Julio López Varona, co-chief of campaigns at the advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy, about whether that technology investment did anything.

The word “meme” might bring to mind a viral picture of a weird-looking cat with silly text, a tweet or video showing up everywhere online. But some political memes can be downright dangerous, according to a new book — “Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America.” Its authors argue that memes have inspired cultural battles over the last decade both on- and offline. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Emily Dreyfuss, a senior editor at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and one of the book’s co-authors, about how far-right or extremist groups use memes as weaponized tools in their attempts to influence American politics.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade back in June, many states have been working on new laws related to digital privacy and access — or restricting what kind of information can be shared online. This trend highlights the increasing disparity between states in terms of what’s legal online and what might be in the future. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Matt Perault, director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a consultant on technology policy issues. He wrote an essay for Wired on what might happen when the rules for what you can say and do online are different from state to state. Perault says this kind of digital fragmentation is a relatively new concept in the U.S., but some people already know what it’s like.

A European Union court had bad news for Google last week, upholding an earlier ruling against the web search giant. It accused the company of engaging in anti-competitive behavior. That ruling also upholds much of the record fine the EU imposed on the company, equivalent to more than $4 billion. And in California, Amazon was hit with yet another lawsuit last week focused on the company’s price-setting power. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, about how the Google case in Europe might affect things here in the U.S.

This week, Vox released an investigation into Launch House, a “professional social club” for tech founders, which among other activities, hosts members at a luxury property in Beverly Hills. But Vox reports that Launch House was, at times, more like a frat house with members alleging excessive partying and sexual assault. Launch House disputes some of these allegations. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Vox senior correspondent Rebecca Jennings, who reported the story.

When far away from cellphone towers, people in remote locations or in emergencies rely on satellite phones, devices that connect to satellites in orbit to send messages or make calls. Last week, Apple announced a feature for its newest iPhones that will allow some users to send emergency texts through a satellite connection. Elon Musk’s Starlink also has a plan to turn your cellphone into a sat phone. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Tim Farrar, president of consulting firm Telecom, Media and Finance Associates, about why big tech and telecom companies are getting into satellite communications and how much consumer demand there is for sat phones.

The First Amendment serves as a check on government intervention into our public expression through, for example, spoken or visually signed speech, writing, protesting and coding languages like JavaScript, HTML, Python and Perl. Computer code as free speech is a relatively new legal concept but has a complicated history. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with technology lawyer Kendra Albert, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, about the history of code as protected expression.

Last week, Californians were hit with a scorching heat wave, and as households blasted their air conditioners in the afternoons to keep cool, it placed extreme stress on the state’s power grid. So, for the first time, Californians received an emergency text alert asking citizens to conserve electricity to avoid blackouts. And it worked. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Severin Borenstein, who researches energy markets at University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.