A massive general election is currently underway in India. It’s been described as the “largest democratic exercise in history.” And tech platforms are a big part of it. Many Indian voters get their information online, where misinformation and disinformation can spread quickly. That includes deepfakes of prominent public figures, like Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, spreading false information about who or which political parties they are endorsing. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Raman Jit...

Robotics company Boston Dynamics announced this month it is retiring its humanoid robot known as “Atlas.” The 6′, 2,330 lb robot was considered a quantum leap in robotics and was famous for parkour stunts and awkward dance moves. Debuting more than a decade ago in 2013, the Atlas robot was a part of a partnership with the Defense Department. It relied on hydraulic power, using pressurized fluid to generate movement. It could do tasks that can be challenging for humans like lifting heavy boxes...

The noncompete clause is dead! American tech workers are poised to benefit from the Federal Trade Commission’s new crackdown on the agreements, which prevent a company’s ex-employees from working for its rivals for a specified time. Also, Tesla’s profits crashed 55%. As electric vehicle sales sputter, we wonder why more players are still speeding into the space. But first, TikTok’s top executive was defiant after the passage of a massive foreign aid package that included a directive to the...

When Jeff Bezos left Wall Street to start Amazon in 1994, the most common question he got was “What’s the internet?” Fast-forward to today, and Amazon is, of course, the country’s leading online retailer, as well as cloud services provider. In 2022, the company controlled almost 38% of the U.S. e-commerce market. Walmart, its closest competitor, had just over 6%, according to Insider Intelligence. In her new book, “The Everything War,” The Wall Street Journal’s Dana Mattioli documents the...

Imagine you’re a national security official tasked with monitoring activity off the coast of your fictitious country. Suddenly, a large tanker ship in your area goes silent. Its location sensor is offline, and it’s not responding to radio communication. What do you do? It’s a question Francesca de Rosa, chief scientist for gaming at the Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation, poses in the Reliability Game, which she designed. It’s part of a genre known as “serious...

A new wearable from tech startup Humane promises to bring an AI assistant to your lapel. It attaches to your jacket, sweater or shirt and operates with voice commands or a digital interface laser projected onto the palm of your hand. It sounds like the stuff of a sci-fi novel, but the reviews so far are not good. The panning of the Ai Pin comes after five years in development, $240 million in funding and partnerships struck with the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and Salesforce. So, what went...

Artificial intelligence has become a big part of medicine — reading images, formulating treatment plans and developing drugs. But a recent investigation by Stat News found that some insurers overrely on an algorithm to make coverage decisions for seniors on Medicare Advantage, a Medicare plan offered by private insurers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Casey Ross, who co-reported the story. He said an algorithm predicted how long patients needed care and coverage was curtailed...

On this week’s show, the United Kingdom is cracking down on makers of sexually explicit deepfakes. We’ll look at what penalizing the practice could mean for the victims. Then, the creator economy has the attention of millions of subscribers, but also venture capital. Why content creators like Dude Perfect on YouTube and other startups are attracting so much investment right now. But we begin with Amazon. The e-commerce giant’s Just Walk Out technology lets shoppers scan an app when they enter...

When you think about gin, what tastes comes to mind? Pine? Maybe citrus or coriander? It can vary quite a bit because unlike some spirits, gin is very lightly regulated. Distillers can throw in all kinds of flavors and call the result “gin” as long it has some minimum requirements. In the U.S., gin is gin as long as the flavor is derived from juniper berries and alcohol by volume is at least 40%. In the European Union, the minimum ABV is 37.5%. But researchers in Edinburgh, Scotland, recently...

When the chemical company DuPont unveiled Teflon in 1946, nonstick pots and pans seemed like a miracle. We now know their coatings contain “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, which don’t break down. These compounds are not only in cookware but in clothing, cosmetics and more — and they contaminate the water millions of us drink. Research shows there’s no safe level of exposure. As the EPA rolls out new limits on PFAS in drinking water, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist...

President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by a razor-thin margin, flipping the state blue for the first time in more than 20 years. As a result, Arizona became a hotbed of election misinformation and conspiracy theories, as false claims of a stolen election led to protests outside voting centers, a GOP-backed ballot audit and threats against election workers. Now, with just over 200 days until the 2024 election, experts warn that artificial intelligence could supercharge misinformation and...

The programming language known as COBOL turns 65 this year. We couldn’t help noticing that’s right around retirement age, but COBOL is nowhere near retirement. It remains a mainstay of IT operations at U.S. government agencies, businesses and financial institutions. Yet the programming language, which is older than the Beatles, is no longer taught at most universities. Glenn Fleishman is a freelance tech journalist who has written about this aging slab of digital infrastructure. Marketplace’s...

The Labor Department this week confirmed what a lot of Americans have been feeling: Inflation is kind of sticking around, and higher interest rates are likely to as well. We’ll look at what that means for venture capital, which was already slow to flow. Plus, the Joe Biden administration announced a $6.6 billion deal with Taiwan-based semiconductor maker TSMC to build a third production hub in Arizona. We take a look at the ongoing rollout of the CHIPS and Science Act, which makes it all...

More than 99% of all species that have lived on Earth are now extinct — something humans have certainly had a hand in. There’s now an entire scientific discipline devoted to bringing some of these species back. If you’re picturing those cloning scenes from “Jurassic Park” right now, we get it. But “de-extinction” is not quite that. Beth Shapiro is the chief science officer at Colossal Biosciences, a bioengineering startup working on de-extinction. She explained to Marketplace’s Lily Jamali...

AI models are increasingly being used by the fashion industry, as they save time and money. Some models and agencies are fans, but others want to see more protection for the image rights of models. What does it all mean for the fashion industry? The BBC’s Sam Gruet reports.

We hear words like “safety” and “transparency” thrown around in the artificial intelligence industry, but they don’t always mean the same things to a tech insider that they do to the rest of us. Luckily, tech journalist Karen Hao wrote a helpful glossary of 50 AI ethics terms to help us make sense of what tech leaders really mean by the words they use. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with her about some of the double meanings on her list.

It’s been six months of war in the Gaza Strip since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The destruction and death have been profound, and nearly every aspect of life in the roughly 140-square-mile territory has been upended. The New York Times recently reported that the Israeli military is using facial recognition artificial intelligence to monitor Palestinians in Gaza. The government hasn’t publicly acknowledged it, but reporter Sheera Frenkel spoke to Israeli intelligence officers, military...

Google has agreed to destroy billions of browser data records to settle a class action suit alleging that the tech giant misled users about how Chrome tracked them in “Incognito mode.” Plus, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart reveals that Apple discouraged him from interviewing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on his Apple TV+ podcast, “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” It’s a window into the “creative differences” that led to the abrupt end of the show last fall and the pressure creators...

Fake obituaries have become an online trend. They exploit tragedy for profit and have raised concerns about the reliability of search engines. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the problem with reporter Mia Sato of The Verge. Her investigation uncovered a network of websites generating this content using search engine optimization, or SEO, tactics. Sato also covered the story of Brian Vastag, a journalist who experienced this abuse when he read his own fake obituary along with that of his...

The Chinese company ByteDance owns two versions of basically the same app. In the U.S. we have TikTok, used by an estimated 170 million people, while in China they have Douyin, home to more than 700 million active users. Despite having the same parent company, TikTok and Douyin function as separate worlds. Now, as TikTok simmers in political hot water, the differences between the two apps are under a microscope. To get to the bottom of what sets these sister apps apart, Marketplace’s Lily...

It was an early attempt to use artificial intelligence in the 2024 presidential election: Ahead of January’s New Hampshire primary, a deepfake audio recording of President Joe Biden made it to some voters in the form of a robocall, encouraging them to save their vote. A political consultant named Steve Kramer said he orchestrated that call to show the dangers of deepfakes. Nevertheless, it caused real confusion. And there are a lot of deepfakes out there, including videos, that contend they...

Right now, the federal government is piloting its response to Silicon Valley’s AI boom. It’s called the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, and it’s supposed to “democratize” access to AI by making gigantic and expensive AI models available to academic researchers. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, who is skeptical of the initiative’s goals. As Myers West explains, the issue with the NAIRR is the government...

In this week’s episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Lily Jamali chats with Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal’s senior personal tech columnist, who takes us on a road trip through New Jersey’s network of Tesla superchargers. Stern recently explored how drivers of non-Tesla electric vehicles can now use these stations via an adapter. It’s part of her larger look into the best ways to save money supercharging your EV. Also this week, we’ll get Stern’s take on what to expect at...

It’s something government officials on both sides of the aisle are known to do: pressuring tech platforms to bend to their will, aka jawboning. But the line between persuasion and coercion, or even censorship, can get murky. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from two states alleging that the Joe Biden administration illegally coerced social media companies into blocking conservative content. Matt Perault, now with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center on...