The thing we call “the cloud” might sound harmless, but that seemingly abstract place where the details of your digital life are stored takes a heavy toll on the environment. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, a postdoctoral researcher in the Fixing Futures training group at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, about his research on cloud data centers and their effect on the health of the planet.

Warning: This conversation isn’t appropriate for all listeners.

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm has always been key to keeping users on the site. Watch a cute cat video, and the platform spews countless more of the same. But that also applies to harmful content, which the YouTube algorithm sometimes serves up not just to adults, but also to kids. Well, this month, Google-owned YouTube said it’ll stop displaying recommended videos to some users who have turned off their watch histories. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed this with Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, an organization that “seeks to hold large technology companies accountable.” Paul said controls on the recommendation algorithm on the site’s homepage are vital.

Deepfakes are just one example of how disinformation-filled digital media are making the rounds as we creep toward the 2024 national elections. These efforts to manipulate voters with the help of artificial intelligence and other tech tools are being crafted by activists, propagandists and political campaigns. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Susan Gonzales, CEO of the nonprofit group AIandYou, about what the nation’s first “AI election” could look like.

Hollywood is a month into its first double labor strike since 1960. The Writers Guild of America hit the picket lines in May, and in July, screen actors represented by SAG-AFTRA joined them on strike. Both unions want higher pay, better residuals and protections from artificial intelligence. Yet as actors and writers fight to limit the use of AI, the film and TV studios are hiring for a growing number of AI-related jobs. For an update on where things stand in Hollywood’s labor dispute, Lily Jamali spoke with Lucas Shaw, managing editor for media and entertainment at Bloomberg News.

Warning: This episode contains references to sexual abuse and violence.

Whether for a hookup or to find true love, 3 out of 10 American adults say they have used a dating app, according to the Pew Research Center. But an investigation out Wednesday from Mother Jones looks into how these apps can also incubate abuse, finding that companies like Grindr and Match Group have failed to protect some of their users from predators. At the heart of this story is this question: Is that the companies’ responsibility? The tech industry has long argued the answer is no, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability for content posted xx on their sites. Abby Vesoulis is the author of the Mother Jones investigation. Her story begins with Matthew Herrick, whose ex-boyfriend created fake profiles of him on Grindr.

If you drive an electric vehicle, you are familiar with the nagging fear that your EV will run out of battery power. A company in Sweden is trying to change that with technology that allows electric vehicles to charge while driving, with the power coming from the road itself. The BBC’s Adrienne Murray reports that it would be the first of its kind.

We’re quickly coming up on one year since ChatGPT was released to the public. In that time, it and other generative AI tools have placed artificial intelligence front and center in a larger discussion about the future of work, art, ethics and pretty much everything else. So, what do Americans think about AI now? The upshot is that many of you are checking the “somewhat concerned” and “mostly concerned” boxes on this one. And it seems like Democrats and Republicans are generally on the same page regarding the future of AI. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the question with Ryan Heath, global tech correspondent for Axios, who recently combed through several surveys to get a sense of the country’s current sentiment toward AI.

Almost three years later, the 2020 presidential election is hardly in the rearview mirror. Big questions remain about how algorithms spread polarizing content on the social media platforms that so many Americans turn to for news and information. For answers, academics across the country have been collaborating with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The result? Four studies that look at online polarization and ideological segregation among users on both platforms over three months during the 2020 election campaign. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with New York University’s Joshua Tucker, one of the academics who worked on these reports. He walked her through what he considers the top three findings.

The artists, producers, designers, and others who make your favorite video games have the technical chops to make it in the industy. But they also bring their personal stories and experiences to the job — and they’re able to take players along. Gameheads, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California, is teaching the next generation of developers how to do that, encouraging them to incorporate themes from their own lives, like gentrification and mental health, into the games they create. Lisette Titre-Montgomery is a veteran art director in the game industry and a Gameheads instructor. She shared how she got started and why she’s helping others break into the business of making games.

Artificial intelligence can feel abstract, so we’ve come to depend on certain narratives to try and make sense of it all. Some of the language we use to describe AI and our interactions with it is rooted in religious ideas. Are you bracing for the apocalypse? Have you been blessed by the algorithm? Have you consulted with a Robo Rabbi lately? The deification of AI, whether it’s done consciously or not, is something Beth Singler studies as a professor of digital religions at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Singler about religious tropes in the narratives we consume and share about AI.