Business, Spoken
2,340 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★ - 16 ratingsGet in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics, and society.
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Episodes
Fei-Fei Li Wants AI to Care More About Humans
March 21, 2019 16:31 - 6 minutesFei-Fei Li heard the crackle of a cat’s brain cells a couple of decades ago and has never forgotten it. Researchers had inserted electrodes into the animal’s brain and connected them to a loudspeaker, filling a lab at Princeton with the eerie sound of firing neurons. “They played the symphony of a mammalian visual system,” Li told an audience Monday at Stanford, where she is now a professor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The EU Hits Google With a Third Billion-Dollar Fine. So What?
March 21, 2019 07:10 - 5 minutesEuropean officials Wednesday fined Google €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) for more than a decade of abusive practices in how it brokered online ads for other websites like newspapers, blogs, and travel aggregators. This is the third billion-dollar antitrust penalty levied against Google by the European Commission, which has fined the company more than $9 billion for anticompetitive practices since 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Mosque Shooter Exploited the Power of the Internet
March 20, 2019 16:32 - 6 minutesAfter each new horrific mass shooting, an all-too-familiar cycle often plays out: Reporters (myself included) race to attempt to unpack an alleged shooter’s possible motivations by piecing together clues from their social media accounts and online postings before it all gets scrubbed from the internet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Deeper Education Issue Under the College Bribery Scandal
March 20, 2019 07:11 - 8 minutesThe college admissions bribery scandal has all the components of a made for TV movie, including celebrity cameos, suspense, and unexpected twists and turns. Behind the broken admissions process and the drama, however, a different educational crisis is looming. According to a 2018 Korn Ferry study, by 2030, there could be a global talent shortage of more than 85.2 million people, costing an estimated $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenue. In the U.S. alone, the study forecasts $1. Learn m...
The People Trying to Make Internet Recommendations Less Toxic
March 19, 2019 07:11 - 7 minutesThe internet is an ocean of algorithms trying to tell you what to do. YouTube and Netflix proffer videos they calculate you’ll watch. Facebook and Twitter filter and reorganize posts from your connections, avowedly in your interest—but also in their own. New York entrepreneur Brian Whitman helped create such a system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How Cambridge Analytica Sparked the Great Privacy Awakening
March 18, 2019 16:31 - 9 minutesOn October 27, 2012, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote an email to his then-director of product development. For years, Facebook had allowed third-party apps to access data on their users’ unwitting friends, and Zuckerberg was considering whether giving away all that information was risky. In his email, he suggested it was not: “I’m generally skeptical that there is as much data leak strategic risk as you think,” he wrote at the time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.co...
With Tech on the Defensive, SXSW Takes an Introspective Turn
March 18, 2019 07:10 - 6 minutesThe first five days or so of SXSW in Austin are always dedicated to the “interactive” portion of the festival. The city’s downtown streets swell with lanyard-laden “entrepreneurs” and “founders” wearing that familiar uniform of T-shirts screen-printed with their company’s clever logo, an outfit made professional by throwing a blazer over the ensemble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Facebook’s Head of Product, Chris Cox, Says Goodbye
March 15, 2019 16:31 - 5 minutesLast spring, Chris Cox, the chief product officer of Facebook, was promoted to also oversee Whatsapp, Messenger, and Instagram. It seemed, at the time, almost like succession planning. If Mark Zuckerberg were to ever leave the company, Cox, his longtime confidante, and a representative of the engineering and product side, would be set up to run it. But today Cox has announced that, after 13 years at the company, he’s leaving. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
5G Is Coming for Real, but It Will Cost You
March 14, 2019 16:31 - 5 minutes5G is coming, and with it a massive boost in bandwidth that will feed artificial intelligence applications, enable the long fabled Internet of Things, and deliver more streaming video. Lots of streaming video. But all that extra bandwidth won't be much use if the average consumer can't afford a 5G connection, or if those connections are hobbled by restrictive bandwidth caps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spotify's Apple Complaint Cuts to a Core Antitrust Issue
March 14, 2019 07:10 - 8 minutesA wave of antitrust interest is washing over Europe and much of the United States, and Spotify is riding its crest. The Swedish audio-streaming giant lodged a complaint against Apple with the European Commission on Wednesday, accusing the company of abusing its position as owner of the App Store to stifle competition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Last Place Big Tech Wants to Be Is on the Defense
March 13, 2019 16:31 - 8 minutesSo, it finally happened. A leading American politician has said aloud what many have whispering: it’s time to break up Big Tech. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren just fired the opening salvo and called for the federal government to take action: “Today’s big tech companies have too much power— too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To Compete With Google, OpenAI Seeks Investors–and Profits
March 13, 2019 07:11 - 9 minutesThe Bay Area is famed for nurturing speculative investments like flying cars, floating cities, and the notion that a ride hailing service can turn a profit. A new utopian investment opportunity arrived Monday: Shovel dollars into a San Francisco artificial intelligence lab cofounded by Elon Musk and you’ll receive a share of the profits when (or if) it figures out how to create machines smarter than humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
30 Years On, Reports of the Web's Death Are Exaggerated
March 12, 2019 16:31 - 7 minutesAs soon as you visit a modern website, it starts feeding you reasons to leave. First by begging you to download its app from the app store, then with a dialog box urging you to sign up for a newsletter. Next will come a request to send you alerts, followed by either an onslaught of ads or a plea to turn your ad blocker off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Legal Scholar Tim Wu Says the US Must Enforce Antitrust Laws
March 11, 2019 16:31 - 10 minutesLast week, presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) announced an ambitious plan to break up big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon and block them from selling their own products on their platforms. Warren called out Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp and Google's acquisition of online advertising giant DoubleClick as examples of the deals she'd like to see reversed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
You May Have Forgotten Foursquare, But It Didn’t Forget You
March 11, 2019 07:10 - 8 minutesIt’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m on the eighth floor of a nondescript building in the Flatiron District, sitting across from Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley. He pulls out his phone to show me an unreleased, nameless game that he and his skunkworks-style team Foursquare Labs have been working on. Think “Candyland,” but instead of fantasy locations like Lollipop Woods, the game’s virtual board includes place categories associated with New York City neighborhoods. Learn more about your ad ch...
Huawei Sues the US, Prodding It to Prove Suspicions
March 08, 2019 16:32 - 7 minutesThe world's largest telecommunications-equipment company, China's Huawei, is suing the US government. But the suit isn't just about US law. It's part of Huawei's larger campaign to defend its role as a global provider of telecom gear amid fears that its technology is or could be used by the Chinese government for spying. In essence, Huawei is challenging the US government to prove its suspicions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook's Future and What Scares Him Most
March 07, 2019 16:32 - 17 minutesOn Wednesday afternoon, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, described a sweeping new vision for his platform. “The future of communication,” he wrote, “will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.” The post raised all kinds of questions about Facebook’s business model and strategies, as well as the tradeoffs the company could face. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Facebook's Pivot to Privacy Is Missing Something Crucial
March 07, 2019 07:10 - 8 minutesIf there’s one choice that Facebook has made repeatedly over the past 15 years, it’s been to prioritize growth over privacy. Users were consistently encouraged to make more of their information public than they were comfortable with. The settings to make things public were always a bit easier to use than the ones to make things private. Data was collected that you didn’t have any idea was being collected and shared in ways you had no idea it was being shared. Learn more about your ad choices....
Why Chinese Companies Plug a US Test for Facial Recognition
March 06, 2019 16:31 - 8 minutesLast year, Chinese police arrested a man at a pop concert after he was flagged as a criminal suspect by a facial recognition system installed at the venue. The software that called the cops was developed by Shanghai startup Yitu Tech. It was marketed with a stamp of approval from the US government. Yitu is a top performer on a testing program run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that’s vital to the fast-growing facial recognition industry. Learn more about your ad choices...
Are Men at Google Paid Less Than Women? Not Really
March 06, 2019 07:10 - 6 minutesAt the end of every year, Google conducts a pay equity analysis to determine whether employees of different sexes and races who are doing similar jobs are being paid equally. On Monday, Google published a blog post with selected findings from its 2018 analysis, highlighting that proposed changes for 2019 would have paid male engineers less than female engineers in one lower-level job category, referred to internally as Level 4 engineers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....
YouTube CEO Defends Its Efforts to Reduce Violent Content
March 05, 2019 16:32 - 7 minutesYouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki defended her company’s efforts to keep violent content off the video platform at the sixth annual Lesbians Who Tech Summit Friday in San Francisco. Wojcicki was interviewed by New York Times columnist Kara Swisher, who took the YouTube leader to task for the platform’s failure to keep dangerous content away from kids. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Twitter Will Let Users Hide Replies to Fight Toxic Comments
March 05, 2019 07:11 - 4 minutesLast March, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that, despite the company’s intentions, Twitter wasn’t the best at encouraging productive or meaningful conversations among users. More often, the platform served to further abuse, harassment, and the spread of misinformation, while plunging users deeper into echo chambers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What's the Value of a Facebook Cryptocoin?
March 04, 2019 16:32 - 9 minutesJust before the Civil War, and long before the Federal Reserve, the United States had 8,000 kinds of money. It was a chaotic, confusing time to buy your groceries. Private banks issued notes with the promise of backing in gold and silver, but their actual value was anybody’s guess. Soon other companies---drug stores, coal mines, and of course railroads, the wealthy connectors of their day---jumped into the fray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Critics Are Wary of the FTC’s New Tech Antitrust Task Force
March 04, 2019 07:10 - 5 minutesAs the United States wrestles with what to do about the tremendous power its technology giants have amassed, the Federal Trade Commission is launching a new task force, which will keep tabs on the industry's competitive landscape and assess mergers both past and present. But critics say the creation of the task force is little more than an exercise in virtue signaling for an agency that has lately failed to bring any meaningful action against tech monopolies. Learn more about your ad choices....
It’s Not Just New York—Amazon Nixes a Seattle Expansion, Too
March 01, 2019 16:32 - 4 minutesLast year, Seattle’s city council repealed a tax on big employers less than a month after approving the legislation designed to raise funds to support homeless programs. The quick reversal came after Amazon, which employs around 45,000 people in the city, halted the construction of a new building and threatened to not occupy space it had leased in the planned Rainier Square tower because of the tax. Now, Amazon says it won’t move into the Rainier Square tower after all. Learn more about your ...
Etsy Crafts a Plan for Carbon-Neutral Online Shopping
March 01, 2019 07:10 - 10 minutesTomorrow, all the carbon emissions spewed into the atmosphere from US ecommerce deliveries---some 55,000 metric tons of CO2, by one estimate, from trucks and planes shipping packages across the country---will be neutralized. It’s all thanks to Etsy, the global online market for indie makers, which is picking up the tab on high-quality carbon offsets for itself as well as its competitors on Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Parents, Here’s How to Make YouTube Kids Safer
February 28, 2019 16:32 - 8 minutesOn Friday, a pediatrician and parenting blogger named Free N. Hess published a post about a series of disturbing videos she found on YouTube Kids, a standalone app that is supposed to make it “safer and simpler” for those under 13 to browse videos online. A number of news outlets quickly picked up on the clips Hess discovered, which included one where Minecraft–inspired characters carry out a school shooting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler Says the Internet Needs Regulation
February 27, 2019 16:31 - 12 minutesIt was hard not to fear the worst when President Barack Obama appointed Tom Wheeler as chair of the Federal Communications Commission in 2013. Wheeler was the CEO of the wireless industry group CTIA from 1992 to 2004, and the CEO of the National Cable Television Association from 1979 to 1984. As the agency drafted its net neutrality rules, comedian John Oliver famously compared putting Wheeler in charge of the FCC to hiring a dingo to babysit your kids. But Wheeler wasn't a dingo. Learn more ...
Thumbtack Tries Bridging the Benefits Gap for Gig Workers
February 27, 2019 07:10 - 8 minutesEven before the online gig economy existed, a simple truth defined life in the American workforce: full-time employees get a safety net—the benefits, the labor protections, the security—and everyone else goes without. Tech companies have revolutionized how people work in countless ways, but this benefits gap persists, especially among low-income workers. The question now is whether these platforms can also be part of the solution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...
Tariffs, BAT, and Social Credit: A US-China Debate
February 26, 2019 16:31 - 3 minutesOver the past few years, China's tech ascension has become one of the hottest topics du jour. Just as there are America's FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google), a trio of Chinese companies have become their own tech acronym: BAT's Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. And China has clear aims to surpass the United States as the new techonomic superpower, from President Xi Jinping’s "Made in China 2025" initiative to his plans for China to lead AI globally by 2030. Learn more a...
Ajit Pai Claims His FCC Improved Broadband Access
February 26, 2019 07:10 - 9 minutesAjit Pai says the Federal Communications Commission's annual broadband assessment will show that his deregulatory policies have substantially improved access in the United States. The annual report will also conclude that broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely basis. The FCC hasn't released the full Broadband Deployment Report yet and won't do so until the commission votes on whether to approve the draft version sometime in the next few weeks. Learn more about...
This Telecom Upstart’s 5G Tech Gets a Boost From Facebook
February 25, 2019 16:31 - 5 minutesAT&T and Verizon are slowly trickling out the next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G, in parts of a few cities. But even as the major carriers prepare larger 5G launches, San Francisco based startup Common Networks is hoping that it can compete with bigger telecom companies by combining 5G with technology open sourced by Facebook. Common Networks is using 5G to offer home, as opposed to mobile, broadband, essentially competing with internet providers such as AT&T and Comcast. Learn...
A ‘Sexist’ Search Bug Says More About Us Than Facebook
February 25, 2019 07:11 - 8 minutesJust before Valentine’s Day last week, Belgian security researcher Inti De Ceukelaire noticed something strange on Facebook. He found the social network’s search function treated pictures of men and women in dramatically different ways. Searching for “photos of my female friends” returned a hodgepodge of images, whereas a similar search for “photos of my male friends” yielded no results. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Real Reason Tech Struggles With Algorithmic Bias
February 22, 2019 17:51 - 3 minutesAre machines racist? Are algorithms and artificial intelligence inherently prejudiced? Do Facebook, Google, and Twitter have political biases? Those answers are complicated. But if the question is whether the tech industry doing enough to address these biases, the straightforward response is no. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Yaël Eisenstat is a former CIA officer, National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden, and CSR leader at ExxonMobil. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/...
Trump Shouldn't Plan to Tweet From a 6G Phone Anytime Soon
February 22, 2019 16:31 - 6 minutesIt's been a big week for 5G, the next generation of wireless networks. Samsung announced its first 5G capable phone, the S10, on Wednesday. Qualcomm announced a new 5G modem on Tuesday. But President Trump is aiming higher. "I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible," Trump wrote in a tweet urging carriers to pick up their pace. "It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard." https://twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...
India Is Cracking Down on Ecommerce and Free Speech
February 22, 2019 07:10 - 6 minutesWhen it comes to cracking down on tech giants, India is on a roll. The country was the first to reject Facebook’s contentious plan to offer free internet access to parts of the developing world in 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
5G? 5 Bars? What the Signal Icons on Your Phone Actually Mean
February 21, 2019 16:31 - 10 minutesSome AT&T customers noticed a strange phenomenon earlier this year. The upper left corner of their smartphones began displaying “5GE,” ostensibly indicating their phones were using 5G technology. And while Samsung announced Wednesday that it will soon release a 5G-compatible phone, actual 5G networks in the US are still in their nascent stages. AT&T is engaging in a marketing ploy—one it has used in the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
VCs Are Hungry for Fast-Casual ‘Food Platforms’
February 20, 2019 16:32 - 3 minutesAfter raising $200 million in a Series H funding round last November, the culty salad chain Sweetgreen became the first-ever restaurant unicorn. Cold-pressed upstart Joe & the Juice is reportedly plotting a $1.5 billion IPO later this year. Now kale-scarfing, ginger-quaffing consumers have VCs salivating over salad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Pentagon Needs to Woo AI Experts Away From Big Tech
February 20, 2019 07:11 - 11 minutesThis week, President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on artificial intelligence and the Pentagon declassified part of its AI strategy. Neither was a first attempt at a national AI strategy. In 2016, the Obama administration published a comprehensive plan on the future of AI, which never had time to gain the momentum it needed in government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Inside the Alexa-Friendly World of Wikidata
February 19, 2019 16:31 - 8 minutesHumans pricked by info-hunger pangs used to hunt and peck for scraps of trivia on the savanna of the internet. Now we sit in screen-glow-flooded caves and grunt, “Alexa!” Virtual assistants do the dirty work for us. Problem is, computers can’t really speak the language. Many of our densest, most reliable troves of knowledge, from Wikipedia to (ahem) the pages of WIRED, are encoded in an ancient technology largely opaque to machines—prose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...
The Soothing Promise of Our Own Artisanal Internet
February 19, 2019 07:11 - 11 minutesTo put our toxic relationship with Big Tech into perspective, critics have compared social media to a lot of bad things. Tobacco. Crystal meth. Pollution. Cars before seat belts. Chemicals before Superfund sites. But the most enduring metaphor is junk food: convenient but empty; engineered to be addictive; makes humans unhealthy and corporations rich. At first, consumers were told to change their diet and #DeleteFacebook to avoid the side effects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...
This Company Takes the Grunt Work Out of Using the Cloud
February 18, 2019 16:33 - 7 minutesLike most 12-year-old boys, Mitchell Hashimoto played a lot of videogames. But he never liked the repetitive parts of games like Neopets, where players feed and care for virtual animals. "I used a lot of bot software that other people wrote to play the more mundane parts for me, so I could do the fun stuff," he says. Those bots were often blocked by gamemakers, so Hashimoto taught himself to program and created his own bot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What Trump’s Executive Order on AI Is Missing
February 18, 2019 07:11 - 7 minutesPresident Trump signed an executive order on February 11 meant to shore up our competitive position in the international race for AI supremacy, but it is short on concrete steps. As the CEO of an artificial intelligence research institute, I am calling on him to include a special visa program for AI students and experts to help us win this race for the sake of both economic vitality and national security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jeff Bezos Aside, Sextortion Is Way Underreported
February 15, 2019 16:31 - 9 minutesWhen Jeff Bezos went public with his accusations of blackmail against the National Enquirer on Thursday, he was hailed by many online for his courage. In a post on Medium, the Amazon CEO alleged that Enquirer representatives threatened to publish intimate photos of him unless he stopped an investigation into the tabloid’s reporting on him. Bezos refused. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The AI Text Generator That's Too Dangerous to Make Public
February 15, 2019 07:10 - 9 minutesIn 2015, car-and-rocket man Elon Musk joined with influential startup backer Sam Altman to put artificial intelligence on a new, more open course. They cofounded a research institute called OpenAI to make new AI discoveries and give them away for the common good. Now, the institute’s researchers are sufficiently worried by something they built that they won’t release it to the public. The AI system that gave its creators pause was designed to learn the patterns of language. Learn more about y...
The Green New Deal Is Just the Vague, Audacious Goal We Need
February 14, 2019 07:10 - 8 minutesThe unveiling of a Green New Deal last week provoked a mix of enthusiasm and derision. For each voice embracing the radical vision to decarbonize the American economy within a decade, revamp capitalism, and attend to a panoply of social ills, there was another voice decrying the plan as economically unrealistic, technologically impossible, and politically untenable. WIRED Opinion About Zachary Karabell is a WIRED contributor and president of River Twice Research. Learn more about your ad choi...
The Pentagon Doubles Down on AI–and Wants Help from Big Tech
February 13, 2019 16:31 - 11 minutesIn the 1960s, the Department of Defense began shoveling money towards a small group of researchers with a then-fringe idea: making machines intelligent. Military money played a central role in establishing a new science—artificial intelligence. Sixty years later, the Pentagon believes AI has matured enough to become a central plank of America’s national security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Trump’s Plan to Keep America First in AI
February 12, 2019 16:31 - 6 minutesThe US leads the world in artificial intelligence technology. Decades of federal research funding, industrial and academic research, and streams of foreign talent have put America at the forefront of the current AI boom. Yet as AI aspirations have sprouted around the globe, the US government has lacked a high-level strategy to guide American investment and prepare for the technology’s effects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Does Jeff Bezos Have a Legal Case Against The National Enquirer?
February 12, 2019 07:10 - 7 minutesJeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, accused The National Enquirer Thursday of engaging in “extortion and blackmail” by threatening to publish intimate images of the billionaire unless he agreed to drop his investigation into how the tabloid obtained his private communications. In an extraordinary Medium post, Bezos reproduced emails that appeared to show representatives of the Enquirer demanding he publicly state that its coverage of him isn’t “influenced by political forces. Learn more about your ad ...
How WIRED Covered Facebook These Past 15 Years
February 11, 2019 16:31 - 19 minutesWhen WIRED introduced Facebook to its online readers in 2004, four months after Mark Zuckerberg launched the site with a few friends out of his Harvard dorm room, the first order of business was explaining the poke. “On Thefacebook, poking is a way of saying ‘hi’ to would-be contacts, a method to strike up a conversation without adding the person as a friend,” went the post. “And there's quite a bit of poking going on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices