Supermarkets are increasingly becoming testing grounds for some of the latest technology. At Walmart’s subsidiary, Sam’s Club, customers can use an app to scan and pay for items while in the grocery aisle. Last month, Walmart sued BJ’s Wholesale Club, alleging the company infringed on patents for its Scan and Go technology. As checkout tech gets more advanced, it’s getting more competitive. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Don Apgar, merchant practice director at Mercator Advisory Group, about innovations in the space.

Private investment in artificial intelligence more than doubled last year, according to Stanford University’s AI Index Report. The research tracks and visualizes data about this tech, including business investment, software costs and research trends. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Jack Clark, co-chair of Stanford’s AI Index, who explains why we’re seeing more of this technology now.

Steve Wilhite, inventor of the graphics interchange format, also known as GIF, died this month at the age of 74. Animated or not, GIFs may now be a common, free feature of the internet, but the tech that powered Wilhite’s format was patented by the technology company Unisys. For a few contentious years during the internet’s youthful era, Unisys wanted to charge fees for all the sparkly GIFs we were sharing. This fight — over who controls how information moves around the web and who gets paid in the process — continues to this day. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Jason Eppink, an artist and a former curator at the Museum of the Moving Image, who gave her a GIF history lesson.

European Union lawmakers recently unveiled the Digital Markets Act, which aims to limit the power of “gatekeepers” — companies so big and popular that they shape entire industries — like the tech companies behind messaging apps. One rule would require that apps be “interoperable” with one another, so a startup, for instance, could let its users send messages to people using Apple’s iMessage or Meta’s WhatsApp seamlessly. Companies that don’t comply would face steep penalties — up to 20% of their global revenue. Alex Heath covers tech and internet platforms at The Verge. He laid out some of the pros and cons of the proposal.

We’re wrapping up our series on cryptocurrency mining, the energy-intensive computing process that does all of the accounting for most cryptocurrencies. Marketplace’s Andy Uhler previously reported on how crypto miners were drawn to the small Texas town of Rockdale because of its robust electric power infrastructure that hasn’t seen much use in recent years. Elsewhere in Texas, oil and gas companies are starting to get involved in crypto mining.

Video game developers, programmers and artists are gathering in San Francisco this week for the first in-person Game Developers Conference since 2019. One topic getting a lot of attention is non-fungible tokens — digital certificates showing ownership of digital assets like a picture or video. It’s a topic for Quality Assurance, where we take a closer look at a big tech story. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Stephen Totilo, who covers gaming for Axios and is attending the conference.

This week, President Biden warned businesses to be wary of potential cyberattacks from Russia, recommending companies increase their cybersecurity defenses. That means more work and higher stakes for the technicians maintaining those defenses. There are hundreds of thousands of vacancies in the cybersecurity sector right now, meaning those already working often end up taking on more duties, burning out and leaving the field. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Lesley Carhart, an incident responder for the industrial cybersecurity company Dragos. Warning: This interview touches on substance use disorder and suicide.

Internet access has been crucial during the pandemic, allowing some of us to work remotely or order all manner of things for delivery. But there’s not much research so far on the connection between internet access and health. A new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association looks at how COVID mortality rates varied based on factors like race, socioeconomic status — and internet access. Researchers found that counties with less access could expect more COVID deaths; for every extra percentage point of homes without internet, another 2 to 6 people per 100,000 would die. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Qinyun Lin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science, who was the paper’s lead author.

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The Federal Trade Commission recently reached a settlement with WW International, the company formerly known as Weight Watchers. The FTC and Department of Justice accused WW of illegally collecting data from children as young as 8 without their parents’ permission through a weight loss app called Kurbo. That data included details such as what the kids ate and their exercise habits. In addition to fining WW $1.5 million, the FTC ordered the company to “destroy any algorithms derived from the data.” Kate Kaye is a staff writer covering artificial intelligence and data for the website Protocol. She explained what it actually means to “destroy” an algorithm.

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Lately, we’ve been exploring cryptocurrency mining, the energy-intensive — and potentially quite lucrative – computing process that produces currencies like bitcoin. Up until last summer, China led the world in crypto mining — thanks in part to its hydroelectric infrastructure. Then the Chinese government cracked down on crypto and many mining companies moved to wherever they could find cheap power, like Kazakhstan, Iran, and … Texas. The U.S. now leads the world in crypto mining. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with reporter colleague Andy Uhler, who recently visited the small town of Rockdale, Texas, which attracted the attention of Chinese crypto miners, even before the ban.

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