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Bytes: Week in Review: A bet to make AI less human, and more Jun 06, 2025

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Yoshua Bengio, one of the so-called godfathers of AI, wants it to be less human. Plus, a federal judge temporarily blocked a law in Florida that would ban kids under 14 from getting social media accounts.

But first, Meta announced an energy deal with one of the country's biggest operators of nuclear reactors. Marketplace’s Nova Safo is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at the venture capital firm Collab Capital, to break down these tech stories from the week.

How a high-tech farm in Canada is winning in the trade war Jun 05, 2025

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We've been looking at how technology is changing agriculture. Last month, we visited Central California where there's new investment in everything from electric tractors and leaf sensors to upskilling farmworkers.

Today, Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams visits our neighbor to the north. Specifically, Canada's first fully-automated greenhouse. It's cost millions to set up, and it's just in time for a trade war.

A test to weed out AI-generated deepfake images Jun 04, 2025

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AI-generated deepfakes are everywhere on social media. Now, you can take a test developed by Northwestern University to see how well you spot them. Marketplace’s Nova Safo took the test, sifting through a bunch of real and fake images. He got five out of six right, which is the average in a study Northwestern conducted. Lead researcher Matt Groh also helped develop a litmus test, a series of things to look for to spot deepfakes.

The startups bringing brain-computer interfaces to market Jun 03, 2025

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On this episode of “Marketplace Tech,” host Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Christopher Mims, a tech journalist at The Wall Street Journal, about the recent evolution of brain computer interfaces — technology that has enabled people with paralysis to move prosthetic limbs or type out communication using computer implants in their brains — and the neurotech startups trying to bring their implants to a larger market by making them less invasive.

Police use new AI tool that can identify someone without facial features Jun 02, 2025

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Facial recognition systems use artificial intelligence to analyze patterns in faces, and they've come under increasing scrutiny, particularly in policing. There have been multiple instances of false positives leading to the arrest and detainment of innocent people. There's no federal regulation of this technology, but at least a dozen states have laws that limit its use. So, some law enforcement authorities have turned to a new system called Track, made by a company called Veritone. It doesn't analyze faces, but looks to the rest of the body for clues — things like clothing, body type or hair — according to recent reporting by James O'Donnell for MIT Technology Review.

Bytes: Week in Review — Texas’ age verification law, a potential moratorium on local AI laws, and Meta splits its AI team May 30, 2025

Show notes

There's a provision tucked into the Big Beautiful Bill, among the tax cuts and Medicaid cuts, that would bar states from passing laws to regulate artificial intelligence for a decade. Plus, Meta is reshuffling its AI team again in an apparent attempt to catch up to the competition. But first, this week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a law requiring age verification for Apple and Google app stores. It also requires parental consent for app downloads and in-app purchases by minors. But it raises some legal questions. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to discuss all this.

NYC's child welfare agency uses AI to scrutinize marginalized families, recent investigation finds May 29, 2025

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The New York City Administration for Children's Services, or ACS, has been using predictive artificial intelligence to flag some families for greater scrutiny, according to a recent investigation by The Markup. Colin Lecher reported the story and tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino, like all AI systems, it can encode historical biases.

Controversial Reddit AI study raises wider ethical concerns May 28, 2025

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In late April, details came to light about a covert experiment conducted by researchers from the University of Zurich on unsuspecting Reddit users on the debate forum known as r/changemyview. They used AI chatbots posing as real humans on the forum to test their powers of persuasion and invented backstories like a rape survivor or a Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter. What they didn't have was consent. The experiment violated Reddit Terms of Service, forum rules and, critics say, academic research standards. The researchers who notified Reddit of the experiment after the fact have since apologized and said they won't publish the results. Reddit says it's increasing efforts to verify users are human. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Mohammad Hosseini, a professor at Northwestern University's medical school, about the potential harms that could come from a study like this one.

Big Tech pivots from the carrot to the stick May 27, 2025

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Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Meta and Google are using stricter performance reviews to bring up productivity and weed out low performing workers. It’s a noticeable pivot away from the perks that defined Silicon Valley work culture a decade ago. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Alistair Barr, author of the Business Insider Tech Memo Newsletter, about their recent coverage of this latest shift.

Are digital banking outages on the rise? May 26, 2025

Show notes

Digital banking is often seen as a smoother, less costly way to deliver financial services. But where there’s tech, there are sometimes outages. Bank customers in the U.K. and other countries have seen an increasing number of banking interruptions, often with costly impacts.

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