Marketplace Tech

There are new tools to help with online learning, but a recent report from Common Sense Media and Boston Consulting Group found that at least 15 million students in the United States lack either a device or internet access, and 9 million kids lack both. Those disparities are worse in rural communities and Black, Latinx and Native American households. Hundreds of thousands of K-12 teachers also lack hardware or internet access. Molly spoke with Elizabeth Gettelman Galicia, vice president for policy at Common Sense Media.

This week on “Marketplace Tech,” we’re reporting on the innovations that will help us transition to a post-pandemic future. One of those innovations has been waiting in the wings for a long time: robots. Robots can do jobs that are too dangerous for humans or just make life a little easier while offering companionship during quarantine. Molly Wood speaks with Ayanna Howard, a roboticist and professor at Georgia Tech. She says the pandemic has been a boost for robotics of all types.

Some companies have spent tens of thousands of dollars on thermal cameras, which can, supposedly, spot someone with an elevated temperature from a distance. Do they work, or is this just a form of health security theater? Molly Wood speaks with Meghan McCarty Carino, who covers workplace culture for Marketplace.

A recent study looked at how artificial intelligence is used to determine treatments and care. It found that many of the algorithms used in medicine use race as a variable, and that is a problem. Molly speaks with Leo Eisenstein, a physician at NYU and Bellevue hospitals, and one of the authors of the paper, as well as with Dorothy Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who wrote a book about race in science and medicine.

This week on “Marketplace Tech,” we’re reporting on the innovations that will help us transition to a post-pandemic future. A lot of hopes are pinned on a vaccine for COVID-19. And there are, in fact, a lot of efforts on that front. Some combine the old ways of making vaccines with new techniques. Molly Wood speaks with Safi Bahcall, a biotech investor and author.

Online hate speech has gone way up since the police killing of George Floyd in May. Hate speech in the form of inflammatory posts has increased by nearly 40% around the country. And while Facebook continues to advocate a relatively hands-off approach to speech, Twitter this week took down thousands of accounts related to the conspiracy group QAnon, saying it will take action on accounts that could “lead to offline harm.” Molly Wood speaks with Dipayan Ghosh, co-director of the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project at Harvard. He says this is all still moving way too slowly.

Even in the context of all the things that are happening in the country right now, Monday is going to be a pretty big day. The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google will testify before the House Judiciary Committee as part of Congress’ antitrust investigation. It’s the first time all four have appeared together and the first time Jeff Bezos has shown up. But like congressional hearings that have come before, it’s probably going to be a mess. Molly Wood speaks with Cecilia Kang, who covers tech policy for the New York Times.

Political strategists and organizers are trying to find new ways to reach voters and potential voters while social distancing. Which is tough because research shows that in-person interactions are usually the most effective technique. Now, organizers are turning to the old idea of a turnout captain — a local volunteer who whips up voting interest — combined with targeted data and, sometimes, apps. And they’re finding that combination can really work. Molly speaks with Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams, who covers money and politics.

Talking about how much you’re paid can make for an awkward conversation, but Adesuwa Ajayi is asking just that of social media influencers. Ajayi started the Influencer Pay Gap Instagram account to highlight the fact that Black influencers are routinely paid less than white influencers, even when they have similar numbers of followers or the same reach. Jack Stewart spoke with Ajayi, whose day job is managing influencers at the talent agency AGM.

As the coronavirus swept around the world, work and education moved to the cloud, with video meetings and online document sharing. Our leisure time relied on cloud servers to stream TV shows and movies. There are a few big companies that stand to benefit. Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba are the big cloud providers. Google is a relative upstart, but it’s now rolling out new services for businesses as fast as it can. Jack Stewart speaks with Owen Rogers, a research director with S&P Global Market Intelligence.