Marketplace Tech

By Marketplace

Technology

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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.

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How the FTC’s new technolog...

03.24.2023

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 Tech episodes:

03.24.2023 How the FTC’s new technology office will regulate Big Tech 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. ...
03.23.2023 Online communities can help with loneliness — to a point 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 ...
03.22.2023 What a TikTok ban would mean for TikTokers 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 ...
03.21.2023 The human labor behind AI chatbots and other smart tools 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 ...
03.20.2023 How AI chat search could disrupt online advertising 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 ...
03.17.2023 What the bank failures mean for crypto 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 ...
03.16.2023 Silicon Valley gets a taste of what the public thinks of the tech sector 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 ...
03.15.2023 What are the ethical hazards in the effort to commercialize AI? 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.
03.14.2023 The SVB-sized hole in Silicon Valley 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 ...
03.13.2023 Can AI learn to understand human emotions? 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 ...
03.10.2023 AI is hard at work in Hollywood 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 ...
03.09.2023 Can a chatbot be an effective search engine? We tried it out. 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 ...
03.08.2023 What happens when robots write sci-fi? 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 ...
03.07.2023 Some U.S. cities are using cameras to crack down on noise pollution 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 ...
03.06.2023 Big retail companies are paying influencers to help them with their TikTok presence 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 ...
03.03.2023 How space tech is being deployed in Ukraine 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 ...
03.02.2023 ChatGPT is a content host and creator. Does that make it liable for what it produces? 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 ...
03.01.2023 The broadband gap leaves behind people with disabilities, study finds 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 ...
02.28.2023 Could AI write our laws next? 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, ...
02.27.2023 Now we’re paying for social media … but for what, exactly? 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 ...
02.24.2023 A year of war, and years of cyberwar, in Ukraine 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, ...
02.23.2023 How mobile apps continue to help many in Ukraine 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 ...
02.22.2023 Algorithms may start deciding who gets fired 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 ...
02.21.2023 Big Tech is gaining Americans’ trust, but not when it comes to their kids’ data, survey says 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 ...
02.20.2023 Digital archivists race to preserve Ukrainian heritage (rerun) 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 ...
02.17.2023 The pitfalls of letting an algorithm set the rent 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 ...
02.16.2023 Black investors hit harder by crypto market slowdown
02.15.2023 Big Tech diversity efforts stall as industry endures mass layoffs 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 ...
02.14.2023 What China’s spy balloon tells us about the state of international espionage 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 ...
02.13.2023 The role of technology in the Russia-Ukraine war 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 ...
02.10.2023 Search engines powered by generative AI might be the next big thing 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 ...
02.09.2023 How dating apps are more and more “gamified” 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 ...
02.08.2023 Students are using ChatGPT to cheat. That’s a challenge for teachers and school districts. 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 ...
02.07.2023 Tech layoffs can trigger an identity crisis for workers who are let go 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 ...
02.06.2023 The 2022 “Crypto Bowl,” then and now 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 ...
02.03.2023 California’s data protection law expands to cover employees 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 ...
02.02.2023 A theory of how internet platforms die 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 ...
02.01.2023 U.S. Border Protection app causes tech headaches for asylum seekers 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 ...
01.31.2023 Why visual misinformation online can be tough to stop 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 ...
01.30.2023 Rural communities are slow to adopt EVs — but a national charging network depends on them 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, ...
01.27.2023 How two cases headed to the Supreme Court could change the internet 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 ...
01.26.2023 Amazon is remaking small businesses in its own image, report says 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 ...
01.25.2023 Carbon capture needs to scale up to make a dent in the climate crisis 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 ...
01.24.2023 It’s in Big Tech’s DNA to overhire in the boom and deflate in the downturn 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 ...
01.23.2023 How solar panels might help fix California’s drought 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 ...
01.20.2023 Text-to-image AI tools are taking the internet by storm. But is it art? Or the end of art? 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 ...
01.19.2023 Affordable-housing hopes are building around 3D printed homes 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 ...
01.18.2023 Why AI is not coming for our jobs — yet 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 ...
01.17.2023 Understanding the tech behind the gas vs. electric stove debate 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 ...
01.16.2023 AI used for hiring and recruitment can be biased. But that’s changing. 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 ...

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