ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot from OpenAI, has raised a lot of questions. Like, what could this mean for society? For art? For the future of human jobs? But one thing became immediately clear: Students are going to use it to cheat on their homework. That’s created a market for software that can detect text that was generated by artificial intelligence like ChatGPT. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Stephanie Hughes, Marketplace’s education reporter, about what teachers say the technology means for them.

During the Meta earnings call last week, Mark Zuckerberg said something that seemed to perfectly capture the vibe in tech as layoffs continue to climb. The CEO said the company was in a “phase change” and that 2023 will be “a year of efficiency.” For tech workers, it’s a striking contrast to a mythology that had been building for more than a decade: the conspicuously cushy tech job.

It’s hard to believe it’s been just a year since cryptocurrency ads made a splash in the Super Bowl, because a whole lot has gone down (and down and down) in crypto since then. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino got journalist and book author Jacob Silverman on the line to look back at the ads from eToro, Crypto.com, Coinbase and FTX in the 2022 “Crypto Bowl.” They might not have aged so well.

California has been a leader in consumer data privacy law. But those protections don’t mean much if they’re not being enforced. So, under a sweeping voter initiative that took effect this year, the state has created an agency dedicated to the task. It’s the first of its kind in the U.S., which, unlike Europe, has no comprehensive federal data privacy regulation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Ashkan Soltani, the executive director of the new California Privacy Protection Agency. He said one of his goals is to educate the public about their rights under the newly expanded California Privacy Rights Act.

Many of the biggest tech platforms, from Amazon to Facebook, follow a similar pattern of transformation, according to a recent essay from the author and internet activist Cory Doctorow. First, he says, these platforms court users with artificially low prices on products or an exciting way to connect with friends. Then, they hook sellers, like advertisers or third-party retailers, with promises of reaching a captive audience. Finally, Doctorow says, as companies try to maximize their profits, they end up ruining the experience on their platforms through a process he describes with a four-letter word we can’t broadcast or publish.

In January, the Joe Biden administration unveiled a new tool to help migrants seeking asylum at U.S. borders. An expanded smartphone app managed by Customs and Border Protection now allows asylum seekers to schedule appointments to enter the country. But since this function launched, thousands of migrants coming from Latin America have been scrambling to sign up, and many have encountered technical glitches in the process. KPBS reporter Gustavo Solis spoke with migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, as they tried out the new system.

Technology is making it easier and easier to create and disseminate visuals, from text-to-image artificial intelligence models and sophisticated deepfakes to simple memes retweeted with hashtags. Visuals are the lingua franca of the internet, but their potential to easily spread misinformation — particularly about health topics — make them especially dangerous to the public. That’s according to an article published last year in the journal Science Communication. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Andy King, an associate professor of communication at the University of Utah. King co-authored the commentary titled “Missing the Bigger Picture,” which discussed what makes visual misinformation unique.

Sales of electric vehicles have really picked up in the last year or so, but at just shy of 6% of all cars sold in the U.S. They’ve still got a long way to go before they hit mass adoption, like the long way to go to find a charger in many areas of the country. There are currently about 100,000 public chargers in the U.S. The federal government wants to reach about half a million chargers by the end of the decade, and the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes billions of dollars to help make that happen. Reporter Rae Solomon of KUNC in Colorado has this story about how rural areas fit into the electrification plan.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court announced it was putting off hearing a pair of highly anticipated cases that could fundamentally change social media as we know it The cases concern laws in Florida and Texas, pushed by conservatives in those states, which basically make it illegal for social media platforms to block or hide content – like say from a former president – even if the post violates the companies’ terms of service. Both laws have been blocked from taking effect while the rest of the country waits for the high court to weigh in. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, about why these cases could be consequential.

Amazon might seem anathema to small business, but the fact is, third-party sellers account for the majority of the e-commerce giant’s sales. These sellers range from independent artisans and designers to opportunistic resellers of products from big-box stores. A new report from the nonprofit Data & Society examines how Amazon is helping, hurting and generally transforming the small business retail model. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Moira Weigel, the author of the report and a professor at Northeastern University. She described the effect Amazon has on small businesses as a “trickle-down monopoly.”

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