We are taking a look at how the tech industry is pushing back against federal cuts to artificial intelligence and science. Plus, Waymo is expanding its self-driving services in Silicon Valley. But first, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba this week released an AI model called R1-Omni, which the company says can read human emotions. Alibaba shared a d…

This week, we’ve been exploring the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, we spoke about what might happen with futurist Amy Webb, the CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group. She predicted, among other things, that we would give up more personal data around our health and location. Then on the show in 2021, she said more definiti…

In the spring of 2020, 77% of American public schools moved to online distance learning when the pandemic hit, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to the pandemic, you could say that schools were trickling into the digital age. Then, when COVID changed everything, they were basically tossed into it. Some educators adapted…

Five years ago today, after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, there was a widespread shift to remote work for many workers who were considered nonessential. And people had to get used to seeing their colleagues mainly on a screen. In recent years, some companies have required employees to return to the office …

March 11 marks five years since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus officially a pandemic. Tracking the virus has been key to understanding where outbreaks are occurring and one tracking tool that had been mostly on the shelf prior to the pandemic is wastewater surveillance. That’s pretty much what it sounds like — testing wha…

In this week’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” TSMC announced it’s investing an additional $100 billion to make chips in the U.S. Plus, a co-founder of the social media platform Reddit joins a bid to buy TikTok. But first, let’s talk about the stock market. A number of tech companies watched their stocks sink this week, when new tariffs o…

Today, we’re wrapping up our series “The Infinite Scroll,” where we look at kids’ lives on social media and the risks and rules they face. One approach some states take to creating rules to mitigate risk is known as an age-appropriate design code, a law that puts the onus on tech companies to design products that keep kids safer when they’re on the…

On our new series “The Infinite Scroll,” we’re looking at the rules and risks of kids using social media. Artificial intelligence is showing up on these platforms in the form of chatbots, digital characters you can text or talk with. Today we explore what can happen to youngsters who interact with them. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes discussed the …

This week, we are looking at how kids use social media and the risks and rules around it. It’s part of our new series “The Infinite Scroll.” Monday, we talked about how habitually checking social media can change adolescents’ brains, making them more sensitive to feedback from their peers. Today, we’re going to look at what it’s like to be a parent…

Social media takes up a huge chunk of kids’ lives. A 2024 study from Pew found that about half of U.S. teenagers are online “almost constantly.” It’s a big source of stress for parents too, and policing their kids’ actions on these platforms can take up a lot of time and energy. Also, there’s AI, and it’s showing up on social media as bots that are…

In this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” chip powerhouse Nvidia saw its revenue soar last quarter, showing that the AI boom is still booming. Plus, it was a bumpy week for bitcoin after the crypto exchange Bybit lost almost $1.5 billion of digital assets in a hack. But first, Apple announced it’s spending $500 billion to expand manufacturing an…

Patreon, a company that enables fans to directly support internet creators financially, has produced a report looking at how creators and their fans are feeling these days. One finding: Fans say they’re seeing more short-form work on social media, even though they prefer long-form content. And more than half of creators surveyed say it’s harder to …

For years, coding has been thought of as a useful skill for children to learn. It’s integrated into computer science classes and a number of organizations are dedicated to helping kids code. But now, AI tools can write code themselves. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Monica McGill of the Institute for Advancing Computing Education about w…

Last year, Australia passed a measure that would ban children under 16 from using social media. That’ll be a big shift: About 80% of Australian kids between the ages of 8 and 12 used social media in 2024, according to a report from Australia’s online safety regulator. The government is now working on the details of how to implement what many are ca…

Satellite internet has been around for decades. But in just the past six years, the number of satellites orbiting the planet has grown dramatically. Many belong to Starlink, a unit of SpaceX whose satellites are in low Earth orbit. And it’s expected to get even busier up there with Amazon’s Project Kuiper launching thousands of new satellites. Joe …

Another lawsuit hits the Department of Government Efficiency from privacy rights advocates concerned about Americans’ personal data. And another wearable — the Ai Pin — bites the dust. But first, layoffs by the federal government are continuing, including, reportedly, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, which is part of …

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that representatives of DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency — gained access to sensitive data at the Department of Education and fed it into AI software. This has raised red flags over whether it violates federal privacy law. We reached out to DOGE for comment, but didn’t hear back. But the…

404: Page Not Found. That error message has become a more common sight on government websites. Many — reportedly thousands — of federal government webpages were recently taken down, ranging from Census Bureau research on depression among LGBT adults to Food and Drug Administration guidance for making clinical trials more diverse. These erasures com…

Venture capitalists have been welcomed into the Donald Trump administration, and their presence is growing. People who’ve been in the business of backing startups have been tapped to run the Office of Personnel Management and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Another, David Sacks, is the White House artificial intelligence and cryptocurrenc…

An industry is emerging that uses AI to build chatbots of people who’ve died. “Five years ago I would have said that most people would still find it kind of creepy. But then ChatGPT hit,” said Carl Orman, a Swedish researcher and author who has spent the past 10 years studying the ethics of the digital afterlife. “It’s not implausible that over the…

On this week’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” we’ll talk about Apple launching a new health research study and BuzzFeed starting a new social media platform. But first, the U.S. is pushing back against global AI regulation. This week there was a kind of who’s who of AI and government at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.…

There’s a concept in business called the first-mover advantage. Basically, it means that if you’re the first company with a successful product in a new market, you have the opportunity to dominate the market and fend off rivals. But that advantage can be short-lived. Take Netscape Navigator, the first popular commercial web browser. Microsoft enter…

Data centers are filled with servers, basically a bunch of beefed-up computers stacked on top of each other in buildings that can be as big as warehouses. So they need a lot of electricity. And there are more of those projects in the works. For example, Meta has said it’s planning to build out at least one data center that’s going to be so big it c…

About 1 in 4 U.S. jobs requires an occupational license, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Licensing requirements differ by state and can apply to everyone from barbers to lawyers. The general idea, of course, is to keep unqualified workers out. But technology, and specifically artificial intelligence, is making inroads. R…

Geography has been part of President Trump’s agenda. His first day on the job, he signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and Denali, the highest peak in North America, will now go back to being called Mount McKinley.Private companies that make maps — analog or digital — don’t have to follow suit bu…

On this week’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” we’ll explore OpenAI’s inroads in higher education. Plus, how passengers can get on a waitlist to hail a driverless car in Austin, Texas. But first, a look at how Google is changing its approach to artificial intelligence. In 2018, the company published its “AI principles,” guidelines for how…

Congress considered 158 bills that mention artificial intelligence over the past two years, according to a count by the Brennan Center for Justice. But zero comprehensive AI laws have been passed. There has been movement by states, however. In Tennessee, for example, the ELVIS Act, which protects voices and likenesses from unauthorized use by AI, b…

Among President Donald Trump’s many executive orders is one calling for a “next-generation missile defense shield.” The White House calls this the Iron Dome for America. The order says it should defend against all sorts of missile attacks and include “space-based interceptors” that could potentially act as both sensors and weapons. It reminded reti…

One of the more hopeful scenarios for how artificial intelligence could affect jobs is that it would take over more of the boring grunt work and free up humans for loftier pursuits. Mondelez, the company behind many of America’s favorite snacks, like Oreo cookies, Sour Patch Kids candy and Ritz crackers, is trying to do just that — using AI to spee…

Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, has long been the holy grail of innovation — a synthetic intelligence with all the capabilities of a human mind or more. Recent advances in AI have many predicting we could be closer to achieving it than we’re ready for. It’s a reality that preoccupied the late diplomat Henry Kissinger before he died last ye…

Everyone was obsessed with the new white whale of the AI world this week. We’ll get into it on today’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Plus, Trump floats tariffs on semiconductors from overseas. And a bipartisan Senate bill to ban kids from social media is getting another look. But first, back to that DeepSeek drama. The Chinese AI compan…

President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has been seen by many as a boost for cryptocurrency. During the campaign, he made several crypto-friendly pledges and recently made a splash when he launched his own “meme coin” shortly before the inauguration. The Trump token reached a nearly a $15 billion valuation, though it has since fallen qui…

Amid all the executive orders signed by President Donald Trump during his first week in office came a promise to “restore freedom of speech” and end federal censorship. Keen observers may note that freedom of speech is protected by the Constitution. But the order seems to have something more specific in mind. It calls out what it characterizes as t…

There’s no shortage of bullish voices on artificial intelligence among the titans of tech. But even many of the leading evangelists, in addition to prevailing pop culture narratives, tend to strike a note of impending doom when envisioning the future of the technology. Reid Hoffman wants us to consider the alternative. He’s the co-founder of Linked…

Last week’s annual gathering of the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was a bit overshadowed by the inauguration of Donald Trump in the U.S. The president made a virtual appearance at the conference, delivering a speech that hit on several of his recurring themes: tariffs, inflation and artificial intelligence. AI…

There’s been quite a firehose of news this week, but we’re going to distill some of it into a nice, tall glass for you on today’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” We’ll dig into why some crypto insiders are upset with President Donald Trump over his preinaugural meme coins. Plus, the latest in the TikTok ban rollback and how Congress might…

Getting fast, comprehensive and accurate information is crucial during emergencies like the devastating wildfires still raging in the Los Angeles area. And over the last two terrifying weeks, one app has become the place to find it: Watch Duty. Operated by a nonprofit, the app was launched in 2021 to track wildfires in Northern California and now p…

The explosion of artificial intelligence tools like chatbots has rocked the education world in the last couple years. It’s spurred efforts to prohibit, detect or otherwise build guardrails around these powerful new tools. Some educators, though are embracing them, and Colby College is doing it on an institutional level. Four years ago, before most …

There’s been a lot of doom and gloom in the tech sector in recent years — the feeling that so many of the advances in internet connectivity, social media and now artificial intelligence might have caused more harm than good, increasing the need for at least caution in the industry and even, possibly, government intervention. But lately a backlash t…

It’s Inauguration Day, and a veritable who’s who of tech are in attendance for the swearing in of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States. The massive presence of tech leaders, overtly supporting or just making nice with Trump, represents a stunning reversal from his first term. Today, we’re looking back at what happened in between.…

On this week’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes,” we’ll dive into President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence plus a request Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made to President-elect Donald Trump. But first, tech news site The Information reported that TikTok plans to completely shut down its app in the U.S. on Sunday and will instead direct use…

California relies on a variety of tools to stop and mitigate wildfires, some as low-tech as dumping giant buckets of seawater on the flames. But on the higher-tech side is a new, AI-powered monitoring system called ALERTCalifornia, which was developed at the University of California, San Diego. It’s designed to speedily detect and report wildfires …

As fires burn in Los Angeles, many people are going online to find ways to support people who have been temporarily or permanently displaced by the disaster. But like we’ve seen in the aftermath of recent hurricanes and floods, bad actors are spreading misinformation and financial scams. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Steve Grobman, chief …

Scam calls about fake warranty renewals, non-existent credit card bills and more are still a global problem. But some companies and telecommunication providers are turning to AI chatbots to intercept the calls before they ever reach a real person. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Dali Kaafar, founder and CEO of Apate AI, an A…

Since large language model chatbots hit the scene a few years ago, there’s been a lot of speculation about which jobs they might disrupt most. A lot of bets were on customer service. And recent data show they are becoming more common in the space. A Salesforce survey found a 42% increase in the share of shoppers who turned to AI-powered chatbots fo…

CES wraps up in Las Vegas this week. That’s the annual convention where some of the most cutting-edge consumer tech is unveiled. And while we still don’t have a prototype for Rosey, the housecleaning robot from “The Jetsons,” we’ll get into some of the big robot reveals for today’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Plus, YouTubers are takin…

This week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg announced some big changes to content moderation strategy. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp will no longer be contracting with third-party fact-checkers from the media and nonprofits as it has since 2016. Instead, Meta will follow the lead of X under Elon Musk and rely on crowd-sour…

U.S. ports could be facing another strike as the deadline looms next Wednesday to settle a union contract for 45,000 dockworkers on the East and Gulf coasts. A major sticking point has been automation. Proponents argue that technology can make ports cleaner and more efficient; critics point to lost jobs, high costs and mixed productivity results. W…

By now you probably know the term “large language model.” They’re the systems that underlie artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT. They’re called “large” because typically the more data you feed into them — like all the text on the internet — the better those models perform. But in recent months, there’s been chatter about the prospect that…

A battle is brewing over the restructuring of OpenAI, the creator of pioneering artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. It was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 with the goal of developing AI to benefit humanity, not investors. But advanced AI requires massive processing power, which gets expensive, feeding into the company’s decision to take on majo…