TechStuff

Smart Talks with IBM returns Tuesday, May 20th, and this season, we’re really shaking things up. Host Malcolm Gladwell will visit various companies to tell stories of how IBM clients are using artificial intelligence and data to transform the way they do business.

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What kind of technology do air traffic controllers use? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah discuss how AI determines your real age, why chatbots can lead to delusions and what to know about a familiar sounding blood-testing startup. On TechSupport, features writer at New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, James D. Walsh, explains how AI-fueled cheating has overtaken college campuses, what students are saying and how educators are trying to address it.

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Chaim Gingold is a game designer and author of the book Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine, which explores the simulation games created by developer Will Wright. Gingold sits down with Oz to discuss why a computer game about city planning became such a big hit in the ‘90s, the surprising legacy of SimCity, and the deeper cultural and technological significance of simulation games.

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Could you be on a livestream for three years straight? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah explore the push to include AI education in schools, the parallel universe of the Chinese car market and why criminals should be wary of Interpol. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s technology reporter Drew Harwell reflects on his time shadowing Emilycc, the record-breaking Twitch streamer and why people have been tuning in 24-hours a day for the past three years.

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Nicolas Niarchos is a journalist whose work focuses on conflicts, migration and, most recently, the energy transition. Specifically, the hidden costs of extracting minerals like cobalt, which remains a critical element in the technology we use to run our lives. Niarchos sits down with Oz to discuss what he’s observed in mineral-rich Congo and Indonesia and how the battle for geopolitical advantage over these natural resources are overturning the world order.

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Can AI help search-and-rescue dogs do their job? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah explore the AI-powered technologies being used in war and why some Meta staffers worry about underage users interacting with their AI companions. On TechSupport, Olivia Carville, an investigative reporter at Bloomberg and the host of the podcast Levittown, discusses the Take It Down Act and what it means for the future of the internet.

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Evan Ratliff is an investigative journalist and podcast host. His Wired article, “The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians,” marked the culmination of a two-year deep-dive into a group of young tech radicals and their spiral into violence. Ratliff sits down with Oz to unpack how the group formed, what they believed the parts we can decipher, at least and how those beliefs led to alleged murder.

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Should you delete yourself from the internet? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah dig into humanoid robots running a half-marathon, the AI-generated personas helping law enforcement interact with potential suspects and Google’s updated ‘Results About You’ tool. On TechSupport, Jeff Rosenthal, the co-founder of the venture capital firm CIV, discusses the role of private investment in building out energy infrastructure to meet the AI boom.

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Lionel Barber is a journalist, author, and former editor of the Financial Times. He’s interviewed state leaders like former US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But in Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son, Barber chronicles the life of SoftBank’s enigmatic CEO from his childhood as an ethnic Korean in Japan to becoming the richest man in the world briefly. Barber sits down with Oz to discuss the impact SoftBank’s investments have had on technology.

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How would Salvador Dalí have used generative AI? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah dig into this year’s most common uses for generative AI, the rise of code editor, Cursor, and how Google DeepMind’s Veo2 interprets a surrealist screenplay. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s staff writer, Naomi Nix, discusses the first week of Meta’s antitrust trial.

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