There’s a lot at stake in the artificial intelligence race, and although it may feel like it’s everywhere, the U.S. AI race is primarily playing out in just a few places — specifically, hubs that offer AI entrepreneurs advantages like capital, talent and more. That helps explain why so many AI companies, patents, job opportunities and so much else are concentrated in Silicon Valley and other very expensive, mostly coastal U.S. cities, said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Muro about that concentration and what it means for AI development going forward.

Every year, grade school students gather at Nasa’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to send science experiments into space. Now, these experiments have to be tiny, fitting into a 6×6 centimeter cube, which can either be flown into space in a research rocket or a scientific balloon. After the cubes are brought back to Earth, the students get together to analyze their experiments and see what happened while they were floating up there for 15 or so hours. This year, hundreds of students from the U.S., Canada and Colombia were in Virginia showcasing their experiments.

There’s a new large language model in town that threatens to out-open OpenAI’s ChatGPT. LLaMa 2, from Facebook parent company Meta, has capabilities roughly in line with big-name competitors. However, it’s also open source, meaning the model’s source code is available for anyone to study or build upon for free. OpenAI, Google and many other artificial intelligence innovators have opted to keep their latest models proprietary. A more open approach has obvious benefits for research and enterprise but can also be advantageous for the companies that put these tools out. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Tom Goldstein, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, about the advantages and disadvantages of the open-source approach.

It’s been just a few weeks since the new Threads app burst onto the scene, threatening to be the ultimate Twitter-Killer, or platform formerly known as Twitter-killer. But it’s not just an alternative to the former bird app Threads has promised, but an alternative model of social media. One that is decentralized and interoperable. So how is this model different than the classic flavor most of us are used to? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Arvind Narayanan, a professor of computer science at Princeton.

It sure feels like we’re on the verge of an artificial intelligence revolution in many workplaces. New tools like chatbots and image generators have taken the tech world by storm, but many businesses across the economy are still figuring out what exactly it means for them. That’s often where firms like Accenture come in. It offers business services and consulting. Last month, Accenture surveyed more than 2,300 C-suite leaders across industries and around the world on their thinking about integrating generative tools into their workflows. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Lan Guan, the global lead for data and AI at Accenture, who said the survey found almost universal enthusiasm.

Even the most impressive artificial intelligence today isn’t quite what we see in science fiction. The superintelligent humanoids of “Westworld,” the malevolent supercomputer in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the emotionally attuned operating system in “Her” are all more like artificial general intelligence, rather than just artificial intelligence. They’re machines that are capable of everything humans are, or even more. As far as we know, AGI hasn’t become a reality yet. But John Licato, a professor of computer science at the University of South Florida, tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that experts don’t always agree on where the tipping point is.

Most online services that children use are likely monetizing their data in some way, according to a new report from Common Sense Media. The nonprofit analyzed the privacy policies of more than 200 popular internet platforms and found that about three-quarters of them were sharing user data or lacked transparency about how they use personal data. Disclosing those details and offering users a chance to opt out is required in California under the latest expansion of the state’s landmark privacy law, which was sponsored by Common Sense. A recent court ruling extended the deadline to comply with the new privacy provisions to March 29. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, about how many companies’ current privacy policies can be misleading.

The movie “Oppenheimer,” about the making of the nuclear bomb, opened last week, and the subject matter has spurred an unavoidable comparison with artificial intelligence. Leaders at AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have explicitly framed the risks of developing AI in those terms, while historical accounts of the Manhattan Project have become required reading among some researchers. That’s according to Vox senior correspondent Dylan Matthews. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Matthews about his recent reporting on the parallels between AI and nuclear weapons.

We’ve taken a week off from our usual programming to research and report on the rise of artificial intelligence in the workplace. In our “AI on the Job” series, we looked into the ways this technology is automating some jobs, simplifying others, competing with human workers and creating entirely new careers.

All week, as part of our “AI on the Job” series, we’ve been reporting on the ways generative artificial intelligence tools like chatbots are changing how we work. Today: the careers this technology is helping to create.