Marketplace Tech

By Marketplace

What's Marketplace Tech about?

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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Marketplace Tech episodes:

04.18.2024
How science could disrupt the gin industry
When you think about gin, what tastes comes to mind? Pine? Maybe citrus or coriander? It can vary quite a bit because unlike some spirits, gin is very lightly regulated. Distillers can throw in all kinds of flavors and call...
04.17.2024
Scientists try to prevent “forever chemicals” from being a forever problem
When the chemical company DuPont unveiled Teflon in 1946, nonstick pots and pans seemed like a miracle. We now know their coatings contain “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, which don’t break down. These compounds are not only in cookware but in...
04.16.2024
How Arizona is preparing for AI-powered election misinformation
President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by a razor-thin margin, flipping the state blue for the first time in more than 20 years. As a result, Arizona became a hotbed of election misinformation and conspiracy theories, as false claims...
04.15.2024
The 65-year-old computer system at the heart of American business
The programming language known as COBOL turns 65 this year. We couldn’t help noticing that’s right around retirement age, but COBOL is nowhere near retirement. It remains a mainstay of IT operations at U.S. government agencies, businesses and financial institutions....
04.12.2024
Tesla settles Autopilot suit, inflation spooks tech investors and Biden’s CHIPS Act pledges $6.6B for domestic chipmaking
The Labor Department this week confirmed what a lot of Americans have been feeling: Inflation is kind of sticking around, and higher interest rates are likely to as well. We’ll look at what that means for venture capital, which was...
04.11.2024
The race to resurrect the dodo
More than 99% of all species that have lived on Earth are now extinct — something humans have certainly had a hand in. There’s now an entire scientific discipline devoted to bringing some of these species back. If you’re picturing...
04.10.2024
The rise of AI fashion models
AI models are increasingly being used by the fashion industry, as they save time and money. Some models and agencies are fans, but others want to see more protection for the image rights of models. What does it all mean...
04.09.2024
The hidden meanings of the AI industry’s favorite words
We hear words like “safety” and “transparency” thrown around in the artificial intelligence industry, but they don’t always mean the same things to a tech insider that they do to the rest of us. Luckily, tech journalist Karen Hao wrote...
04.08.2024
Facial recognition part of Israel’s arsenal in Gaza war
It’s been six months of war in the Gaza Strip since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The destruction and death have been profound, and nearly every aspect of life in the roughly 140-square-mile territory has been upended. The New...
04.05.2024
The FCC tackles net neutrality, Google commits to voiding billions of data records and Jon Stewart spills about working with Apple
Google has agreed to destroy billions of browser data records to settle a class action suit alleging that the tech giant misled users about how Chrome tracked them in “Incognito mode.” Plus, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart reveals that Apple...
04.04.2024
Why are fake obituaries cluttering Google — and upsetting loved ones?
Fake obituaries have become an online trend. They exploit tragedy for profit and have raised concerns about the reliability of search engines. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the problem with reporter Mia Sato of The Verge. Her investigation uncovered a network...
04.03.2024
Why there’s no TikTok in China
The Chinese company ByteDance owns two versions of basically the same app. In the U.S. we have TikTok, used by an estimated 170 million people, while in China they have Douyin, home to more than 700 million active users. Despite...
04.02.2024
Can deepfakes be used for the greater good?
It was an early attempt to use artificial intelligence in the 2024 presidential election: Ahead of January’s New Hampshire primary, a deepfake audio recording of President Joe Biden made it to some voters in the form of a robocall, encouraging...
04.01.2024
Who benefits from a national AI program?
Right now, the federal government is piloting its response to Silicon Valley’s AI boom. It’s called the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, and it’s supposed to “democratize” access to AI by making gigantic and expensive AI models available to academic...
03.29.2024
Florida bars kids from social media, EV charging tips to make your money go farther and AI ambitions at Apple’s developer fest
In this week’s episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Lily Jamali chats with Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal’s senior personal tech columnist, who takes us on a road trip through New Jersey’s network of Tesla superchargers. Stern...
03.28.2024
Government pressures tech behind the scenes, says former Facebook employee. It’s called jawboning.
It’s something government officials on both sides of the aisle are known to do: pressuring tech platforms to bend to their will, aka jawboning. But the line between persuasion and coercion, or even censorship, can get murky. Last week, the Supreme...
03.27.2024
What a privacy organization and Big Tech’s lead lobbying group think about internet regulation
When you look at the lawsuits aimed at blocking attempts to regulate tech, it’s usually not companies like Meta or Snap doing the suing. Oftentimes, it’s a group called NetChoice, which has emerged as Big Tech’s top lobbying force from...
03.26.2024
Africa’s gaming market is expected to top $1 billion in 2024
The number of gamers in Africa has doubled in recent years, but many gaming platforms require users to pay for subscriptions or make in-game purchases. That’s a problem for users who don’t have credit cards, but as the BBC’s Mo...
03.25.2024
Why crypto has made a comeback in the Philippines
Crypto is once again big in the Philippines. It first took off during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021 with a now-defunct video game called Axie Infinity, where players earned money — often more than minimum wage — through non-fungible tokens, or...
03.22.2024
Lawsuits, fines and the tech at the heart of it all
When a company pushes false claims about using artificial intelligence in its business, that’s known informally as “AI washing.” It can feel like everybody’s doing it, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is cracking down on the practice. Plus, is...
03.21.2024
What it means for nations to have “AI sovereignty”
Imagine that you could walk into one of the world’s great libraries and leave with whatever you wanted — any book, map, photo or historical document — forever. No questions asked. There is an argument that something like that is...
03.20.2024
AI manipulation and the liar’s dividend
Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams discuss how deepfake images are leading people to second guess everything in the latest episode of our “Decoding Democracy” series.
03.19.2024
What Redditors think about the Reddit IPO
More than two years after Reddit first announced plans to go public, a share offering is expected to hit the stock market this week. The social network boasts 260 million active weekly users and more than 100,000 active communities, according...
03.18.2024
Makers of electric roasters pitch carbon cutting in coffee making
Roasting coffee beans was a market worth over $1 billion globally in 2022, according to Grand View Research, which projects that figure could double by 2030. Traditional roasters, powered by the fossil fuel natural gas, still dominate the market. These...
03.15.2024
TikTok faces the hammer, Sam Altman returns to OpenAI’s board, and Waymo’s driverless taxis come to Los Angeles
We’re at the end of the week, which means we’re serving up another episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review. Autonomous vehicle company Waymo has launched its driverless taxi service in Los Angeles. OpenAI has given CEO Sam Altman...
03.14.2024
What a TikTok ban would mean for free speech and data privacy
On Wednesday, members of the House of Representatives proved they can agree on something. In a bipartisan vote, lawmakers passed a bill that would force TikTok to split from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban — the...
03.13.2024
The Biden administration hasn’t had a CTO. Why?
When President Barack Obama took office way back in 2009, he created a new role that promised to bring some tech know-how to his administration. Chief Technology Officer, or CTO, was, of course, a title borrowed from corporate America. Early...
03.12.2024
States and schools are learning how to manage AI in education
It’s been about a year and a half since ChatGPT hit the scene and changed the world of education, leaving teachers scrambling to adjust lesson plans and grading policies. Currently, only a handful of states are providing guidance on how...
03.11.2024
AI can’t handle the truth when it comes to the law
Almost one in five lawyers are using AI, according to an American Bar Association survey. But there are a growing number of legal horror stories involving tools like ChatGPT, because chatbots have a tendency to make stuff up — such...
03.08.2024
EU fines Apple over competition, Change Healthcare cyberattack drags on, and Max will join the crackdown on password sharing
Late last month, Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth, came under attack by an infamous hacker group called BlackCat. $22 million in ransom later, reportedly paid in bitcoin, and the problem is far from solved. Also this week: Max, previously...
03.07.2024
The San Francisco Fed chief says Silicon Valley is thriving, but “in transitional waters”
More than 260,000 people working in the tech industry were laid off last year, and some CEOs have put at least some of the blame on high interest rates. Policymakers at the Federal Reserve hiked rates at the fastest pace...
03.06.2024
One year after “all hell broke loose” at Silicon Valley Bank
This week marks the first anniversary of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the largest bank failure in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis. Today, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali revisits the SVB collapse with Anat Admati, an economics professor...
03.05.2024
Deepfakes and the 2024 election season
Audio deepfakes have become shockingly convincing in the last few years. A deepfake robocall impersonating President Joe Biden encouraging voters to stay home for the New Hampshire primary was one recent example of how far the technology has advanced. That’s...
03.04.2024
Spotting tech-driven disinformation isn’t getting easier
“Misinformation” and “disinformation” are often lumped together. They’re not the same, but they are very much connected. Say you hear that Christmas falls on Dec. 23 this year. If someone told you that thinking it was true, it’s considered misinformation. But...
03.01.2024
A boost for data privacy policy, Nvidia’s chip shortage eases and Apple steers away from electric cars
It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to dig into some of this week’s tech headlines in “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Good news for Nvidia, the top chipmaker for artificial intelligence applications. There are signs that the company’s...
02.29.2024
Voting precincts are steadily moving away from paperless machines
“DRE” is the acronym in election-speak. It stands for direct-recording electronic voting machines … the kind that record votes directly into a computer’s memory, often with no paper trail. In an effort to boost security and ensure more reliable counting...
02.28.2024
DOE’s Granholm drives campaign to make EV batteries a U.S. industry
A big part of Jennifer Granholm’s job as U.S. secretary of energy involves selling President Biden’s clean energy agenda and convincing Americans that it’s benefiting them. On Monday, she toured a facility near San Francisco operated by the company Cuberg,...
02.27.2024
Will we remember any of the fast-paced “trendbait” slang on TikTok?
The race to coin new words and phrases is on — on TikTok. They range from “first time cool syndrome,” to “the weekend effect,” and “dinner and couch” friend. Keeping track of all this can feel like a wild goose...
02.26.2024
How NetChoice became Big Tech’s ally against social media regulation
The Supreme Court hears arguments on two state laws Monday — one in Texas and one in Florida — that seek to punish social media platforms over allegations they censor conservative speech. The legal force fighting these state laws is...
02.23.2024
Amazon to join the Dow, VCs steer away from China’s startups, and Rivian’s cold EV winter
It was not that long ago that electric vehicle maker Rivian was drawing comparisons to Tesla. But flagging demand for EVs has not served the company well. Its earnings release this week made that much clear. Also, a look at...
02.22.2024
When cellphones fail, landlines are still a lifeline
AT&T; is asking California regulators to be relieved of its obligation to provide basic landline phone service to anyone who wants it. “No customer will be left without voice or 911 service,” AT&T; says, but Californians weighing in are, by...
02.21.2024
Want to quit your smartphone?
Once a week, many of us get that dreaded screen-time report courtesy of our smartphones. But a recent study found keeping track of our average usage doesn’t actually help us control our screen time all that much. Caught in the...
02.20.2024
Would you trust a cancer screening by artificial intelligence?
As consumers, we’ve all been subjected to the “upsell,” or pressure to pay a little more for a product that’s slightly better. It’s one thing if you’re buying, say, a car or a piece of clothing. The ethical questions get...
02.19.2024
Vibrating suits offer a new way to experience music
We often think of music as a mostly auditory experience, but it’s also a physical one, especially for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Daniel Belquer — a Philadelphia-based technologist, composer and “chief vibrational officer” of Music: Not...
02.16.2024
A $7 trillion chips moonshot, AI-fueled cyberattacks, and Disney’s bet on gaming
On the show today, Microsoft says groups affiliated with the governments of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are using AI tools to improve their cyberattacks. Also, Disney is investing $1.5 billion in Epic Games. Can we expect a “Frozen”...
02.15.2024
How a comprehensive federal privacy law could protect kids online
On our show last week, we had Sen. Amy Klobuchar share her take on the recent Senate hearing with tech executives. You remember the one, with the execs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, doing their best to stall in response to...
02.14.2024
Dating apps can get pretty intimate with your data
Cuffing season is that time of year when singles hunker down with someone to keep them warm — temporarily. And Valentine’s Day more or less marks the end of it. So people are about to start flocking back to their...
02.13.2024
In spite of plummeting valuation, 23andMe still aims to pivot into biotech
23andMe has seen its valuation plummet from $6 billion to close to zero, with the Nasdaq threatening to delist the company’s stock. Still, company leaders have high hopes for medical research and a pivot to biotech. Rolfe Winkler has been...
02.12.2024
For Uvalde families, social media is a tool to share grief and energize advocacy
On May 24, it will be two years since 19 children and two teachers were killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Photojournalist Tamir Kalifa has spent much of the last year and a half documenting...
02.09.2024
FCC cracks down on AI robocall scams, Meta tightens oversight of AI content and Sen. Klobuchar discusses Section 230 reform

What's Marketplace Tech about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Marketplace Tech episodes:

How science could disrupt the gin industry

Scientists try to prevent “forever chemicals” from being a forever problem

How Arizona is preparing for AI-powered election misinformation

The 65-year-old computer system at the heart of American business

Tesla settles Autopilot suit, inflation spooks tech investors and Biden’s CHIPS Act pledges $6.6B for domestic chipmaking

The race to resurrect the dodo

The rise of AI fashion models

The hidden meanings of the AI industry’s favorite words

Facial recognition part of Israel’s arsenal in Gaza war

The FCC tackles net neutrality, Google commits to voiding billions of data records and Jon Stewart spills about working with Apple

Why are fake obituaries cluttering Google — and upsetting loved ones?

Why there’s no TikTok in China

Can deepfakes be used for the greater good?

Who benefits from a national AI program?

Florida bars kids from social media, EV charging tips to make your money go farther and AI ambitions at Apple’s developer fest

Government pressures tech behind the scenes, says former Facebook employee. It’s called jawboning.

What a privacy organization and Big Tech’s lead lobbying group think about internet regulation

Africa’s gaming market is expected to top $1 billion in 2024

Why crypto has made a comeback in the Philippines

Lawsuits, fines and the tech at the heart of it all

What it means for nations to have “AI sovereignty”

AI manipulation and the liar’s dividend

What Redditors think about the Reddit IPO

Makers of electric roasters pitch carbon cutting in coffee making

TikTok faces the hammer, Sam Altman returns to OpenAI’s board, and Waymo’s driverless taxis come to Los Angeles

What a TikTok ban would mean for free speech and data privacy

The Biden administration hasn’t had a CTO. Why?

States and schools are learning how to manage AI in education

AI can’t handle the truth when it comes to the law

EU fines Apple over competition, Change Healthcare cyberattack drags on, and Max will join the crackdown on password sharing

The San Francisco Fed chief says Silicon Valley is thriving, but “in transitional waters”

One year after “all hell broke loose” at Silicon Valley Bank

Deepfakes and the 2024 election season

Spotting tech-driven disinformation isn’t getting easier

A boost for data privacy policy, Nvidia’s chip shortage eases and Apple steers away from electric cars

Voting precincts are steadily moving away from paperless machines

DOE’s Granholm drives campaign to make EV batteries a U.S. industry

Will we remember any of the fast-paced “trendbait” slang on TikTok?

How NetChoice became Big Tech’s ally against social media regulation

Amazon to join the Dow, VCs steer away from China’s startups, and Rivian’s cold EV winter

When cellphones fail, landlines are still a lifeline

Want to quit your smartphone?

Would you trust a cancer screening by artificial intelligence?

Vibrating suits offer a new way to experience music

A $7 trillion chips moonshot, AI-fueled cyberattacks, and Disney’s bet on gaming

How a comprehensive federal privacy law could protect kids online

Dating apps can get pretty intimate with your data

In spite of plummeting valuation, 23andMe still aims to pivot into biotech

For Uvalde families, social media is a tool to share grief and energize advocacy

FCC cracks down on AI robocall scams, Meta tightens oversight of AI content and Sen. Klobuchar discusses Section 230 reform