Episódios

  • Taylor Swift vs. AI
    May 1 2026

    This week, Taylor Swift trademarked her voice and image in what appears to be a bid to protect against AI misuse. Plus, a Japanese airline is experimenting with humanoid robots to help with baggage.


    But first, Google landed a deal with the Pentagon to let its AI models be used for classified work. A Google spokesperson told us in a statement that the company is proud to be providing its services for national security and that it believes AI should not be used for “domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight."


    We talked with Maria Curi at Axios about how Google’s deal compares to ones the Department of Defense has with other AI companies.


    Check out our YouTube page to watch more episodes of “Tech Bytes.”

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    12 minutos
  • Middle East tensions are putting tech supply chains under pressure
    Apr 30 2026

    The war with Iran has upended supply chains including for materials that are critical to building the electronics we use everyday, such as a certain kind of thermoplastic, copper, and helium. We are now dealing with shortages of all of them. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Jeff Janukowicz, an analyst with the research firm IDC, to learn more.

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    8 minutos
  • How this startup is bringing nuclear power to AI data centers
    Apr 29 2026

    There's been renewed interest in nuclear power in recent years, thanks in part to demand from tech companies in search of reliable energy to power their AI data centers.


    The startup Kairos Power has jumped on this opportunity. Its nuclear reactors are cooled by molten salt. They also use golf-ball sized nuclear fuel, instead of uranium rods cooled by water used by traditional reactors.


    Mike Laufer, co-founder and CEO of Kairos, says their reactors a bit like an upside down gumball machine.


    The company just started construction on its first power plant, located in eastern Tennessee, called Hermes 2. It will supply energy to the utility in the area, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and specifically to Google to power its data centers.


    Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Laufer to learn more.

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    9 minutos
  • Introducing the world’s largest Math Olympiad database
    Apr 28 2026

    The International Math Olympiad is a yearly competition for students, most of them high school age, who compete to solve six difficult math problems. They're chosen from a pool of math problems submitted by different countries that participate in the competition.


    The problems that don't make the cut previously have mostly just been lost; there was no one place you could go to find them.


    But now a team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has gathered over 30,000 of those problems together in one dataset so both humans and AI models can look through and study them.


    Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Mark Hamilton, a visiting researcher at MIT CSAIL who has been part of the work to gather problems. He’s also a Research Scientist at Google's DeepMind laboratory.

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    8 minutos
  • What a reform to Section 702 could look like
    Apr 27 2026

    Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, allows government agencies to collect information about foreign nationals located abroad. That surveillance can happen without a warrant and the government can order email providers to turn over any messages of a particular foreigner, including those with a U.S. citizen.


    Section 702 is set to expire this week. President Donald Trump has called for its extension, but there are Congressional lawmakers in both parties who oppose the kind of surveillance the law allows for. Elizabeth Goitein at the Brennan Center for Justice has testified before Congress advocating for reform of the law. She says right now it lets agencies search through Americans’ sensitive data.

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    5 minutos
  • Bytes: Week in Review — Apple’s new CEO, Meta's latest AI play, and Roblox's safety updates
    Apr 24 2026

    This week, Meta is reportedly laying off 10% of its workers. But in the meantime, it's also capturing their mouse clicks to train its AI models. Plus, Roblox settles with states over child safety concerns.


    But first, Apple's CEO is stepping down. The company announced this week that CEO Tim Cook is moving on from that role after about 15 years. His successor is John Ternus, a senior vice president of hardware engineering at the company. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, a columnist at The Information, about all these headlines for this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

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    14 minutos
  • Anti-AI data center sentiment is becoming a political issue
    Apr 23 2026

    Lawmakers around the U.S. are moving to restrict data center development. Maine, for example, recently passed what's being called the country's first statewide ban on data centers. The measure would prohibit building any new data centers until late 2027.


    As of this taping, Maine's governor, Janet Mills, was reportedly still undecided on whether she'd sign the bill. And 13 other states are also considering bans on data center development, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.


    Tony Pipa of the Brookings Institution talks more about how much of the pushback has to do with the speed with which data centers are popping up.

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    7 minutos
  • When do tech companies need to be consistently profitable?
    Apr 22 2026

    The social media company Snap recently announced it’s laying off about 1,000 workers — 16% of its employees. The company said these changes will reduce costs by more than half a billion dollars and help establish a path to net income profitability.


    This move comes after one of Snap's investors, Irenic Capital Management, wrote a public letter to the company outlining what it needs to do to “save” the company and cut costs.


    Snap has been a public company for nine years. It's had just a few non-consecutive profitable quarters. Sarah Kunst, a general partner at the venture capital firm Cleo Capital, explains more about when a company has to be consistently profitable.

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    10 minutos