Marketplace Tech - Marketplace

How an algorithm helps convert empty offices into housing Jun 02, 2023

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.

AI is already taking jobs from some voice actors Jun 01, 2023

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.

What we know about social media’s effects on kids May 31, 2023

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.

AI could boost productivity, and also inequality May 30, 2023

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.

Safe and sound: how EVs tell you they’re coming May 29, 2023

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.

Learn how to invest — using computer games May 26, 2023

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 challenges of archiving the internet 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.

Paper ballots can ensure a secure, resilient election next year May 24, 2023

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.

How AI is helping people speak May 23, 2023

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.

The “crypto winter” didn’t keep bitcoiners away from its annual conference May 22, 2023

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.

Section 230 co-author says the law doesn’t protect AI chatbots May 19, 2023

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.

Creatives compete in first AI fashion week. How will it impact the industry? May 18, 2023

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: They’re not there yet May 17, 2023

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.

Passkeys versus passwords: Will we soon use biometrics for all logins? May 16, 2023

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.

A search for the right balance in building out AI May 15, 2023

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’s “bold and responsible” approach to AI May 12, 2023

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.

AI promises it can know one’s mental state, but that comes with a lot of data tracking May 11, 2023

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.

Labor unions’ fight against AI is nothing new May 10, 2023

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.

How people are using AI for stock market picks May 09, 2023

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.

Should we worry about deepfakes and an “epistemic apocalypse”? May 08, 2023

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.

What fake Drake means for the music industry May 05, 2023

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.

E-SUVs may be popular, but are they sustainable? May 04, 2023

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.

The systemic barriers to landing a Big Tech internship May 03, 2023

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.

Tech companies look to Mexico for new talent May 02, 2023

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.

The coming AI chip shortage May 01, 2023

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.”

How facial-recognition technology can lead to wrongful arrests Apr 28, 2023

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.

The complications of regulating AI Apr 27, 2023

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.

What does an AI chatbot know about you? Apr 26, 2023

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.

Customer service is being automated. Will bots take over those jobs? Apr 25, 2023

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.”

TMI! The problem with too much data. Apr 24, 2023

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.

What’s the future of retail shopping? Snap bets on virtual try-on tech. Apr 21, 2023

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.

AI’s carbon footprint is growing. Is it worth it? Apr 20, 2023

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.

As chatbots are deployed, AI whisperers will be employed Apr 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.

Filing taxes online shouldn’t be this hard Apr 18, 2023

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.

No reward for loyalty: Gig companies winning fight to classify drivers as independent Apr 17, 2023

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.

A New York law will require AI hiring systems to be audited for bias Apr 14, 2023

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.

Don’t be surprised by AI chatbots creating fake citations Apr 13, 2023

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.

What happens when AI is entrusted with medical decisions? Apr 12, 2023

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.

Bias generated by technology is “more than a glitch,” expert says Apr 11, 2023

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.

Diversity among esports athletes is slowly increasing Apr 10, 2023

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.

Could pausing AI development do more harm than good? Apr 07, 2023

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.

Parent influencers in France make a living by blogging about family trips Apr 06, 2023

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.

Without AI regulation, the “information apocalypse” looms, expert says Apr 05, 2023

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.

One state is betting on technology to address problem gambling Apr 04, 2023

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.

Do we have an AI hype problem? Apr 03, 2023

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.

The pitfalls of being the child of a parenting influencer Mar 31, 2023

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.

Why women in tech hold high-profile positions, but rarely CEO Mar 30, 2023

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.

GPT-4 needs more robust testing, “red team” member says Mar 29, 2023

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.

American’s mental health data is on the market 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. 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.

What does it mean to develop trustworthy AI? Mar 27, 2023

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.

How the FTC’s new technology office will regulate Big Tech Mar 24, 2023

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.

Online communities can help with loneliness — to a point Mar 23, 2023

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.

What a TikTok ban would mean for TikTokers Mar 22, 2023

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.

The human labor behind AI chatbots and other smart tools Mar 21, 2023

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.

How AI chat search could disrupt online advertising Mar 20, 2023

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.

What the bank failures mean for crypto Mar 17, 2023

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.

Silicon Valley gets a taste of what the public thinks of the tech sector Mar 16, 2023

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.

What are the ethical hazards in the effort to commercialize AI? Mar 15, 2023

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.

The SVB-sized hole in Silicon Valley Mar 14, 2023

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.

Can AI learn to understand human emotions? Mar 13, 2023

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.

AI is hard at work in Hollywood Mar 10, 2023

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.

Can a chatbot be an effective search engine? We tried it out. Mar 09, 2023

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?

What happens when robots write sci-fi? Mar 08, 2023

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.

Some U.S. cities are using cameras to crack down on noise pollution Mar 07, 2023

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.

Big retail companies are paying influencers to help them with their TikTok presence Mar 06, 2023

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.

How space tech is being deployed in Ukraine Mar 03, 2023

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.

ChatGPT is a content host and creator. Does that make it liable for what it produces? Mar 02, 2023

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.

The broadband gap leaves behind people with disabilities, study finds Mar 01, 2023

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.

Could AI write our laws next? Feb 28, 2023

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.

Now we’re paying for social media … but for what, exactly? Feb 27, 2023

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.

A year of war, and years of cyberwar, in Ukraine Feb 24, 2023

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.

How mobile apps continue to help many in Ukraine Feb 23, 2023

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.

Algorithms may start deciding who gets fired Feb 22, 2023

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.

Big Tech is gaining Americans’ trust, but not when it comes to their kids’ data, survey says Feb 21, 2023

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.

Digital archivists race to preserve Ukrainian heritage (rerun) Feb 20, 2023

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.

The pitfalls of letting an algorithm set the rent Feb 17, 2023

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.

Black investors hit harder by crypto market slowdown Feb 16, 2023

Big Tech diversity efforts stall as industry endures mass layoffs Feb 15, 2023

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.

What China’s spy balloon tells us about the state of international espionage Feb 14, 2023

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.

The role of technology in the Russia-Ukraine war Feb 13, 2023

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.

Search engines powered by generative AI might be the next big thing Feb 10, 2023

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.

How dating apps are more and more “gamified” Feb 09, 2023

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.”

Students are using ChatGPT to cheat. That’s a challenge for teachers and school districts. Feb 08, 2023

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.

Tech layoffs can trigger an identity crisis for workers who are let go Feb 07, 2023

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.

The 2022 “Crypto Bowl,” then and now Feb 06, 2023

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’s data protection law expands to cover employees Feb 03, 2023

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.

A theory of how internet platforms die Feb 02, 2023

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.

U.S. Border Protection app causes tech headaches for asylum seekers Feb 01, 2023

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.

Why visual misinformation online can be tough to stop Jan 31, 2023

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.

Rural communities are slow to adopt EVs — but a national charging network depends on them Jan 30, 2023

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.

How two cases headed to the Supreme Court could change the internet Jan 27, 2023

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 is remaking small businesses in its own image, report says Jan 26, 2023

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.”

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Carbon capture needs to scale up to make a dent in the climate crisis Jan 25, 2023

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.

It’s in Big Tech’s DNA to overhire in the boom and deflate in the downturn Jan 24, 2023

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.

How solar panels might help fix California’s drought Jan 23, 2023

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.

Text-to-image AI tools are taking the internet by storm. But is it art? Or the end of art? Jan 20, 2023

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.

Affordable-housing hopes are building around 3D printed homes Jan 19, 2023

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.

Why AI is not coming for our jobs — yet Jan 18, 2023

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.

Understanding the tech behind the gas vs. electric stove debate Jan 17, 2023

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.

AI used for hiring and recruitment can be biased. But that’s changing. Jan 16, 2023

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 bans could cause headaches for government employees Jan 13, 2023

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 law requiring proof of ID for porn site access has privacy advocates worried Jan 12, 2023

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.

How private images captured by a robot vacuum ended up online Jan 11, 2023

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.

How new tech could put more EVs on the road Jan 10, 2023

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.

Chaos at Twitter has brands questioning their association with the platform Jan 09, 2023

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?

This year’s CES puts the smart in smart home Jan 06, 2023

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.

What’s ahead for crypto in 2023? Jan 05, 2023

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.

A clock for the next civilization — what could it say about the past and future? Jan 04, 2023

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.

How AI is disrupting the trucking sector Jan 03, 2023

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.

How does copyright law affect the sale and distribution of NFTs? (rerun) Jan 02, 2023

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.

Fractured tech policy, easy-to-use AI and emotional recognition: stories to watch in 2023 Dec 30, 2022

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.

The complications of trying to engineer life (rerun) Dec 29, 2022

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.

Women don’t wear bikinis to battle, and other things the gaming industry is learning (rerun) Dec 28, 2022

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.

Tech is speeding up the search for ships — and stories — from the trans-Atlantic slave trade (rerun) Dec 27, 2022

The government would like to talk to you about UFOs (rerun) Dec 26, 2022

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.

Smart rings, air-purifying masks and hearables — the wearable tech trends to watch in 2023 Dec 23, 2022

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.

How AI can connect you with your inner child Dec 22, 2022

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.

How anti-trans hate speech online leads to real-world violence Dec 21, 2022

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.

ChatGPT can write English essays … quite well. How are teachers going to deal? Dec 20, 2022

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.

What we can learn from an Indigenous approach to AI Dec 19, 2022

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.

How the transistor helped create Silicon Valley Dec 16, 2022

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.

How the NSA and private sector are working together on cybersecurity Dec 15, 2022

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.

The power of the sun is (nearly) within grasp Dec 14, 2022

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 extends “zero-COVID” surveillance methods to protests Dec 13, 2022

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.

Real-world RoboCop: The ethics of using robots to apply lethal force Dec 12, 2022

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.

Unionization efforts are shaking up the gaming industry Dec 09, 2022

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.

Predicting natural disasters is complicated. Climate change makes it even more so. Dec 08, 2022

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.

An environmentally friendly model for crypto mining shows promise Dec 07, 2022

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.

Solving an old equation brings a new wave of AI Dec 06, 2022

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.

Meta’s pixel code helps businesses reach online customers, but shares sensitive data about them Dec 05, 2022

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.

Irish regulators fine Meta for not safeguarding user data Dec 02, 2022

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.

Black Twitter has been a cultural engine. Where will that community go if the site breaks? Dec 01, 2022

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 MarketplaceTechComments@marketplace.org. 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.

Scientists aim to 3D bioprint human tissue in space Nov 30, 2022

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 MarketplaceTechComments@marketplace.org. 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.

Changes at Twitter put adult content creators in limbo Nov 29, 2022

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.

For disabled shoppers, some Cyber Monday deals are out of reach Nov 28, 2022

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.

The new tech behind LeVar Burton’s crusade for child literacy (re-air) Nov 25, 2022

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.

Among the goals of Artemis I: launching the lunar economy (re-air) Nov 24, 2022

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.

AI used for hiring and recruitment can be biased. But that’s changing. Nov 23, 2022

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.

YouTube and content creators clash over the platform’s automated copyright tool Nov 22, 2022

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.

A tool for creating an “unbreakable” internet under oppressive, censoring regimes Nov 21, 2022

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.

FTX bankruptcy points to more difficult times for crypto Nov 18, 2022

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.

This lab experiments with disaster — to help create climate-resilient homes Nov 17, 2022

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.

A critical update to the national broadband map is coming Friday Nov 16, 2022

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 for Twitter under Elon Musk. What’s next? Nov 15, 2022

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 NLRB is keeping electronic surveillance of workers in check Nov 14, 2022

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.

Inside the high stakes of the quantum computing race Nov 11, 2022

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.

What Silicon Valley’s boom-and-bust history tells us about its latest slowdown Nov 10, 2022

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.

Social media has evolved as a crucial tool during election cycles — but it can also be misused Nov 09, 2022

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.

How platform rules shape where people “live” online Nov 08, 2022

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.

Voting tech for people with disabilities has expanded — but more is still needed Nov 07, 2022

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.

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