Marketplace Tech

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.

Data analytics company Palantir has many contracts with federal government, just as the Trump administration is reportedly trying to construct a centralized database combining information from various agencies. That's brought Palantir renewed scrutiny. Joseph Cox has been following all of this at the tech news site 404 Media.

On today's episode of Marketplace Tech, Nova Safo speaks with Ari Redbord, global head of policy with the blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, about the recent wave of cryptocurrency “wrench attacks” and why more bad actors are going after high-profile crypto investors with threats of physical violence.

Today on “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” we're looking at Apple's latest software and operating system updates. Also, there's a tentative labor deal between video game actors and studios. And we'll remember legendary Apple software engineer Bill Atkinson, who died at the age of 74. We begin with Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference which came and went this week with some mixed reactions. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, Columnist for The Information, to get her take on this year's WWDC. Tech Bytes for June 13More on everything we talked about“Apple fails to clear a low bar on AI” - from The Wall Street Journal“Apple underwhelms at WWDC with incremental AI changes, new software name and ‘liquid glass' design” - from The Associated Press”Video game performers on strike for almost a year over AI issues reach a tentative deal” - from The Associated Press“Videogame voice actors strike 'suspended' following agreement with game companies: 'All SAG-AFTRA members are instructed to return to work'” - from PC Gamer“Bill Atkinson, Macintosh Pioneer and Inventor of Hypercard, Dies at 74” - from WIRED“Bill Atkinson, who made computers easier to use, is dead at 74” - from The New York Times

Building work has started in the Finnish capital Helsinki on what's expected to become the biggest startup campus in Europe. Finland's government says it wants the small Nordic nation to offer the best startup ecosystem in Europe. The BBC's Maddy Savage has this story.

There's a trial run taking place over a type of digital wallet for data. Consumers are in control, and they can sell their data to the highest bidder. This trial run is taking place in Brazil, the first country to try something like this on a national scale. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Sao Paolo-based journalist Gabriel Daros. He's been covering the story for the news site Rest of World.

The International Energy Agency projects the global market value of critical minerals could reach almost $800 billion by 2040. That's because we must have them for the electrified future. And right now, China is a dominant supplier.The Trump administration wants to find other sources, and it's looking to U.S. and international waters to mine minerals on the ocean floor. Marketplace contributor Daniel Ackerman has been reporting on the deep-sea mining companies that are working to figure out how to harvest in unforgiving terrain.

There's a lawsuit right now that's testing the question of whether AI chatbots are protected by the First Amendment. And before we get into it, a warning that our story today includes discussion of suicide. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with Jane Bambauer, law professor at the University of Florida, who's been following this case.

Yoshua Bengio, one of the so-called godfathers of AI, wants it to be less human. Plus, a federal judge temporarily blocked a law in Florida that would ban kids under 14 from getting social media accounts.But first, Meta announced an energy deal with one of the country's biggest operators of nuclear reactors. Marketplace's Nova Safo is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at the venture capital firm Collab Capital, to break down these tech stories from the week.

We've been looking at how technology is changing agriculture. Last month, we visited Central California where there's new investment in everything from electric tractors and leaf sensors to upskilling farmworkers.Today, Marketplace's Kimberly Adams visits our neighbor to the north. Specifically, Canada's first fully-automated greenhouse. It's cost millions to set up, and it's just in time for a trade war.

AI-generated deepfakes are everywhere on social media. Now, you can take a test developed by Northwestern University to see how well you spot them. Marketplace's Nova Safo took the test, sifting through a bunch of real and fake images. He got five out of six right, which is the average in a study Northwestern conducted. Lead researcher Matt Groh also helped develop a litmus test, a series of things to look for to spot deepfakes.

On this episode of “Marketplace Tech,” host Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Christopher Mims, a tech journalist at The Wall Street Journal, about the recent evolution of brain computer interfaces — technology that has enabled people with paralysis to move prosthetic limbs or type out communication using computer implants in their brains — and the neurotech startups trying to bring their implants to a larger market by making them less invasive.

Facial recognition systems use artificial intelligence to analyze patterns in faces, and they've come under increasing scrutiny, particularly in policing. There have been multiple instances of false positives leading to the arrest and detainment of innocent people. There's no federal regulation of this technology, but at least a dozen states have laws that limit its use. So, some law enforcement authorities have turned to a new system called Track, made by a company called Veritone. It doesn't analyze faces, but looks to the rest of the body for clues — things like clothing, body type or hair — according to recent reporting by James O'Donnell for MIT Technology Review.

There's a provision tucked into the Big Beautiful Bill, among the tax cuts and Medicaid cuts, that would bar states from passing laws to regulate artificial intelligence for a decade. Plus, Meta is reshuffling its AI team again in an apparent attempt to catch up to the competition. But first, this week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a law requiring age verification for Apple and Google app stores. It also requires parental consent for app downloads and in-app purchases by minors. But it raises some legal questions. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to discuss all this.

The New York City Administration for Children's Services, or ACS, has been using predictive artificial intelligence to flag some families for greater scrutiny, according to a recent investigation by The Markup. Colin Lecher reported the story and tells Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino, like all AI systems, it can encode historical biases.

In late April, details came to light about a covert experiment conducted by researchers from the University of Zurich on unsuspecting Reddit users on the debate forum known as r/changemyview. They used AI chatbots posing as real humans on the forum to test their powers of persuasion and invented backstories like a rape survivor or a Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter. What they didn't have was consent. The experiment violated Reddit Terms of Service, forum rules and, critics say, academic research standards. The researchers who notified Reddit of the experiment after the fact have since apologized and said they won't publish the results. Reddit says it's increasing efforts to verify users are human. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Mohammad Hosseini, a professor at Northwestern University's medical school, about the potential harms that could come from a study like this one.

Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Meta and Google are using stricter performance reviews to bring up productivity and weed out low performing workers. It's a noticeable pivot away from the perks that defined Silicon Valley work culture a decade ago. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Alistair Barr, author of the Business Insider Tech Memo Newsletter, about their recent coverage of this latest shift.

Digital banking is often seen as a smoother, less costly way to deliver financial services. But where there's tech, there are sometimes outages. Bank customers in the U.K. and other countries have seen an increasing number of banking interruptions, often with costly impacts.

On this week's episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week In Review, President Donald Trump signed the "Take It Down" Act, which requires internet publishers to take down intimate images like revenge porn or deepfakes within 48 hours of a complaint. Google unveiled a suite of new AI products, upgrades and projects at its annual I/O developers conference. And the game Fortnite finally returns to the Apple App Store after a long legal drama. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at WIRED, to discuss all these topics and more.

This week, we hit the road to check out California's Central Valley, where the future of agricultural innovation is taking shape. We visited a farm that's piloting next-gen tools and a university research center that's helping develop that tech. Today, we're at an AgTEC Workforce graduation, a community college program in this region that helps upskill farm workers.

This week, we're heading to California's Central Valley to see how technology is transforming this agricultural region. And we're going straight to the innovation source: the University of California, Merced, where academics there are guiding students to research agtech innovations to potentially develop them for commercialization.

California is known for being home to Hollywood and Silicon Valley. But the Golden State also has millions of acres of farmland, and we're exploring how technology is changing that landscape in a series this week about “Agtech Valley.”We visited HMC Farms with its farm manager Drew Ketelsen, who took us to an orchard of Lady Erin yellow peach trees trained to grow in narrow upright pillars rather than the usual rounded shape.

Internet culture writer Amanda Hess shares how her first pregnancy magnified her relationship with technology.

President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East has prompted a flurry of AI deals worth billions. We'll get into the details on today's “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”Stateside, the Trump administration has rolled back a Biden-era “AI Diffusion” rule. Companies involved in the semiconductor supply chain were critical of the rule, though it's still not entirely clear how Trump plans to revamp the regulation.Plus, what some might call the most obvious rebrand: Warner Bros brings back the "HBO" to its Max streaming platform.Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, to discuss all of this and more.

President Donald Trump talks a lot about wanting to build more stuff here in the U.S. But the future of manufacturing might not even be on earth, but in orbit.It might sound kind of out there — or way out there — but space manufacturing is already happening on a small scale. There's a mini boom of companies looking to do more of it, according to recent reporting in Wired by journalist Jonathan O'Callaghan. He says space has some unique qualities that make it attractive for manufacturing.

The excitement around AI has gotten a bit frothy. Those two magic letters are everywhere, promising everything. Authors Emily Bender and Alex Hanna want us all to take a beat and a more critical look, per their new book "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want."Bender is a linguist at the University of Washington who helped popularize the term "stochastic parrots" to describe large language models. And Hanna is the director of research at the Distributed AI Institute, formerly an AI ethicist at Google. She says claims of AI's artistic prowess can be misleading.

The remedy phase of one of the antitrust cases against Google wrapped up last week and the judge is expected to issue his decision by August on how the company must address its monopoly in search. One option suggested by the Justice Department: ban Google from paying browsers to make its search engine the default. But Mozilla, the developer of the independent Firefox browser, has opposed this remedy. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Laura Chambers, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, about how the move would be crippling for smaller browsers like theirs.

There was a time not so long ago when it seemed like the most consequential conversations in our society were happening on social media. But as the digital commons spawned mobs, performative posturing and rage-baiting, a lot of those conversations went private. That's one takeaway from the recent Semafor report on the private group chats between tech titans, business leaders and public intellectuals. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Amy Webb, founder and CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group, about the growth of what she calls the Splinternet.

On this week's “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” OpenAI retreats from its pivot to profit after its plan to restructure the business hit some snags. Plus, we say goodbye to the old-school internet phone call platform - Skype. But first, the Department of Justice pushed for breaking up part of Google's advertising business by selling off two of its ad tech products, which Google says would be nearly impossible. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to discuss all these topics and more.

Vibe coding is having a moment.The buzzy new phrase was coined earlier this year by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy to describe his process of programming by prompting AI. It's been embraced by tech professionals and amateurs alike. Google, Microsoft and Apple have or are developing their own AI-assisted coding platforms while vibe coding startups like Cursor are raking in funding.Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Clarence Huang, vice president of technology at the financial software company Intuit and an early adopter of vibe coding, about how the practice has changed how he approaches building software.More on this“What is vibe coding, exactly?” - from MIT Technology Review“New ‘Slopsquatting' Threat Emerges from AI-Generated Code Hallucinations” - from HackRead“Three-minute explainer on… slopsquatting” - from Raconteur

E-commerce sites like Temu and Shein might not be quite as cheap as they were a week ago now that tariffs are kicking in on even small-dollar imports. But these platforms known for selling low-cost goods from China have also sought to cut costs on delivery.They contract in the U.S. with companies like UniUni, which promises to dispatch packages for $3 or less — well below the industry standard. How UniUni delivers on those low rates is the subject of a recent investigation by reporter Theo Wayt at The Information. He tells Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino that drivers are hired through a network of subcontractors and UniUni pays them per item rather than an hourly wage.

In an internal memo to his staff in April, Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman wrote that “AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it's coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call. It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person - AI is coming for you.” Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kaufman, about his "radical candor" on the subject and how he wanted to spur them to think creatively about how they can remain relevant in the face of fast-changing technology.

People are using chatbots in all kinds of ways — to search the web, get help with an online purchase, sometimes even for counseling. But there's a lot about this human-AI interaction we don't fully understand. Do these chatbots effectively combat loneliness or worsen social isolation? The answer — so far — is complicated, according to Cathy Fang, a second-year PhD student at MIT Media Lab who, along with researchers from OpenAI, studied how chatbot use affects human social and emotional wellbeing.

Meta launches its own, dedicated AI app that could go head to head with the likes of ChatGPT. Plus, a massive data leak put California Blue Shield members' most sensitive medical details at risk. And how is the health tech investment sector navigating all the recent economic uncertainty from the Trump Administration's latest trade war? Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino and Christina Farr, managing director at Manatt Health, explore all these topics on this week's Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

When President Jimmy Carter died late last year, the foundation that runs Wikipedia noticed something unusual: the flood of interest in the late president created a content bottleneck, slowing load times for about an hour.Wikipedia is built to handle spikes in traffic like this, according to the Wikimedia Foundation, but it's also dealing with a surge of bots scraping the site to train AI models, and clogging up its servers in the process, the organization's chief product and technology officer Selena Deckelmann told Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino.

Canada's liberal party and its leader Mark Carney are set to remain in control after the country held federal elections Monday. They were the first since Canada adopted the Online News Act in 2023, which requires online content providers — like social media platforms — to negotiate some sort of "fair" payment to news publishers in exchange for using their content. They can also do what Meta did — block news from their Facebook and Instagram platforms altogether. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Marketplace Senior Washington Correspondent Kimberly Adams, who's been reporting on the election from Canada, to learn more about that law and what happened to the online news environment after it passed.

One of the most powerful tools in the fight against climate change is the money sitting in investment portfolios - especially the trillions of dollars invested on behalf of public retirees. That's money that could continue to fund fossil fuel development, or help pay for  climate solutions instead.New York City has implemented an ambitious Net Zero plan for its public pensions. That plan includes divesting from some fossil fuel companies and investing billions of dollars in climate solutions. One company benefiting from that investment is NineDot Energy.   Wedged between an elementary school and a big box shopping center in the Northeast Bronx, NineDot Energy is operating a battery farm that the city's utility company, Con Ed, can call on to help relieve the grid when it gets overstressed. “The batteries hold a combined three megawatts of battery storage. That's enough to power about 3,000 New York City households for four hours on a hot summer day. Last summer, the battery farm was called half a dozen times, which was enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a combined 24 metric tons. That's the equivalent of nine thousand car trips on the Cross Bronx Expressway.Currently, the city has the dirtiest energy grid in the state. More than 90% of its power comes from fossil fuels. NineDot Energy is still in growth mode, but battery farms like this could eventually help the grid transition to renewable sources, like wind and solar.“The sun only shines when nature tells it to; the wind only blows when nature tells it to, but people use electricity when they decide to,” explained Adam Cohen, co-founder of NineDot Energy. “A battery helps mediate that process. It pulls in the extra power when it's available, and then puts it back out when people call for it.” On a recent visit to the Bronx facility, 12-year-old Virtue Onoja showed off a mural she helped paint along with other students from the elementary school across the street, envisioning a future powered by cleaner energy.“One thing about me, I'm definitely an artist,” she said. “I drew a clear blue sky, no pollution, no nothing [and] beautiful yellow flowers and the sun.”There are also drawings of windmills and electric school buses. “There's still a lot of pollution, not just in the Bronx, but just in New York in general,” Onoja said. “All of this is the goal that we want to achieve.”This is an excerpt from the latest season of How We Survive. Listen to the full episode here.

Leyla Isik, a professor of cognitive science at Johns Hopkins University, is also a senior scientist on a new study looking at how good AI is at reading social cues. She and her research team took short videos of people doing things — two people chatting, two babies on a playmat, two people doing a synchronized skate routine — and showed them to human participants. After, they were asked them questions like, are these two communicating with each other? Are they communicating? Is it a positive or negative interaction? Then, they showed the same videos to over 350 open source AI models. (Which is a lot, though it didn't include all the latest and greatest ones out there.) Isik found that the AI models were a lot worse than humans at understanding what was going on. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes visited Isik at her lab in Johns Hopkins to discuss the findings.

It's the last Friday in April and it's time for Marketplace Tech Bytes Week in Review. This week, we'll talk about how the Federal Trade Commission is suing Uber over its subscription service.Plus, how the VC world is navigating the uncertainty created by the trade war.But first, a nonprofit pivot is facing some challenges. Open AI, the maker of ChatGPT was founded about a decade ago as a nonprofit research lab. It's now looking to restructure as a for-profit — specifically, a public benefit corporationBut that transformation is facing resistance. About 10 former Open AI employees, along with several Nobel laureates and other experts, have written an open letter asking regulators in California and Delaware to block the change. They argue that nonprofit control is crucial to Open AI's mission, which is to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, about how unusual it is to see this kind of conversion. YouTube Video of Marketplace Tech BytesMore on everything we talked aboutAn Open Letter - Not For Private GainEx-OpenAI workers ask California and Delaware AGs to block for-profit conversion of ChatGPT maker - from the Associated PressOpenAI's Latest Funding Round Comes With a $20 Billion Catch - from the Wall Street JournalFTC Takes Action Against Uber for Deceptive Billing and Cancellation Practices - from the Federal Trade CommissionFTC sues Uber over difficulty of canceling subscriptions, “false” claims - from ArsTechnicaWhite House Considers Slashing China Tariffs to De-Escalate Trade War - from the Wall Street JournalVC manufacturing deals were already declining before tariffs entered the picture - from Pitchbook

TikTok is going to be testing a new crowd-sourced fact-checking system called Footnotes. It's seems similar to the Community Notes systems already in use on other social media, such as X and Facebook. TikTok is also keeping its current fact-checking systems in place. The way these community systems generally work is, say someone makes a post stating "whales are the biggest fish out there." Another user could add a note saying "actually, whales are mammals, and here's a source with more information."Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes spoke with Vanderbilt psychology professor Lisa Fazio about why this model of "citizen fact-checking" is catching on.