Marketplace Tech

Latest Episodes:

Bytes: Week in Review - Micron's big earnings, Oracle's data center woes and "slop" is Merriam-Webster's word of the year Dec 19, 2025

Show notes

Building artificial intelligence tools requires a lot of graphic processing units, and those GPUs need huge amounts of ultra-fast memory to feed them data. Micron Technology is one of a handful of memory chip makers that has been selling a whole lot of memory, thanks to the AI boom.

Plus, cloud company Oracle's data center debt is coming under scrutiny. And Merriam-Webster names the word of the year for 2025: slop.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, to learn more on this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

The challenges of integrating ads in AI search engines Dec 18, 2025

Show notes

Search engines, social media, e-commerce, and mobile games all make money by selling advertising. But making ads work in AI search might not be so straight forward. Perplexity, for instance, reportedly pulled back on plans to integrate ads into their AI search engine. And internal documents showed the company made only $20,000 in ad revenue in the fourth quarter last year.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Garrett Johnson, professor of marketing at Boston University to get a sense of why jumping into the ad business is difficult.

Tech sector job postings on Indeed (mostly) stabilized this year Dec 17, 2025

Show notes

A career in tech was once seen as a safe bet — the jobs were plentiful, the pay was ample. But this year the tech sector had another “meh” year for hiring according to the job site Indeed. Tech jobs have been declining now for several years, but this year, the losses at least seemed to stabilize, according to Indeed's latest Jobs & Hiring Trends Report. Still, job postings in the industry remain well below their pre-pandemic baseline.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Indeed senior economist Cory Stahle for a look at how this year turned out for the tech job market.

How states are competing in the data center gold rush Dec 16, 2025

Show notes

Tech giants are estimated to have spent almost $400 billion in capital expenditures this year, mostly to build data centers for artificial intelligence. A single massive facility can have a price tag in the billions of dollars.

And many states want in on that spending spree. Thirty-seven states have some sort of incentive program to attract data centers with the hope of bringing a boost to their local economies. They're giving away hundreds of millions in tax exemptions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Nicholas Miller, policy associate at NCSL, to learn more.

A case for AI models that understand, not just predict, the way the world works Dec 15, 2025

Show notes

Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at NYU, explains the differences between large language models and "world models" — and why he thinks the latter are key to achieving artificial general intelligence.

Bytes: Week in Review - Apple's leadership departures raises concerns over its AI future Dec 12, 2025

Show notes

There’s been something of a critical mass of high-profile departures and retirement announcements at Apple in recent weeks. Plus, how will consumers be helped or hurt by a potential merger between Netflix and Warner Bros or a hostile takeover from Paramount? And McDonald's pulls an AI-generated Christmas ad because some folks on social media weren't “lovin' it.”

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal for this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

The little-known regulatory bodies that can make or break AI data centers Dec 11, 2025

Show notes

The AI boom is propelling a once-obscure group of state regulators into key decision-making roles for the economy. AI needs data centers, data centers need power and power is generally regulated in some way — depending on the state — by public utilities commissions.

That's the topic of a new report from the Center on Technology Policy at NYU. Scott Brennen, CTP director and author of the report, said these commissions often make decisions on planning and permitting for new infrastructure and decide the rates utilities charge consumers.

The latest TV innovations have their critics Dec 10, 2025

Show notes

The extended Black Friday sale season means a lot of people have been buying new TVs. The top sets today can display in up to 8K Ultra High Definition, they have deeper blacks, brighter highlights and are thinner and lighter-weight than ever. And yet, modern TVs have their haters — a dedicated group of purists who find them lacking, and would rather hunt down a good old fashioned used plasma.

3D printing was supposed to disrupt prosthetic costs. It hasn’t. Dec 09, 2025

Show notes

Prosthetic limbs can be expensive, costing thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the industry seemed ripe for disruption when 3D printing came along. The technology requires little labor and uses economical materials. But the reality of 3D printing prosthetic limbs isn’t that straightforward, according to writer and University of California, Berkeley, lecturer Britt Young, who uses a prosthetic arm.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Young about why 3D printing has yet to bring down prosthesis costs.

Using AI chatbots for mental health support poses serious risks for teens, report finds Dec 08, 2025

Show notes

A new report from Stanford and Common Sense Media finds that more than half of U.S. teens use AI chatbots for companionship. But, according to Dr. Darja Djordjevic, an adolescent and adult psychiatrist who co-authored the research, the bots aren't equipped to provide the kind of emotional support young people need when dealing with a mental health issue.

Dr. Djordjevic and her team simulated conversations involving various mental health concerns with four of the most popular consumer chatbots and identified several risks; chiefly, their tendency to be sycophantic. A note, this conversation mentions suicide and self-harm.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected