Marketplace Tech

Big tech companies have invested hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure, including data centers that are popping up all over the country. Constructing the facilities brings in jobs to local communities, but what happens once the construction is finished? Former Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Pat Harker says tech companies owe a longer-lasting benefit to the communities that host data centers. Marketplace tech host Nova Safo talked with Pat Harker about his proposal for a “digital AI land grant act.”

Rya Jetha, tech culture reporter at The San Francisco Standard, spends a lot of time thinking about the industry’s internal dynamics. Gone are the computer programmers, self-proclaimed nerds of an era mostly focused on software development. Jetha says the new tech bro is of the “hard tech” era, with emphasis on the charisma needed to raise huge sums of money for expensive hardware innovations and AI technologies.

OpenAI’s latest AI video generator Sora 2 has gotten a lot of attention for its realistic creations. The tool is supposed to have guardrails to prevent creating videos based on misinformation. But new analysis from watchdog group Newsguard found that, when prompted, Sora 2 often generated videos based on lies, such as false claims having to do with election fraud in a foreign country or that a toddler was detained by immigration agents. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Sofia Rubinson, senior editor at Newsguard, to learn more.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is serving 25 years in federal prison for fraud. His company collapsed and went bankrupt in 2022. Investigators found that billions of dollars in customer funds had been borrowed without permission to help shore up Bankman-Fried’s other firm, Alameda Research. But throughout the last three years, Bankman-Fried has maintained his innocence, and he's filed an appeal. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 4. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Jonathan Jones, a reporter and producer for the investigative podcast “Reveal,” who spent hours talking to the former CEO, FTX insiders and customers.

Several major firms announced tens of thousands of job layoffs this week, and some reports are putting the blame on AI. Plus, startup Character.AI says it will ban minors from interacting with its chatbots. Also, Nvidia became the first $5 trillion company. We'll look at what that means. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with regular contributor Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, about all these topics on this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

Graphics processing units are essential to training and deploying artificial intelligence models, but they don’t come cheap. Big Tech companies like Meta, Microsoft and xAI have spent billions, amassing hundreds of thousands or even millions of them. For those without such deep pockets, access to this kind of computing power has gotten out of reach. Recently, the state of California launched an initiative called CalCompute to look into building its own public GPU cluster for startups and non-profit researchers to use. There are similar public compute pilots in New York state and at the federal level. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino tells us more.

Beijing is making it easier for global science and tech talent to visit or do business in China. Chinese officials opened a new K visa for graduates in science, technology, engineering and math to do research and start companies. This comes as the U.S. is cutting research grants and choking H-1B talent visas. Overseas, analysts say America’s loss could be China’s gain. But within China, there is a lot of anger over the K visa. Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak explains from Shanghai.

In his new book, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales writes ”in the early years of the internet, we were right to be bullish about people and the technology. Our capacity for social connection, community and cooperation can deliver amazing things. But the very same human nature can deliver atrocities.” Wales’s says he wrote this book to help combat a crisis of trust in society that is leading to the rise of authoritarianism. Marketplace’s Nova Safo asked him about the main lessons he learned from building Wikipedia into a highly-relied-upon source of information.

Robots are commonplace in factories, and increasingly in warehouses like those run by Amazon. But what about robots to help with household chores — so-called humanoids to load the dishwasher or fold the laundry? To find out, we checked in with Ken Goldberg, professor of engineering at UC Berkeley and cofounder of the AI and robotics company AmbiRobotics. He spoke to Marketplace’s Nova Safo enroute from a robotics conference in China.

OpenAI released its new web browser, Atlas, in a bid to become our main conduit to the internet. Plus, we learned this week that Amazon may be planning to expand its use of robots and shrink its use of humans at its warehouses. And this week's disruptive outage at Amazon Web Services reminded us of just how much we depend on cloud computing, even for a good night's sleep. Marketplace’s Nova Safo discussed all of this with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at the venture firm Collab Capital, for this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

The promise has been titillating: quiet, electric taxis taking off vertically, floating over urban traffic. The consulting firm McKinsey says in a matter of five years, flying taxi fleets could rival airlines in size. Well, maybe. It's already taking longer than predicted. Marketplace’s Henry Epp has been tracking the industry and its evolution.

Artificial intelligence holds a lot of promise for tribal nations — as a force multiplier for hard-to-staff departments, a tool to better serve tribal citizens, and even to aid in the revitalization of Indigenous languages and culture. But, as with all applications of AI tools, data security concerns loom. And some nations are adopting the new technology quicker than others. For an overview, Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Savannah Peters, who covers Indigenous communities for Marketplace.

AI chatbot adoption is moving rapidly. We can already ask the tools to help us find local restaurants, a good deal on an item we’re looking to purchase. And soon, we’ll even be able to buy products from Walmart through ChatGPT. But as more people turn to AI for search and shopping, what happens to small businesses that traditionally depend on web searches and online reviews?

California has enacted a law requiring rideshare giants Uber and Lyft to collectively bargain with their drivers. Because the drivers are technically independent contractors, they otherwise would not have federally-protected labor rights like full-time employees. The new state law could be a game changer. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Levi Sumagaysay, reporter at CalMatters, who helps sift through the details of the law.

AppleTV+ ditches the plus in its name. Plus, Walmart announced an e-commerce deal with OpenAI so customers can shop through ChatGPT. But first, Instagram announced what it called PG-13 settings for teen accounts. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to discuss all these topics and more.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to set up an around-the-clock social media surveillance network, according to public documents reviewed by WIRED magazine. Under the proposal, ICE would partner with private contractors to monitor platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for information and leads that can be passed on to officers in the field. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Dell Cameron, senior writer at WIRED who broke the story, about the proposed structure of this new surveillance program.

Before the government shutdown, the Federal Communications Commission voted to end funding for Wi-Fi on school buses and the lending of hotspot devices from libraries. Nicol Turner Lee, author of “Digitally Invisible,” said this could further the digital divide for marginalized communities.

Countries all over the world use technology to keep track of immigrants released from detention centers. The idea is to allow people to live in communities while their cases are adjudicated. But Petra Molnar of the Refugee Law Lab at York University said the technology is also often employed in ways that are too intrusive and can act like digital shackles. She told Marketplace’s Nova Safo that even smartphone apps, which can be glitchy, are a challenge for immigrants who are often waiting on asylum claims.

Open AI has added a checkout feature to ChatGPT, partnering with Etsy and Shopify to let users purchase some items from select merchants. OpenAI says ChatGPT's answers are still organic and unsponsored. But why not offer a seamless way to buy things that come up in certain responses? Eventually this could lead to so-called “agentic” shopping: letting AI research items, pick one, and then buy it on our behalf. Marketplace's Nova Safo spoke with colleague Meghan McCarty Carino about what AI companies stand to gain from integrating e-commerce tech.

The ongoing government shutdown has caused a lapse in the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act,a law that's key to protecting the nation against major cyberattacks. Plus, OpenAI this week made a huge investment in chipmaker AMD, the latest in a round of blockbuster deals. And Google said it will be updating its smart home devices with its advanced artificial intelligence, Gemini. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, about all these headlines on this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.