Marketplace Tech

The social media app Bluesky is flying high this week as users disenchanted with Elon Musk’s X flee that platform post-election. That’s just one of the topics for today’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” We’ll also get into Big Tech’s big-money lobbying effort to slow down a federal bill aimed at protecting kids online. But first, the latest in the potential Google breakup. This week, the Department of Justice proposed forcing the company to sell its Chrome browser. It’s one possible resolution to an antitrust case that has already ruled Google’s search business a monopoly. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to break down these stories.

Some of the biggest health insurers in the country are turning to an algorithm to help determine if a medical claim will be approved. That’s according to a recent investigation led by ProPublica into EviCore, a contractor used to outsource prior approval requests for much of the insurance industry. The investigation found that EviCore tweaks an algorithm to increase the likelihood those claims will be denied, which means lower costs for insurers but more patients losing access to potentially lifesaving care. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller, who co-reported this story.

Remember the old mantra from the early days of social media, “pics or it didn’t happen”? For more than a century, photographic evidence was about as close to a physical representation of the real world as we’ve had. But, thanks to new AI-powered photo editing tools – like the one now available on Google’s newest Pixel phones – anyone can create convincing pics of things that didn’t happen. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Sarah Jeong, a features editor at The Verge, who recently wrote about these cutting edge tools. Jeong says no one’s ready for the impact of this technology.

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency. And the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who is also the owner of X, does have a record of wringing efficiencies out of his businesses. But the move raises many questions, like should someone whose companies benefit from federal dollars have a hand in making budget decisions? SpaceX alone has secured about $15.4 billion in federal contracts over the last decade, helping it become the dominant player in the industry. So, how has SpaceX rocketed ahead of the competition, and can anyone catch up? Ashlee Vance, the author of “When the Heavens Went on Sale” and a writer for Bloomberg, pointed to reusable rockets, an innovation that was on spectacular display when SpaceX tested its Starship system last month.

Advancements in artificial intelligence have made it possible for the technology to mimic humans in ever-more convincing ways. But even far less sophisticated tools than today’s chatbots have been shown in research to trick our brains, in a sense, into projecting human thought processes and emotions onto these systems. It’s a cognitive failure that can leave people open to deception and manipulation, which makes the increasingly human-like technologies proliferating in our daily lives particularly dangerous, Rick Claypool, research director at the nonprofit Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

It’s been almost eight months since Reddit went public, and since then, the platform known as the front page of the internet has been going gangbusters. We’ll get into why on this week’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Plus, crypto surges to new highs in the wake of the election. But first up, Silicon Valley is going to Washington. This week, President-elect Donald Trump tapped his favorite tech CEO, Elon Musk, as the co-lead of a new Department of Government Efficiency along with Vivek Ramaswamy, the former biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential candidate.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Anita Ramaswamy, financial analysis columnist at The Information, for her take on these stories.

Apple is reportedly facing a fine from the European Union, and it could be a hefty one. It’s the first Big Tech company to be slapped with a financial penalty under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which went into effect last year. The law, aimed at spurring competition in digital markets, requires Big Tech companies designated as “gatekeepers” to change policies that lock consumers into their products. Like, say, the walled garden of the Apple App Store. EU regulators ruled that Apple violated the DMA by failing to fully support app developers “steering” consumers to alternative marketplaces. It’s a story Matt Binder, a senior tech reporter for Mashable, has been following.

Gary Marcus is worried about AI. The professor emeritus at NYU doesn’t count himself a luddite or techno-pessimist. But Marcus has become one of the loudest voices of caution when it comes to AI. He’s chronicled some of the funniest and most disturbing errors made by current tools like ChatGPT, calling out the many costs – both human and environmental – of an industry that continues to accrete money and power. In his new book “Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us,” Marcus lays out his vision for a responsible path forward. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Marcus about that path and how it may be further out of reach, though not impossible, given the results of this year’s presidential election.

Do the free speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment apply to online discourse? What if that online discourse spreads misinformation? Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, about how we should understand the right to free speech in the internet era.

This fall, California became the latest state to adopt a law banning cellphone use in schools. The Golden State joins more than a dozen that have imposed restrictions as alarm grows about the potentially harmful effects of smartphone use on students’ learning and mental health. Support for these policies spans the political spectrum. But one important constituency sometimes has a hard time adjusting: parents. Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a columnist for The Cut, wrote about the challenges of disconnecting.