Marketplace Tech

Meta and Microsoft — as well as other tech titans — have been reporting quarterly earnings, and investors are looking at AI spending with a more skeptical eye. Plus, more than 1,000 workers at top AI labs signed an open letter this week calling on the government to "deliberately set the pace" of this fast-moving technology, and NBCUniversal makes a deal with YouTube to add all of Peacock's content to its premium streaming service.Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino to discuss these stories on this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

The ocean is already one of the best climate solutions we’ve got. It absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that would otherwise contribute to global warming. But what if it could store even more CO2? Marketplace’s Amy Scott, host of our climate podcast “How We Survive,” looked into one strategy to achieve that goal. And she set sail for a demonstration.This feature is part of “How We Survive.” You can hear more of Amy’s reporting on marine carbon removal and other geoengineering solutions on their new season, wherever you get your podcasts.

OpenAI revealed this week that two of its advanced AI models escaped containment and hacked into the systems of AI company Hugging Face, which had the answers to the benchmarking test the two models were being evaluated on.Plus, France becomes the first country in the European Union to ban social media for kids under 15. And Apple is reportedly expected to start leasing its devices to consumers. Will Oremus at The Atlantic joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino for these stories.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino has been using chatbots pretty intensively the last couple years. And there are some details she’s shared about herself that chatbots seem to think are really important. For instance, Claude is obsessed with the fact that she sometimes gets up for work at 4 a.m.It comes up constantly in their chats — apropos of nothing. So, why do large language models latch on to these random tidbits? It's the first topic in our new series “Uncanny AI.” Those moments when it becomes clear AI doesn't think like us.Here to help us unpack what might be going on is Janelle Shane, a laser scientist who writes the AI Weirdness blog.

During last year’s massive wildfires in Los Angeles, concerned residents and firefighters went to one app to get up to date information: Watch Duty. Now, the app covers all 50 states and recently added flood tracking to its repertoire. Watch Duty’s chief technology officer David Merritt joined Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino to talk about how the app is scaling up.

AI is the buzzy tech of the moment. It's made plenty of money not only for companies but the cities and states where investment is pouring in. Illinois and specifically Chicago are betting that quantum computing will be the next major tech breakthrough to transform the economy. And they're trying to get in on the ground floor. So they’ve turned a former steel mill site into a tech hub, called the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, with the hope of attracting as much talent and investment as possible. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Jeanne Whalen, economics reporter at The Wall Street Journal, to learn more.

The resemblance to an actual dog is loose but the quadrupedal robot dogs known as “Spot” from Boston Dynamics do have four legs. They're often used to do reconnaissance in hazardous environments. And four of them are working security at the World Cup games in Dallas and New York. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Merry Frayne, at Boston Dynamics about Spot’s capabilities and why they wanted to deploy them at live sporting events.

SpaceX stock prices fell back to earth this week after they skyrocketed in the wake of the IPO a couple weeks ago. Plus, why a Google AI subsidiary is investing in the film studio A24. And why Meta might be getting into the prediction markets. The New York Times reported this week the social media giant was working on its own prediction market app, sort of like Kalshi and Polymarket, which have been bringing in billions of dollars but also drawing lots of scrutiny and legal challenges. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, financial columnist at The Information, for this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”Check out our YouTube page to watch more episodes of “Tech Bytes.”