Marketplace Tech

China's labor market is known for being intense, especially in the tech sector. For years high profile tech workers have embraced the “996” schedule – that's 9am to 9pm six days a week.And recently, Silicon Valley startups have reportedly been leaning in to the “996” grind themselves. So now China is taking it up a notch.

Implementing AI in government agencies — where the public goes for things like food stamps and unemployment or disability benefits — could come with tradeoffs, according to a recent report by the Roosevelt Institute. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino sat down with Samantha Shorey, who authored that report on AI and public administration.

In recent years, the Transportation Security Administration has been piloting facial recognition at security checkpoints. But opting out of getting scanned can be complicated, according to a recent report from the non-profit Algorithmic Justice League. Joy Buolamwini is president of the organization and co-authored that report.

U.S.-based data centers are expanding at a fast pace, thanks largely to the boom in generative artificial intelligence software and cloud computing. But they're also reportedly causing environmental issues and other problems for their neighbors. The BBC's Michelle Fleury reports from Georgia on how the boom in data centers is raising environmental and sustainability concerns from the people who live near them.

OpenAI's new open-weight models are designed to run on a local computer and can be fine tuned by users. A Tech Transparency Project report shows Google dropped more than 50 DEI-related groups from its funding list. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the company's investment to build up its supply chain in the domestically. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, to discuss all of this and more.

Section 1033 of the Dodd Frank Act was finalized at the end of the Biden administration and would require banks to give consumers free access and control of their personal banking data.The rule had met legal pushback from the bank industry and the CFPB under the Trump administration planned to scrap it. But last week, the bureau said it will instead rewrite Section 1033.Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino discusses the news with Rohit Chopra, who served as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when the rule was finalized in 2024.

Marketplace's Alice Wilder has been waiting for a love letter from her boyfriend to arrive at her home since March. But it's not just her — years of financial troubles and political turmoil mean that those still sending letters are experiencing longer delivery times. Today, Wilder explores how email has eaten into USPS' letter traffic since 2008 and whether a romantic email could ever replace the intimacy of a handwritten letter.

A new national study from groups including Gallup and the non-profit Jobs for the Future found that relatively few employees have any influence over how new technology is adopted in the workplace. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Molly Blankenship, director of strategy and impact at Jobs for the Future, about what that means for employers and employees as technology like generative AI becomes more common in the office.

As autonomous vehicles become more common, cities are grappling with how to keep robotaxis from interfering with emergency response efforts. Julia Pickar reports on how Seattle is trying to fix this problem.

The Tea app is a place for women to share red or green flags about men, but it recently suffered a major data breach. Plus, why some members of Congress are protesting a deal with China to allow Nvidia to sell its H20 chips to the country. And YouTube is rolling out new age estimation technology to protect younger users. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to discuss all this.

Simon Johnson, Nobel-winning economist, joined Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino to explain his current thinking about AI and inequality. He says the tech could bring productivity gains, but they might not benefit everyone.

Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino speaks to Sayash Kapoor, a PhD candidate at Princeton and co-author of “AI Snake Oil." He says small tweaks to AI chatbots can often have big, unpredictable effects.

In Canada, road freight is part of the backbone of the economy — historically moving about four-fifths of all goods across the country, with demand growing. But trucking is changing, with digital freight-matching platforms reshaping how drivers find work and how goods get delivered. The BBC's Sam Gruet reports.

Temperatures this summer have been hotter than usual, a trend we have come to expect with climate change as records are continually surpassed. While many of us can ride out extreme heat in the comfort of air conditioned interior spaces, outdoor workers don't have that option and must contend with the risks of serious injury which can be acute and long lasting. A fast growing market for wearable cooling products, both in high tech and low tech varieties, is attempting to meet the challenge. Among those products is the CülCan, made by the Tennessee based small business Black Ice.  “If you can pull heat away from your hand, it'll cool your whole body down. And so that's what we've done with the CülCan. It's basically a five inch cylinder that contains our special coolant,” said Mike Beavers, co-founder of Black Ice. A key selling point of the product, according to Beavers, is that the coolant inside, which is a chemical composition Beavers designed, doesn't get as cold as ice, so it is easier to use on a person's skin. “You put it in ice water or a freezer… and then you just hold it in the palm of your hand,” he said. “That is now our most popular product. We sell tons of those things.”Beavers said his business has been growing by about 30 percent a year over the last three years, an acceleration from its previous pace. The company has been around for about 20 years. Across the Atlantic, the Swiss company GreenTeg is also reporting growing demand for its continuous body temperature monitors, which are worn with a patch or a strap. The monitors are often employed by athletes who have to perform outdoors, said CEO and founder Wulf Glatz. “So this device can communicate then with your smartphone,” he said, “and it will estimate your core temperature and broadcast that value to that device.”Being able to monitor core temperature can help with prevention. Unlike a simple thermometer which, if put against the skin, would only tell you the temperature on your skin, GreenTeg claims its monitors can measure the temperature inside the body. It is that core temperature that is key to whether someone is developing heat-related illness. Glatz says there's growing interest in his company's technology. They've been approached by organizations representing firefighters, the military, miners and airfield workers. “If there's an airplane landing, you need to unload the baggage. You can't wait for three hours for it to get cooler, but what you can do is to measure the individuals and really have them safe,” he said, “maybe you need to exchange teams in higher frequency, maybe you need to equip them with cooling gear.”Brett Perkison, an environmental and occupational medicine specialist at UTHealth Houston, tested one of GreenTeg's monitors in combination with cooling vests. In a small study, he found the combination approach helpful in limiting heat related illnesses among outdoor laborers. The problem with the personal cooling industry is that not all of the gadgets being sold to the public are proven to work. For example, ones that use fans to cool the body, such as ventilated helmets, are unlikely to do much in humid environments, said Fabiano Amorim of the University of New Mexico, who has studied heat stress on outdoor workers in Brazil and the U.S. “[Helmets with fans] can increase the comfort or let's say your perception to heat, but it's not reducing your temperature,” he said. Not reducing core body temperature on hot days can have serious consequences. The number of heat-related emergency room visits in the summer of 2023 totaled 120,000, according to the CDC. Heat stress can cause someone to get lightheaded and fatigued. More serious symptoms include seizures. Repeat exposure to heat stress  can permanently damage people's kidneys, Amorim said. The condition can be fatal. “We have seen people 40, 50 years old, [who are] dying from chronic kidney disease. And, they don't have any factor that's related to the traditional chronic kidney disease. That's hypertension, obesity and diabetes. And, the only history these people have is working under hot environments,” Amorim said. Many people do not develop serious symptoms until it's too late. That means employers must be proactive in employing cooling gadgets and strategies such as rest breaks in shaded areas, access to cool water, and access to bathrooms so workers feel confident in drinking plenty of liquids. But while more tools to avoid heat illness are coming to market, companies are not racing to adopt them. Many do not have adequate heat stress prevention programs at all. “There needs to be an acceptance by the business community, the public community, about the ramifications of heat stress. So I would hope that if we continue, instead of having 20% of businesses having an adequate heat stress prevention program, in 10 years, we'll have 80%,” Perkison said. Adopting cooling gadgets as part of prevention programs faces hurdles. Aside from concerns over efficacy, there is also the problem of measurement. Perkison said it is hard to tell when someone is struggling with heat before symptoms start. “There's not a lab value that we can get to identify when somebody has heat stress,” he said, which means that it is hard for companies to keep track of workers' health and know when to take action, unless they use a digital monitor like the one provided by GreenTeg. Mike Beavers, the Tennessee-based inventor of the CülCan, said he has been surprised by the diversity of his client base, including the many people with multiple sclerosis who are using it. The disease of the central nervous system causes symptoms such as numbness and trouble walking which, for some, can worsen in heat. “We had one guy write us a full one page letter handwritten that basically he was bragging about the fact that he could actually go out and cut his yard now,” Beavers said. 

NASA employees protest budget cuts, Google reportedly eyes licensing deals with 20 national news organizations, and President Donald Trump signed three executive orders on AI this week. Marketplace's Kimberly Adams is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at venture firm Collab Capital, to break down these stories.

This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.High-flying and high-tech, the very latest in drone technology took to the skies over an airfield near the Danish city of Odense.At the International Drone Show, 50 exhibitors showed off their wares. And because more money is flowing into military budgets, the emphasis was on defense.Danish company Quadsat makes drones with satellite reading software. Besides civilian uses, the devices can also identify enemy radar."Over the years, we have seen an increasing interest from the defense side, no doubt about that, and that's also where we have a lot of work currently being carried out," said Klaus Aude, Quadsat's chief commercial officer.Leaders of the NATO military alliance have agreed to ramp up defense spending to 5% of their countries' economic output by 2035, following months of pressure from President Donald Trump.Nordic countries have already committed to bigger budgets. Among them, NATO's newest members Finland and Sweden, as well as long time members Norway and Denmark.As Europe races to re-arm, drones are a sought-after technology. One estimate suggests the global market for defense drones is already worth over $24 billion, and could double by 2032."The Nordics have always been very strong in drone adoption, drone development," said Kay Wackwitz, chief executive of Drone Industry Insights."You can definitely see that those countries that have borders with Russia are really stocking up on those technologies. The commercial market is now struggling for its fourth year in a row with declining venture capital,” added Wackwitz. “And on the other side, we see a huge demand on the military end of things, which means a lot of companies are refocusing from the commercial space to the military space."In June, low-cost Ukrainian drones carried out an audacious mission, destroying dozens of prized Russian fighter jets in a conflict that's reshaped modern warfare.North of Copenhagen in a hangar, Danish firm Nordic Wing makes drones used for battlefield surveillance and combat. Its customers are NATO countries, but they are largely destined for Ukraine, where “there was a huge need and a calling to have these systems helping on the front lines,” said Jonas Münster, CEO of Nordic Wing. “And therefore, the production went into overdrive. Now we have a European Union that is looking into what we've learned in Ukraine and realizing that we don't have a drone capability in Europe."With a 2,000-square-kilometer flying zone, the drone port in Odense has grown into a hub for tech startups. Next year, military personnel will also be training there at a new $110 million army facility."Some militaries have actually made a shift from saying ‘every soldier is a rifleman,' to ‘everyone is going to be a drone operator at some level,'” said Major Rasmus Ros, who's part of Denmark's Defense Command. “We're going to have drone operators in the whole joint military of Denmark. They can come here, get their basic training, share ideas and technology development, and then go back to their units and further develop that."But not everyone is so positive about this. Outside the trade fair, protestors chanted "drones for peace, not war." New geopolitical realities are reshaping this fast-paced industry. And as this technology advances, ethical and regulatory concerns over the use of AI to pilot drones are also being raised.

ProPublica has recently discovered blueprints for an automated computer program that could potentially share millions of IRS taxpayer records with ICE, as the Trump administration continues to step up deportations and criminal investigations. When Marketplace asked for comment about the system uncovered by ProPublica, a senior DHS official cited a recent memorandum of understanding that allowed for the sharing of specific taxpayer info with appropriate safeguards and said descriptions of this system as "surveillance" were "absurd."Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with William Turton, one of the reporters on the ProPublica investigation, about how exactly this program would work.

You might have heard Meta has been on a bit of a hiring spree recently as it tries to build out its new AI Superintelligence team. The company has reportedly been offering hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to attract leading AI researchers from rivals like OpenAI, Google and Apple.And it's not just Meta doing the poaching. Tech companies big and small are jumping into the AI Wars. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, a reporter at The Information, about the AI talent wars happening behind the scenes of Silicon Valley.More on this“Meta hires two Apple AI researchers for Superintelligence push, Bloomberg News reports” - from Reuters“Anthropic Revenue Hits $4 Billion Annual Pace as Competition With Cursor Intensifies” - from The Information

With the passage of President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, numerous Biden-era clean energy incentives will begin to phase out. Many of those incentives were aimed at onshoring energy and battery manufacturing. Energy demand is only expected to rise as more data centers are built to service AI and electric and autonomous vehicles become more widespread. And storage for that energy has to come from somewhere. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Jeremy Michalek, a professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, about the impacts of the Big Beautiful Bill clean energy rollbacks. 

This week on Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, leaders of tech, energy and private equity promised to invest more than $90 billion to build an AI hub Pennsylvania. Plus, the Trump Administration says chipmaker Nvidia can sell its semiconductors to China again, following a brief ban. But first, Crypto Week wraps up on Capitol Hill. Congress advanced a trio of cryptocurrency bills that could pave the way for more adoption and regulation of digital currencies like bitcoin.Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at the Information, about the details of those three bills.

Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Joseph Cox, a reporter at the tech news site 404 Media, about his recent reporting on how ICE is uses ISO ClaimSearch, among other databases, to find deportation targets.

Know how some companies intentionally make it hard for customers to fix their own gadgets? In the armed forces, as military contractors consolidate and equipment becomes increasingly software-driven, it's become a problem. Now, some Pentagon leaders are talking about adding right to repair provisions into procurement contracts. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with now-retired Master Sergeant Wesley Reid, who's spoken out in favor of the military's right to repair, informed by his experiences at an Afghanistan army field hospital in the late 2000s.

Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Adam Aleksic, author of the new book “Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language." He's a trained linguist and also an influencer who goes by the handle "Etymology Nerd" online. True to his name, he told us what he means when he uses the term “algospeak.”

Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Rebecca Lester, a professor of accounting at Stanford, about a tax provision within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that could further tech R&D and innovation.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino leaves the social media giant on the heels of antisemitic posts from AI chatbot Grok. SCOTUS rejects a challenge to a Texas law for age verification online. President Trump this week said he'll impose a 50% tariff on copper. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to discuss all this.

For years, AI crawlers have scraped data and content from the internet for free. But last week, Cloudflare attempted to change that. With an update to its web services, the tech company keeps AI crawlers out by default. The hope? To create a new economic model that makes AI companies finally pay for the content they collect.In this episode, Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Cloudflare co-founder and CEO, Matthew Prince, about his vision for a fairer internet.

The National Weather Service lost some 600 positions early in the second Trump administration, through early retirements and layoffs. Now the agency says it's working to fill some “mission-critical” roles. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has also proposed cutting the greater NOAA budget by more than 25% next year.A rising chorus of meteorologists and climate experts warn that efforts to shrink the federal workforce and downplay global warming could compromise accurate weather forecasts and climate monitoring.

As technology has advanced, the ways countries fight wars has changed drastically. Now, AI companies are hoping technology can also play peacekeeper and prevent the next global conflict.Anadyr Horizon, one of the AI startups, developing what many are calling “peace tech,” is doing so through simulating future conflicts and the world leaders they may involve.

More than half of all Americans have used artificial intelligence tools recently, according to a study published by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. And one in five people use it daily. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Amy Wu Martin, a partner at Menlo Ventures, to learn how they're using it in their day-to-day lives.

On this week's “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” Marketplace's Nova Safo and Paresh Dave, senior writer at WIRED, discuss Amazon releasing its 1 millionth robot at one of its warehouses. Plus, lawmakers contended with provisions dealing with artificial intelligence and renewable energy in that big tax and spending bill, recently passed by Congress, that consumed Washington this week.

In today's episode, Marketplace's Nova Safo speaks with Sharon Lurye, a data reporter at the Associated Press, about her recent investigation into “ghost students” — scammers who use AI to pretend to be college students in order to steal financial aid and loan money.

What once was taboo has now gone mainstream. As television and print audiences have dwindled over recent years, social media is now the No. 1 place for Americans to get their news updates.Detailed in the report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, Americans across the political spectrum are using social media for news consumptions over traditional avenues. However, conservative influencers have seen the largest audiences and most engagement.Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Nic Newman, a co-author of the report, to talk about the state of news consumption in the U.S.More on this“Overview and key findings of the 2025 Digital News Report” — from the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford

An investigation from Tomas Apodaca, at CalMatters and The Markup, found several states were accidentally sharing private health information with tech companies. The tech companies receiving the information never even wanted it. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Apodaca to learn more about the accidental leak.

Haley Hinkle, policy counsel at the advocacy group Fairplay, recently formulated a case brought to the FTC, saying there are powers afforded to the Commission to impose new children's safety regulations on internet companies. She specifically points to Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”

On this week's Bytes: Week in Review: Apple irked customers with movie ads, the Mideast conflict reminded us of the lack of security in smart surveillance cameras, and a federal judge handed down a landmark ruling on AI's use of copyrighted works, citing a legal doctrine known as fair use.

Demand for data centers continues to grow everywhere, but their environmental impacts are causing some to consider a different option: build them in space, where there's lots of room, solar power and a cold environment. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Evan Robinson-Johnson, business reporter at The Information, to learn more.

Over the last several days, you may have seen the latest examples of a growing phenomenon: satellite images of a conflict zone. This time, they were of Iranian nuclear sites, before and after American bombs struck. Images like these come from commercial satellite companies, a change from our past reliance on government-provided photographs. The shift toward commercial satellites gained steam amid Russia's war in Ukraine, according to Mariel Borowitz, an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who specializes in space policy and the satellite industry.

Iran's government knocked out internet and mobile networks after Israel began bombing the country. That's left the population with little to no access to critical information. One person who watched this played out is Ahmad Ahmadian, executive director at Holistic Resilience, an organization that helps Iranians circumvent government censorship. He says Iran's government often restricts internet during critical times.

In California, the state Senate has voted in favor of a so-called AI Bill of Rights, which would establish new guardrails around automated decision systems. To learn more about them, Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Kate Brennan, associate director of the think tank AI Now Institute.

OpenAI and Microsoft are reportedly caught up in protracted behind-the-scenes negotiations that are in danger of boiling over into public conflict. Prosecutors say the man accused of assassinating a Minnesota Democratic lawmaker used online data brokers to help target his victims. And, the Trump Organization unveiled a new venture this week: a mobile service and a smartphone. Marketplace's Nova Safo is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas at The Information, who explains why.

Despite having free primary schools, children in Malawi are lagging behind. According to UNESCO, almost 90% of them cant read a simple sentence at the age of 10, due in part to a shortage of teachers and basic resources. But the government has gone for a high-tech solution — digital tablets.

Protests in Southern California and around the country over raids targeting undocumented immigrants played out differently on social media depending on the person or the platform. They're peaceful - look at the carnival atmosphere. They're violent - Los Angeles is in flames. These competing narratives underline the hyper-siloed nature of online discourse and the power of misinformation. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Renee DiResta, Research Professor at Georgetown University about how protest discourse has been playing out online.