Earlier this week, six U.S. tech companies were named in a lawsuit that accuses them of endangering the lives of child laborers in the mining of cobalt for their products. Several children have been maimed or killed in pursuit of this rare element, most of which comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The lawsuit, the first of its kind, names Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla. “This is the first time that tech companies have been on the hook for this,” Roger Cheng of CNET tells host Molly Wood.

Lawsuit says tech giants use child labor in cobalt mining

Monday through Friday, Marketplace demystifies the digital economy in less than 10 minutes. We look past the hype and ask tough questions about an industry that’s constantly changing.

Technology

Tech News

Podcasting

Gadgets

Software How-To

News

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

Tech Bytes — Week in Review: The TikTok ban, the end of noncompetes and Sony’s EV


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


Inside Amazon’s business tactics and company culture

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

Training for the next crisis with “serious games”

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

Why the Ai Pin fell flat



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



Lawsuit says tech giants use child labor in cobalt mining

Download our free app to listen on your phone