Marketplace Tech

An Anthropic researcher publicly resigned this week, warning on social media that artificial intelligence companies are “gambling with our lives.”It’s part of a growing chorus of insiders pleading to slow down the AI race. One said he believed there was a greater than 10% chance the tech will kill us all in the next decade.The news comes after a fresh wave of troubling details about the OpenAI incident where agents escaped a testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face.Plus, data center developers have their eye on Patagonia — the colder, the better. And Amazon is betting AI lip-syncing can make dubbed video content more watchable.Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino to break down the busy week in tech news.Everything we talked about:Scoop: Sanders convenes senators for AI briefing amid mounting alarm — from Axios Tech explores Argentina's Patagonia for mega data centers — from ReutersGoogle to invest record $15 billion in AI infrastructure in the ‘Texas of Europe’ — from CNBCAmazon Prime Video’s new AI tech matches lips to dubbed audio — from The Verge

Meta agreed to a settlement last month with 52 attorneys general in a landmark case over teen social media addiction. The company promised a number of restrictions for under 18-year-old users, like time limits, overnight blackouts on some features and hidden likes. It also agreed to pay up to $17 billion, partly contingent on TikTok and YouTube adopting similar reforms.Surveys show a strong majority of Americans support stricter limitations on social media for kids. But, this settlement could fundamentally change how everyone accesses the internet, according to Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.More on this:“That $17B Meta settlement comes with a catch: Your online speech rights” from The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression“Majority of Americans support banning social media for kids under 16” from Pew Research Center

More Americans are leaving the labor force for a variety of reasons. The labor force participation rate — which measures the share of working-age Americans who either have a job or are looking for a job — has fallen sharply this year, and it’s been on a steady decline for decades. We hear from Kris Bell, who recently retired early from a long career in the tech industry, about why he chose to make the leap.

Even if artificial intelligence leads to a more prosperous future in the long run, most agree there will be a lot of disruption in the meantime. Marketplace’s senior correspondent for Future Effects, David Brancaccio, explores how that AI disruption will mean layoffs, underemployment and ultimately less income tax revenue for the government. Experts say now’s the time to revamp the tax system for the age of AI.

Amazon's popular brand of video-enabled smart home and security devices, Ring, is adding a new encryption system called TAKE — Throw Away the Key Encryption. It allows users to encrypt all video their home cameras capture while keeping advanced AI-enabled capabilities and security features active.The company already offered traditional end-to-end encryption, but that disabled advanced security features processed on the cloud that required Ring servers to maintain access to the video. Ring’s founder, Jamie Siminoff, says TAKE works by changing — or "throwing away" — the encryption key so Amazon servers don't have permanent access.More on this:“Ring introduces TAKE, setting a new industry standard for default encryption and control” from Amazon“Ring says its new encryption limits what it can give police” from The Verge“Ring Superbowl Ad Shows Americans How Powerful Surveillance Systems Have Become, Freaks Them Out” from The American Civil Liberties Union

Meta announced this week that it has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a landmark trial over social media addiction. It also agreed to add stronger child-safety measures on its platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Some of the changes could include new screen time limits, disabled notifications and restrictions during school hours. Plus, Nvidia reported strong quarterly earnings earlier this week, again. And while investors have been wary of AI spending, Wall Street seemed pleased with the results this time. And the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to eliminate a requirement that forces states to publicize and seek public feedback for new air pollution permits. Anita Ramaswamy at The Information joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino for these stories. Check out our YouTube page to watch more episodes of “Tech Bytes.”

When Meta Ray-Ban glasses were launched in 2021, they didn’t perform so well on the market. But in recent years, Meta has been partnering with fashion brands like Coperni and with pop culture figures like Kylie Jenner and Teyana Taylor, in order to expand their demographic reach. Kylie Jenner recently launched her own model of Meta glasses, called Starfire. But the campaign didn’t go over especially well, says Carrie Battan, a contributing writer at New York Magazine. Putting a spotlight on the glasses has only increased scrutiny — with some calling them “pervert glasses”. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Battan about her recent piece in New York Magazine’s “The Cut”, where she tracks Meta’s push to make smart glasses cool.More on this:The Cursed Quest to Make Meta Glasses Cool from The Cut

Anthropic recently announced it's adding watermarks to all text outputted by its chatbot Claude. But often, you don't need fancy detection software to know; you just need to look for language that gets repeated over and over by AI chatbots, like “it's not X, it's Y.”That's a rhetorical structure referred to as negative parallelism. And it's the topic for today's “Uncanny AI,” those times when it becomes clear AI doesn't think like us. Will Oremus recently wrote about this AI tic for The Atlantic.More on this“The Most Famous AI Writing Tic Is Also the Most Mysterious” from The Atlantic“Move Over Em-Dash, There’s a New AI Tell in Town” from Ai-Ai-OH

Most of the world’s internet traffic flows through underwater cables on the ocean floor. The wires are also responsible for some $10 trillion worth of financial transactions every day. And because those cables hold so much data and carry so much money, they’re also a potential security threat. That may explain why the U.S. and China are vying for control over the technology — and why the Trump administration is ramping up spending to replace cables in the Caribbean and Central America. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Erin Murphy, the managing director for Asia at Redpoint Advisors, about why these cables play a key role in geopolitics. More on this:US is considering big boost to anti-China spending globally from The Associated PressRisk Beneath the Waves: Safeguarding Subsea Cables for a Secure Global Network from CSIS

More than 100 rockets took off into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast last year — a new record. And with more rockets taking flight each year, the availability of launch sites is becoming a bottleneck for the growing space industry.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wants to make it easier for space companies to build new spaceports to make way for the increasing number of rocket launches. The agency has proposed waiving some environmental requirements for space launch. Daniel Ackerman has been reporting on the space industry as part of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.

Anthropic announced it's adding invisible watermarks to all text generated by its chatbot Claude. The AI startup is rolling out the policy globally as part of efforts to comply with the European Union AI Act.Plus, there's a patchwork of state laws that regulate AI-generated political messaging — they're being put to the test ahead of the midterm elections. And federal regulators ordered Kalshi to continue to operate in New York, despite a state lawsuit seeking to shut it down.Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, about all this for this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

This story includes discussion of suicide.Back in 2021, TikTok tweaked its algorithm in an effort to address dangerous filter bubbles — a sort of algorithmic spiral of recommendations for high-risk content like extreme dieting or self-harm. But internal company documents obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek show 10% of U.S. users — 15 million Americans — were purposely excluded from this safety update. This was part of user testing to validate the new feature and track whether it reduced engagement with the famously sticky platform.One of those users was then-16-year-old Chase Nasca, who subsequently died by suicide. Olivia Carville, Bloomberg Businessweek investigative reporter, has been on the story.