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 NFTs. Of course, the crypto winter soon followed with the implosion of FTX in 2022, but now crypto is back in a big way on the island nation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with reporter Eli Tan, who recently visited and wrote about the scene for The New York Times.

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 the government’s communication with social media companies persuasion or coercion? The Supreme Court heard arguments this week in yet another case involving online speech. But first, the Department of Justice on Thursday announced that it’s bringing antitrust charges against Apple. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Reuters Breakingviews columnist Anita Ramaswamy about all of these stories for this week’s episode of Marketplace Tech’s Bytes: Week in Review.

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you could walk into one of the world’s great libraries and leave with whatever you wanted — any book, map, photo or historical document — forever.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 happening to the digital data of nations. In a lot of places, anyone can come along and scrape the internet for the valuable data that’s the backbone of artificial intelligence. But what if raw data generated in a particular country could be used to benefit not outside interests, but that country and its people? Some nations have started building their own AI infrastructure to that end in a bid to secure their “AI sovereignty.” According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, the potential implications and opportunities are huge.

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.

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 to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yet in its nearly two-decade history, Reddit has never turned a profit. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Elizabeth Lopatto, senior writer at The Verge, who says not everyone is on board with the company selling stock.

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 machines are big and bulky and kind of look like part of a train. But the makers of more compact electric roasters are piling into the business. And they have an edge, touting themselves as high-tech alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and cheaper to run than their old-school counterparts. The BBC’s Frey Lindsay has more on the story.

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 his board seat back. And a U.S. bill passed by the House of Representatives would force TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the U.S. version of the popular social media platform or be banned from app stores. Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, joined Marketplace’s Lily Jamali to discuss why policymakers have been pushing for action on TikTok for years.

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 first for a social media app in the U.S. President Biden has signaled he’d sign the bill into law if it passes the Senate. Advocates argue that the Chinese government could use the hugely popular app to collect Americans’ personal data and threaten U.S. security. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, about the congressional action. He pointed out that a little something called the First Amendment could complicate the crackdown.

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 on, the job focused on things like bringing broadband access to rural parts of the country and modernizing the way the federal government keeps records. President Donald Trump also had a CTO. Well, we are now deep into President Joe Biden’s current term in office and the president has yet to appoint a CTO for the United States. For more on why, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Cristiano Lima-Strong, tech policy reporter at The Washington Post, who’s been tracking developments on the position.

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 AI should be used in the classroom. Just five have official policies, with about a dozen more in the works. Bree Dusseault at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University has been following all this.