It’s been not quite three years since AT&T; completed its $85 billion merger with Time Warner, with the hope that investing in content would drive customers to consume that content with AT&T;’s internet and on AT&T; phones. Now, that deal is coming undone. AT&T; now plans to spin off HBO, CNN and the rest of its media assets in a deal with Discovery, leaving telecom as its main focus again. Verizon is doing the same thing by getting rid of AOL and Yahoo. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Roger Entner, who follows the industry as founder of Recon Analytics. He said this comes as the companies pour billions of dollars into 5G and fiber. And it’s hard to fight the broadband war and the streaming war at the same time.
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That AT&T-Discovery deal is about the battle for broadband

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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When Jeff Bezos left Wall Street to start Amazon in 1994, the most common question he got was “What’s the internet?” Fast-forward to today, and Amazon is, of course, the country’s leading online retailer, as well as cloud services provider. In 2022, the company controlled almost 38% of the U.S. e-commerce market. Walmart, its closest competitor, had just over 6%, according to Insider Intelligence. In her new book, “The Everything War,” The Wall Street Journal’s Dana Mattioli documents the tactics she says have enabled Amazon to dominate.


Inside Amazon’s business tactics and company culture

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.

That AT&T-Discovery deal is about the battle for broadband

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