Marketplace Tech
1,011 episodes - English - Latest episode: 28 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.2K ratingsMonday 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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Episodes
Major social media platforms fail to protect LGBTQ+ users
June 27, 2023 09:48 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBThe Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) recently released its annual social media safety index. It scores the five biggest platforms — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter — on how well they’re doing protecting LGBTQ+ users from harassment and abuse. All five platforms received failing grades. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube did improve their scores slightly over last year but Twitter’s score sank, hitting a new low of 33%, according to Jenni Olson, GLAAD...
Identifying the trade-offs in online age verification
June 26, 2023 09:36 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBConcern about the harm social media can do to young people is growing. But to protect kids, platforms have to know who is underage. That’s why user age verification has become a focus for policymakers. Several states have passed laws that require it. But these policies require a range of trade-offs, according to a new analysis from Utah State University’s Center for Growth and Opportunity. Matt Perault and Scott Brennen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center on Technolo...
What happened when an entire class of college students had ChatGPT write their essays
June 23, 2023 09:32 - 13 minutes - 11.8 MBThe chatbots are out of the bag, and educators are scrambling to adjust. Chris Howell, an adjunct assistant professor of religious studies at Elon University, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that as the year progressed he noticed more and more suspiciously chatbot-esque prose popping up in student papers. So rather than trying to police the tech, he embraced it. He assigned students to generate an essay entirely with ChatGPT and then critique it themselves.
Patreon CEO Jack Conte’s creator-oriented vision
June 22, 2023 09:39 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBThe “creator economy” could grow to nearly half a trillion dollars in the next four years, according to Goldman Sachs. That buzzword describes the online ecosystem of people creating and monetizing videos, music, podcasts, newsletters, art and other forms of expression, usually on social media. But advertising and algorithms can be fickle mistresses. For the last decade, Patreon has enabled fans to directly support creators with paid digital subscriptions. Now the company is offering a free...
A checkup on privacy risks posed by digital wellness benefits
June 21, 2023 09:36 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBIn the U.S., employers are the main source of health coverage and, increasingly, benefits that encourage “wellness.” Many of them are provided in digital form, like meditation apps, virtual therapy or wearables that track our steps, heart rate or stress level. But with that web of digital benefits comes privacy concerns, according to a new report from the nonprofit Data & Society, titled “Wellness Capitalism: Employee Health, the Benefits Maze, and Worker Control.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCar...
As our lives increasingly move online, older adults are often left out
June 20, 2023 10:16 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBFor a lot of us, most of our days are spent online, and the pandemic only increased that pace. That’s also true for the way we do business. Utilities, restaurants, health care providers, the government — they all want us to go to an app or a website to get stuff done. While this might be easy and convenient for people who don’t remember a world before the web, many older adults are left out by the move to digital. Reporter Ashley Milne-Tyte looks into the ways older adults are trying to catc...
The game-changing work of Jerry Lawson
June 19, 2023 09:00 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBWhen you think of the early days of video games, the Fairchild Channel F console might not be the first brand that comes to mind. The Fairchild Channel F was released in 1976, before the more famous Atari released its console. It was also the first system to use individual game cartridges thanks in large part to Jerry Lawson, a Black engineer at Fairchild. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Anthony Frasier, CEO of ABF Creative and host of a podcast about Jerry Lawson ca...
Talking credit helps visually impaired people make transactions safely
June 16, 2023 10:57 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBThe French firm Thales is launching a credit card that talks. Not to embarrass users for their spending habits, but to make transactions more secure for people with a visual impairments. About 250 million people worldwide have some form of visual impairment, according to the World Health Organization, and in France they’re often targeted in fraud schemes because of their disability. The new Thales credit card connects users with a phone app that verbalizes transactions. In Paris, John Lauren...
Artists warn of the harm AI-generated illustrations can do to their careers
June 15, 2023 11:03 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBPublishers of books, magazines and their digital incarnations have long hired artists to contribute unique visuals to their storytelling. It’s the kind of work Molly Crabapple cut her teeth on. Her illustrated journalism has been published by outlets like Vice, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. But she fears the format faces an existential threat from artificial intelligence image generators like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Crabapple recently wrote an open letter about her concerns in c...
Is AI more biased than humans?
June 14, 2023 11:45 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBWhenever we talk about artificial intelligence, the problem of bias is never far behind. All kinds of insidious patterns can get embedded in these systems because they’re trained on data from our imperfect world. A new report from Bloomberg looks at bias in text-to-image generative AI systems like Stable Diffusion. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed the issue with the report’s authors, technology reporter Dina Bass and data visualization reporter Leonardo Nicoletti. They analyzed...
For banking customers, AI chatbots may have trust issues
June 13, 2023 10:10 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog agency for the banking sector, recently warned the industry about the use of artificial intelligence chatbots. Previous iterations of chatbots, which operate like automated decision trees, have long been used in banks’ customer service operations. But these new generative tools like ChatGPT are so good at imitating human communication, banks may be relying on them more than ever. While they can incorporate huge amounts of data, AI...
Costs of AI spur quest for a cheaper chatbot
June 12, 2023 09:58 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBGenerative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT have caught on like wildfire, largely because of their impressive capabilities, but also because they’re free, or nearly free, to use. But just because a service doesn’t charge users doesn’t mean it doesn’t have costs. In reality, sophisticated large language models cost a lot to build and maintain. AI companies will have to recoup that investment eventually, in one way or another. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke about the h...
Are brain implants a privacy issue?
June 09, 2023 09:59 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBThe field of brain-computer interfaces is quickly advancing. Elon Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink, received approval from the Food and Drug Administration last month to begin to test brain implants in humans. Its rival company, Paradromics, is even further along in the process. Neurotechnology could be revolutionary for people with severe paralysis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or other disabilities that affect communication. But Sara Goering, a philosophy professor at the Universit...
Tinder’s relationship with AI
June 08, 2023 10:12 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBNew generative artificial intelligence tools like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT can create stunning headshots, write flawless prose — even imitate someone’s voice. Basically, a catfisher’s dream. In other words, these tools enable a user to create a false online persona that in some cases can be used for financial gain. Catfishing and other online romance scams have become an increasing problem, especially on dating apps. Tinder, one of the most popular dating apps in the U.S., has stepped up...
AI’s sense of humor is no laughing matter
June 07, 2023 09:59 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBWhen asked to complete this joke, “Why did the chatbot cross the road?” OpenAI’s ChatGPT gave this response: “As an AI language model, it doesn’t have physical presence or the ability to cross roads.” A rather disappointing punchline, considering the chatbot’s long list of impressive capabilities. Writers Guild of America members have raised alarms about the use of AI in the scriptwriting process, but when it comes to killing a comedy set, these systems have a ways to go. Marketplace’s Megha...
Regulating generative AI will be challenging
June 06, 2023 09:59 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBThe European Union is getting closer to approving the world’s most comprehensive artificial intelligence regulations. Here in the U.S. — well, at least we’re not defaulting on our debt, right? Fast-moving developments in generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have raised a slew of concerns over misinformation, copyright violation and job losses. But even the EU’s AI Act — years in the making — wasn’t crafted with this kind of general purpose AI in mind, these broadly accessibl...
FTC doubles down on data privacy enforcement with Amazon settlements
June 05, 2023 09:32 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBLast week, Amazon agreed to pay more than $30 million to settle two complaints brought by the Federal Trade Commission over allegations the company violated user privacy with its Ring video security system and Alexa audio assistant. The FTC said Amazon gave employees too much access to users’ private videos and left Ring systems open to hacking. The agency also said Amazon Alexa devices violated child privacy law by retaining kids’ voice recordings for years and that the company used consum...
How an algorithm helps convert empty offices into housing
June 02, 2023 09:57 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBDuring the pandemic, many offices were vacated in favor of working from home. Now, cities are looking to reuse the buildings by converting them to housing units. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Steven Paynter, principal at Gensler, about an algorithm that assesses whether an office building would make for a successful conversion.
AI is already taking jobs from some voice actors
June 01, 2023 10:00 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBPowerful new artificial intelligence tools have a lot of people worried about being replaced. Remie Michelle Clarke, a voiceover artist in Dublin, says she’s already seeing it. Michelle Clarke did some voiceover work for Microsoft a few years ago, and since then, her voice has been licensed to third-party companies, including one called Revoicer, an AI company selling text-to-speech voices. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Michelle Clarke about the growing threat this technolog...
What we know about social media’s effects on kids
May 31, 2023 09:47 - 16 minutes - 11.8 MBLast week, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned about the risks social media could pose to the well-being of children and adolescents. It’s a topic the American Psychological Association has also been researching. The organization recently released recommendations based on the growing body of research into how social media is affecting young people. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Mitch Prinstein, the APA’s chief science officer, about social media’s effects on identity, rel...
AI could boost productivity, and also inequality
May 30, 2023 09:54 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBGenerative AI may help some workers become better and faster at their jobs, which could ultimately boost wages. That’s good news for workers, right? Not if employers roll out AI in a way that replaces workers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Anton Korinek, economics professor at the University of Virginia, on the long- and short-term impacts generative AI may have on the labor economy.
Safe and sound: how EVs tell you they’re coming
May 29, 2023 09:54 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBThere’s a federal regulation requiring “quiet vehicles” — meaning hybrid and electric cars — to emit synthetic sounds. That’s because without noisy combustion engines, EVs produce no sound of their own at speeds under about 18 mph, which would make them dangerous to other road users, particularly visually impaired pedestrians. So those sounds are added on. We wanted to know why these cars sound the way they do, so we asked Danielle Venne. She’s the executive creative director at Made Music S...
Learn how to invest — using computer games
May 26, 2023 10:22 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBFor a lot of people, lessons about investing and personal finance are learned the hard way. Now, Marketplace has a new show on YouTube called “Financially Inclined” that aims to teach young people about money in a less painful fashion. It’s made in collaboration with Next Gen Personal Finance, a financial literacy non-profit, and hosted by Yanely Espinal, who says digital tools like computer games can help get inexperienced investors engaged.
The challenges of archiving the internet
May 25, 2023 14:24 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBThe internet is where so much of what happens in our world gets archived. But where does the internet get archived? There are projects around the world, like the Internet Archive, to try to preserve some content online. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kayla Harris, a professor and director of the Marian Library at the University of Dayton, about whether current archiving work is enough.
Paper ballots can ensure a secure, resilient election next year
May 24, 2023 09:40 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBNext year’s election is still 18 months away, but it’s never too soon to start thinking about security. Voting systems are a little different wherever you go and the tech has changed over the years — from paper ballots to electronic ones to something in between. Most jurisdictions in the U.S. now use hand-marked paper ballots, or paper ballots marked with an electronic interface, and counted with optical scanners or by hand, should the need arise. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke wi...
How AI is helping people speak
May 23, 2023 09:56 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBThe language models behind artificial intelligence chatbots aren’t just great at generating term papers, Fake Drake raps and get-rich-quick schemes. This technology could be transformative in the world of augmentative and alternative communication. AAC refers to all the ways people communicate besides talking. It’s typically used by people who — due to a medical issue or disability — experience difficulty with speech. Sam Sennott, an assistant professor of special education at Portland State...
The “crypto winter” didn’t keep bitcoiners away from its annual conference
May 22, 2023 09:53 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBBitcoin believers gathered in Miami for what organizers say is the world’s biggest annual bitcoin convention, though it was quite a bit smaller than last year. It drew less than half of the 35,000 attendees who went in 2022. Of course, a lot has happened in the crypto world since then. A little disaster called FTX, a crypto-friendly bank failure or two. Not to mention the price of bitcoin has taken a dive, from around $40,000 during last year’s event to about $26,000 this time around. Market...
Section 230 co-author says the law doesn’t protect AI chatbots
May 19, 2023 10:18 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBThe U.S. Supreme Court delivered a win to Big Tech on Thursday, when it avoided weighing in on the limits of a key piece of tech law called Section 230. It’s a segment of the Communications Decency Act that shields internet companies from liability for their users’ content. In recent years, it’s become a target for both legal challenges and political attacks. Add to the mix artificial intelligence, which is raising new questions. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to former Congressm...
Creatives compete in first AI fashion week. How will it impact the industry?
May 18, 2023 10:04 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBArtists worry AI will take away jobs. But for those who never went to fashion school, does it provide opportunities? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Nima Abbasi, partner at Maison Meta, about how the first AI fashion week allowed creatives without formal training to go head to head with experienced designers.
Autonomous vehicles: They’re not there yet
May 17, 2023 08:33 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBAutonomous vehicles are here, and they’re causing some problems. Reports over the past year show driverless cars occasionally getting glitchy in cities like San Francisco and Phoenix. Andrew Hawkins, transportation editor for The Verge, says driverless cars are in a confusing moment. Most of the time, they work remarkably well, until suddenly, they don’t. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Hawkins about the state of autonomous vehicles today and an industry beset by technological a...
Passkeys versus passwords: Will we soon use biometrics for all logins?
May 16, 2023 08:41 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBPasswords are an enormous security risk for Americans, so big tech companies are looking at passkeys as a tentative solution for password breaches and lost phones. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Chester Wisniewski, a security expert as Sophos, about the risks and benefits of passkeys.
A search for the right balance in building out AI
May 15, 2023 08:41 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBGoogle is bringing artificial intelligence to … like, everything. Last week, the company announced updates to its Bard chatbot and integrations into search, productivity tools, health care services and more. But plenty of people are calling for more caution with this technology, from the thousands of tech and science experts who signed an open letter calling for a pause in AI development to renowned former Google employee Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whom many consider the “godfath...
Google’s “bold and responsible” approach to AI
May 12, 2023 09:39 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBGoogle revealed a slew of new products this week at its annual developer conference, I/O. But it was artificial intelligence that stole the show, from new search integrations and updates to its Bard chatbot to an automatic translation dubbing service. Google is clearly going big on AI as it tries to fend off competition from Microsoft and OpenAI. It’s part of a strategy to be simultaneously bold and responsible, says James Manyika, Google’s senior vice president of technology and society. Ma...
AI promises it can know one’s mental state, but that comes with a lot of data tracking
May 11, 2023 09:51 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBSure, technology that supposedly reads human emotion has been on the scene for a while, along with concerns about its use. But now it looks like Apple may be getting in on the game. The tech titan is reportedly developing AI-powered mood tracking for Apple Watches. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Daniel Kraft, a physician-scientist and founder of Digital.Health. He says wearable emotion recognition devices could achieve something that’s been difficult to provide in mental hea...
Labor unions’ fight against AI is nothing new
May 10, 2023 10:02 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBDisruptive technology is at the heart of the contentious negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and studios, networks and streaming services. Last week, those negotiations failed and the screenwriters went on strike. The WGA has pushed for guardrails on the use of new generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which are trained on vast amounts of human-made creative work and could, some fear, end up replacing it. It’s a concern that is popping up more and more across a number of different ...
How people are using AI for stock market picks
May 09, 2023 10:19 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBThe popularity of ChatGPT has exploded since the artificial intelligence chatbot was released to the public last fall. In just a matter of months, it’s gained more than 100 million users. It can write haikus, pass law school admissions tests and help you plan your dinner, but can it make you money in the stock market? It’s a prospect a lot of people are intrigued by, according to a new survey from The Motley Fool. The investment advice platform polled 2,000 Americans about their interest in...
Should we worry about deepfakes and an “epistemic apocalypse”?
May 08, 2023 09:57 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBIt’s getting harder to believe your eyes and ears on the internet. Artificial intelligence tools can generate convincing images, videos and voices. Chatbots can spit out confident misinformation. And Twitter users for $8 a month can basically impersonate anyone they’d like on the site. The specter of an internet full of fakes has a lot of people worried about an epistemic apocalypse: a total breakdown of our ability to perceive truth and reality. It’s something Joshua Habgood-Coote, a resea...
What fake Drake means for the music industry
May 05, 2023 09:57 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBFirst, there was fake Drake. Now, counterfeit Kanye and bogus Bad Bunnys are all over the internet. It seems that artificial intelligence-generated music has arrived. Some examples are obvious forgeries, like Barack Obama performing “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen.” Others, like the fake Drake song, “Heart on my Sleeve,” that went viral last month are pretty convincing. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Dan Runcie, founder of the media research firm Trapital, about AI’s latest...
E-SUVs may be popular, but are they sustainable?
May 04, 2023 09:51 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBMany Americans have range anxiety when they contemplate buying an electric vehicle. But is the solution bigger car batteries or better charging and transit infrastructure? Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Thea Riofrancos, political science professor at Providence College, about how EV batteries impact the environment and what else can be done to create a no-emissions future.
The systemic barriers to landing a Big Tech internship
May 03, 2023 09:57 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBSummer internship season is right around the corner. While it’s never been easy to get one of the coveted spots at big-name Silicon Valley firms, this year there’s an added wrinkle: The tech industry is reeling from mass layoffs. Many human resources departments and recruiting budgets have been slashed, which could put up even more barriers for candidates from underrepresented groups, said Ruthe Farmer, founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund, which helps low-income students get thro...
Tech companies look to Mexico for new talent
May 02, 2023 09:46 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBMexico is in the middle of a tech boom as U.S. companies look across the border for hires after mass layoffs. Tijuana is right at the center, with a growing market for tech workers and engineers to be hired stateside.
The coming AI chip shortage
May 01, 2023 09:59 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBArtificial intelligence is booming. Tools like ChatGPT are getting more capable at an impressive rate as companies race to plug them into new areas of the economy. But the burgeoning demand for AI computing power faces a big constraint: the graphics processing units, or GPUs, needed to train and deploy these models. These specialized, costly GPUs are almost entirely made by one company — Nvidia — at one manufacturer in Taiwan, according to Chris Miller, a professor of history at Tufts Unive...
How facial-recognition technology can lead to wrongful arrests
April 28, 2023 09:55 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBFacial-recognition software is leading to wrongful arrests, but the secrecy around the use of the technology makes it hard to know just how often it happens. So far, there are at least five known cases in which police use of facial-recognition algorithms have led to mistaken-identity arrests in the United States. All five were Black men. Nate Freed Wessler is part of the team representing one of those men in a case against the Detroit Police Department. He’s also a deputy director of the Ame...
The complications of regulating AI
April 27, 2023 09:59 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBWhen a chatbot spouts misinformation or defames someone, what tools do lawmakers and regulators have to rein it in? Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Elizabeth Renieris of Oxford University’s Institute for AI Ethics. Renieris said our existing legal frameworks are capable of doing the job.
What does an AI chatbot know about you?
April 26, 2023 09:52 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBIt’s the new Googling yourself — querying your name with an artificial intelligence chatbot and seeing what it spits out. Many large language models like ChatGPT and Bard are trained on vast amounts of data from the internet, so they’ve encoded text about individuals, especially public-facing ones. But, as we know, they don’t always stick to the facts, and that’s particularly troubling when it comes to your good name on the internet. That’s why engineer Silver Keskküla founded the website H...
Customer service is being automated. Will bots take over those jobs?
April 25, 2023 09:49 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBBefore ChatGPT took the world by storm, wowing users with its prose-writing prowess, most people knew chatbots as those annoying website pop-ups that offered basic and not always useful customer support. Even before chatbots could pass the Law School Admission Test, customer service was moving toward greater automation, often in an effort to cut costs. Human agents are an expensive and finite resource, causing those long, Muzak-filled waits and limiting service hours. So will the current art...
TMI! The problem with too much data.
April 24, 2023 09:31 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBMaking data-driven decisions has, seemingly, never been easier. We’ve got pulse surveys, performance analytics, reviews, anecdotes on social media — all just a click away. And yet … all these inputs aren’t really helping us make better decisions. That’s according to a new study from the software company Oracle, which surveyed workers and business leaders around the world. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a data scientist and author who partnered with ...
What’s the future of retail shopping? Snap bets on virtual try-on tech.
April 21, 2023 08:40 - 15 minutes - 11.8 MBSnapchat made its name with silly augmented-reality filters, or lenses, as it calls them. In recent years, it’s expanded into shopping, enabling users to try on clothing, jewelry and makeup in the app. The company, now called Snap, has started selling this technology to other businesses. Snap announced this week that it’s pushing AR tools into the real world, bringing AR mirrors to some Men’s Wearhouse and Nike stores in the U.S. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino went to the company’s hea...
AI’s carbon footprint is growing. Is it worth it?
April 20, 2023 08:38 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBBetween mining for rare minerals, cooling data centers, and running computers for millions of hours, the climate impact of artificial intelligence is big and getting bigger. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Sasha Luccioni, the climate lead for the AI company Hugging Face, about the process of training an earlier version of ChatGPT, which emitted roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide as a gas-powered car driving over one million miles.
As chatbots are deployed, AI whisperers will be employed
April 19, 2023 08:23 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MB“Prompt engineering” for artificial intelligence is a new career field that’s rapidly gaining interest. In some cases, salaries are reaching $350,000. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Anton Korinek, economics and AI professor at the University of Virginia, about who will need these workers and how this role is likely to evolve.