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

Google and Apple’s complicated relationship, and Meta’s chance to return to China

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

Bytes: Week in Review – AI whistleblowers, Facebook’s future, and meme stock backlash

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

Deepfake detectors promise to tell truth from AI-generated fiction. Do they work?



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



The universe is expanding faster than we thought, Webb Space Telescope shows

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

Paris braces for a barrage of cyberattacks

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

Google and Apple’s complicated relationship, and Meta’s chance to return to China

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