Marketplace Tech

The House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence released a lengthy report this week that doesn’t recommend any specific policies or bills. We’ll also look ahead at what the new year could bring the robotaxi business. But first, the TikTok ban is heading to the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court last week upheld the law that would ban the short-form video app if its Chinese owners don’t sell it by Jan. 19. TikTok asked the court to weigh in, and this week SCOTUS agreed. Lily Jamali, tech correspondent at the BBC, joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino to discuss the news.

Voice cloning is becoming easier, faster and more convincing. Artificial Intelligence makes it possible to change the age of an actor’s voice, translate words into any language, and replace a voice lost through illness. But it’s also increasingly being used by criminals to impersonate a loved one, extort money or compromise bank accounts. It’s changing how we communicate with each other and how we trust each other. And experts say we’re already at the point where AI voice cloning can be used for real time conversations. So how are the U.S., the U.K. and Europe handling regulation of this rapidly-evolving new technology?

About 170 million U.S. users could be TikTokless as soon as Jan. 19. Early this month, a federal appeals court upheld a law that could ban the very popular short-form video app unless its Chinese owners agree to sell it. They have a willing buyer, though, in billionaire Frank McCourt, who has assembled a consortium of investors ready to put down more than $20 billion. He’s the founder of the internet reform initiative Project Liberty. You may also know him as a real estate developer who once owned the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The artificial intelligence boom and its hunger for electricity has brought a surge of interest in nuclear power. Microsoft, for instance, made a deal to restart the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, while Google and Amazon have invested in companies developing small, modular reactors. The Joe Biden administration’s Department of Energy aims to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, but the sector will need a lot more workers to make that happen. By some estimates there’s a gap of more than 200,000 jobs to fill over the next decade. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Craig Piercy, CEO of the American Nuclear Society, to learn more about the hunt for talent.

As we approach President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next month, questions are coming up about how his second administration might deal with tech. A lot has changed in the industry and its relationship to the former president since his first go-round. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Reed Albergotti, tech editor at the news site Semafor, to help us decode some of the signals, starting with artificial intelligence and the man Trump has named as his AI czar, venture capitalist David Sacks.

There’s been a lot of discussion about health insurance over the last week. And one practice could be seeing more oversight: the use of artificial intelligence in coverage decisions. Plus, the FDA issues final guidance for makers of AI-enabled medical devices so they can now update their software after approval. And it was a good year for health tech startups — after a not-so-good year in 2023 — especially for those with the letters “AI” attached to their business. Our regular contributor Christina Farr, managing director with Manatt Health, joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino to discuss the news.

Some low-income consumers have trouble qualifying for loans, due to a variety of reasons — lacking the required paperwork, or the documentation banks require for loan applications. Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall-Genzer explores whether AI could be used to help consumers access traditional banking systems.

As consumers, we leave trails of personal data all over the internet. And collecting and selling it is big business. Sensitive information, like our Social Security numbers, incomes and credit scores, are often sold by so-called data brokers to the highest bidder. Sometimes that’s a bank, sometimes it’s a scammer. This month, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule that would crack down on the practice. It would bar companies from selling sensitive data or hold them to the same legal standards that apply to credit reporting agencies. Rohit Chopra, director of the CFPB, explained the proposal in more detail to Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

The push to integrate artificial intelligence — like large language models — in the workplace is hitting almost every industry these days. And that includes policing. Reporter James O’Donnell with MIT Technology Review got an inside look at the ways in which many departments are experimenting with the new technology when he visited the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police conference back in October. O’Donnell attended to see how artificial intelligence was being discussed. He said police are using or thinking about AI in a wide range of applications. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with O’Donnell to learn more about those use cases.

One of the industries that is adopting artificial intelligence tools the fastest is the legal field. A recent report from the legal tech company Clio showed almost 80% of legal professionals are using AI in some way in their practice, up from about 30% last year. Joshua Lenon, a lawyer in residence at Clio, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino the profession is particularly ripe for tech disruption.

The CEO of Intel resigned this week, likely with a push from the company’s board. We’ll take a look at the landscape for U.S. chip manufacturing on today’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Plus, Amazon is trying to make good on its net zero carbon emission pledges with a pilot to capture carbon at one of its data centers. But first, OpenAI announced this week it’s partnering with a military technology startup called Anduril. It’s just the latest AI company to get into the defense business. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, about all these stories and more.

We talk a lot about how the internet is filling up with AI content. And, of course, that includes the sort guaranteed to generate clicks and dollars: the adult variety. Platforms like Instagram have seen an explosion in sexy AI-generated influencers, and the people running those accounts sometimes steal content from real creators and mash them up with AI. The practice is called “AI pimping,” Jason Koebler, co-founder of 404 Media, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

The Quayside development on Toronto’s waterfront was supposed to be the shining example of a tech-optimized smart city, an urban environment reinvented “from the internet up,” as it was described by Sidewalk Labs. That was a sister company to Google, which won a government bid in 2017 to modernize the 12 acres of former dockland. There would be robotaxis, heated sidewalks, adaptive traffic lights and lots of data collection. But in 2020, Sidewalk Toronto suddenly shut down before a single ribbon had been cut, turning a shining example into a cautionary tale. It’s all chronicled in a new book from Globe and Mail reporter Josh O’Kane called “Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with O’Kane about what went on behind the scenes of the Sidewalk Toronto project.

Ever since ChatGPT hit the scene a couple years ago, there’s been a nagging sense of dread for many: what will this mean for jobs? Well, new research from Imperial College London finds a shift already underway. Between July 2021 and July 2023, the report found freelance job postings for writing and coding decreased by about 20%. There was also a slowdown in freelance jobs for visual art. And it’s happening more quickly than past technological disruptions, Ozge Demirci, one of the coauthors of that report and a business professor at Imperial College London, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

The internet has been overrun by AI content. The weirdly glowing and inadvertently surreal airbrushed images, the generic and oddly formal sentences peppered with factual errors and distracting phrases like “as of my last knowledge update.” So much of social media content these days has the unmistakable stench of “AI slop,” hastily spit out by image generators or chatbots to get a few likes. And while the phenomenon might seem harmless or sometimes even charming, the AI slop takeover of the internet is crowding out real information and human perspectives. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Rebecca Jennings, a senior correspondent at Vox, about how AI slop is transforming social media.

OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT turns two years old tomorrow. So how has it changed the tech industry and what’s next for the company? We’ll get into it in today’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Plus, we look into rumblings that improvements in AI have slowed, raising questions about whether we’ve hit a wall when it comes to training more advanced AI systems. But first, the Commerce Department finalized nearly $7.9 billion in subsidies for Intel. It’s the largest award yet under the CHIPS and Science Act and a potentially game-changing sum for the company right now. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, to break down these stories.

A survey by nonprofit organization Common Sense Media shows 42% of children in the U.S. have a phone by the age of 10. And numbers like this are causing concern for educators, including a group of headteachers in Greystones, a town in Ireland. That group was so worried by the increased levels of anxiety among children using smartphones and social media that last year they asked parents to sign a voluntary pledge to delay buying cellphones for their children until at least the age of 11. The BBC’s Leanna Byrne checks in to see what effect it had.

A 58-year-old Mike Tyson may have come up short in his ballyhooed comeback match against YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul. But Netflix emerged as a big winner, boasting 108 million viewers for the Nov. 15 spectacle, the most streamed sporting event in history. Unfortunately for viewers, Netflix’s livestream of the fight suffered buffering and lag problems. It wasn’t a great start for the platform, which will be livestreaming some much-anticipated NFL games on Christmas Day. But the streaming service has been leaning into more and more live content. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Lucas Shaw, who writes the Screentime newsletter at Bloomberg, about the event and what it portends for Netflix’s future live endeavors.

It’s an interesting time for many in the U.S. Some people feel great about President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, while others don’t. This week, people from both sides are sitting down together for Thanksgiving dinner. And while it’s one thing to ignore a family member’s social media posts or online rants, that can be a bit more challenging face-to-face, sometimes leading to awkward conversations about beliefs, truth and misinformation. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke to Whitney Phillips, assistant professor of digital platforms and ethics at the University of Oregon, about how to navigate awkward conversations this holiday season.

The push for electric vehicle adoption got a bit more uncertain with the election of Donald Trump. While reports of “EV death” have been greatly exaggerated, sales growth has slowed, and carmakers have pulled back on aggressive targets. Now, it seems Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino may be part of that trend. She recently spoke with Jack Stewart, a former Marketplace reporter and the man who convinced her to buy an EV, about her decision to trade in her EV for a gas-powered car.