Marketplace Tech

If there's one thing that's clear from the 2016 election, it's that the internet and social media have a huge influence on the political process. These days if you want to run a successful campaign, you need an effective digital strategy. Fortunately for politicians, Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook provide representatives to embed within a campaign. They help navigate digital platforms and give tech support. But are those tech reps getting too much access to politicians and future leaders? We talk about it with Daniel Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington, D.C. (01/08/19)

Hardly anything happens these days that isn't caught on video. Cell phones, security cameras, drones, even doorbells have cameras built in these days. All of that video would seem to be evidence galore for law enforcement, except for a few problems. First: there's so much of it. Companies and law enforcement agencies are developing algorithms and machine learning to sift through all that video, looking for patterns or places or people. Second: that technology can have all the same biases and flaws as the people who designed it. Molly Wood talks about this with Kelly Gates, associate professor at the University of California San Diego, who's studied the rise of forensic video evidence. (1/7/19)

If you live in a city with a lot of tech companies, expect that city to be pretty empty next week. That's because tens of thousands of people are headed to Las Vegas for the annual tech trade show, CES. It's the place where companies roll out their newest technologies, from huge televisions to gaming laptops to virtual reality gear to Wi-Fi connected plant feeders. It's all there, but the tech industry has also changed a lot in the many years that CES has been happening. For one thing, it used to be called the Consumer Electronics Show. But the name has since officially changed to just CES. Because it's not just all about the gadgets anymore, says Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Thompson about what to expect at the trade show this year. (01/04/19)

This week we're looking ahead at what to expect in tech and business in 2019. Today we're diving into tech policy and regulation. There’s the possibility of federal privacy legislation, net neutrality is still on the table, tons of state laws are in the works, and, in 2018 we saw the first big challenges around Section 230, the law that says tech platforms aren't legally responsible for everything that gets posted on their platforms. That language in Section 230 is really crucial to the digital economy. But in 2018, Congress passed a law holding Google, Facebook and others responsible for sex trafficking posts on their sites. Molly Wood talks with Cecilia Kang, who covers tech policy for The New York Times. (01/03/19)

All this week, we're looking ahead to 2019 and what's likely to be big in business and technology. This year, expect the space economy to really take off. According to Space Angels, an investment firm that specializes in aerospace, private investment in space-related businesses has gone from a handful of companies and a couple hundred million dollars in 2009 to 375 companies and $15 billion today. The Trump administration is making space a huge economic priority, as well as a military one, creating a new Space Command in December to oversee and organize the country's space-based operations. Kimberly Adams, a senior reporter at Marketplace and our resident space expert, says those moves are all part of an international race to space that's got money at its core. (01/02/19)

Hey, happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to Marketplace Tech 2019 edition! The future looks about the same as yesterday, right? This week, we've been looking at what the near future of this year might look like in business and technology. Today, we’ve got a futurist on the show to talk about the big trends that will influence tech. Amy Webb is a professor of strategic foresight at New York University's Stern School of Business and founder of The Future Today Institute. She tells Molly Wood one big trend in 2019 and beyond is that your phone won't be the center of your life anymore. It'll just be the center of everything else.

It is New Year's Eve, and that means we made it to the end of 2018, which was by any account a huge year in the world of business and technology. It was a year of gigantic data and privacy scandals, Amazon's search for a second headquarters and MoviePass turning out to be too good to be true. This week, we look back at the year that was and ahead to the stories that will be big in 2019. Molly Wood talks with Tom Merritt, host of the "Daily Tech News Show." (12/31/18)

Facial recognition software has made huge advancements in accuracy, but it has a long way to go — specifically when it comes to recognizing people of color. Commercially available software can tell the gender of a person using a photograph. According to researcher Joy Buolamwini, of the MIT Media Lab, that software is correct 99 percent of the time when it’s looking at a white male but is less than half as accurate when looking at a darker-skinned female. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Buolamwini about her research and the human biases that creep into machine learning. (This interview originally aired Feb. 13.)

Fake news is enemy No. 1 right now. Companies and governments are trying to figure out who should be in charge of spotting misinformation and getting rid of it. MIT researcher Sinan Aral has found that the not-true stuff, what he calls “false news,” is not only hard to stop, but also really effective. A study published last spring found that false news travels way more efficiently and much farther than the truth. In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Aral said misinformation can come at a real cost. (This interview originally aired Aug. 27.)

Self-driving cars will probably save a lot of lives in the future. But right now the tech is new, and most of it requires human intervention. Experts refer to several levels, one through five, of automation in cars. A fifth-level car would have no steering wheel or gas pedal. Several cars on the market now fit into the middle category, requiring human intervention with some autonomous features. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University, about the risks of having humans only partly in control. (This interview originally aired May 2.)