Picture this: You’re not feeling so hot and you say to your smart speaker, “Robot, I’m hungry,” and you cough. And the device says, “Would you like a recipe for chicken soup?” And then, “By the way, would you like to order cough drops with one-hour delivery?” This is the scenario laid out in one of Amazon’s patents. And it shows how voice recognition technology could be used to learn things about us, beyond the words we say to our devices. Like whether we’re sick or depressed. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Joe Turow, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who writes about all of this in his new book “The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet.” 
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Smart devices are listening to more than our words

Monday through Friday, Marketplace demystifies the digital economy in less than 10 minutes. We look past the hype and ask tough questions about an industry that’s constantly changing.

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Imagine you’re a national security official tasked with monitoring activity off the coast of your fictitious country. Suddenly, a large tanker ship in your area goes silent. Its location sensor is offline, and it’s not responding to radio communication. What do you do? It’s a question Francesca de Rosa, chief scientist for gaming at the Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation, poses in the Reliability Game, which she designed. It’s part of a genre known as “serious games.” De Rosa told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that while serious games can be fun, they’re really meant to prepare people to handle all kinds of situations.

Training for the next crisis with “serious games”

A new wearable from tech startup Humane promises to bring an AI assistant to your lapel. It attaches to your jacket, sweater or shirt and operates with voice commands or a digital interface laser projected onto the palm of your hand. It sounds like the stuff of a sci-fi novel, but the reviews so far are not good. The panning of the Ai Pin comes after five years in development, $240 million in funding and partnerships struck with the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and Salesforce. So, what went wrong? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Victoria Song, senior reviewer at The Verge, what this device is supposed to be for.

Why the Ai Pin fell flat



Artificial intelligence has become a big part of medicine — reading images, formulating treatment plans and developing drugs. But a recent investigation by Stat News found that some insurers overrely on an algorithm to make coverage decisions for seniors on Medicare Advantage, a Medicare plan offered by private insurers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Casey Ross, who co-reported the story. He said an algorithm predicted how long patients needed care and coverage was curtailed to fit that calculation.



When a senior is ill, can an algorithm decide length of care?

On this week’s show, the United Kingdom is cracking down on makers of sexually explicit deepfakes. We’ll look at what penalizing the practice could mean for the victims. Then, the creator economy has the attention of millions of subscribers, but also venture capital. Why content creators like Dude Perfect on YouTube and other startups are attracting so much investment right now. But we begin with Amazon. The e-commerce giant’s Just Walk Out technology lets shoppers scan an app when they enter a store so they can leave with their purchases without paying at a register. This week, Amazon said there’s growing interest in the technology among retailers outside its empire. Yet the company is reportedly reducing the use of Just Walk Out in its own brick-and-mortar stores. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on these stories.

Tech Bytes — Week in Review: Amazon, deepfakes & the creator economy



When you think about gin, what tastes comes to mind? Pine? Maybe citrus or coriander? It can vary quite a bit because unlike some spirits, gin is very lightly regulated. Distillers can throw in all kinds of flavors and call the result “gin” as long it has some minimum requirements. In the U.S., gin is gin as long as the flavor is derived from juniper berries and alcohol by volume is at least 40%. In the European Union, the minimum ABV is 37.5%. But researchers in Edinburgh, Scotland, recently identified the exact elements that define gin using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscropy. Think of it as something like an MRI scan that lets scientists create a flavor “fingerprint.” The new technique could have big implications for this very old industry. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Eve Thomas, who wrote about it for Wired, to learn more.



Smart devices are listening to more than our words

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