Marketplace Tech

Voters have made their dissatisfaction quite clear with the tech status quo. And it sounds like the Democrats gearing up to take power in the House and Senate might actually do something about that. Plus, Big Tech spent big on races in this election, but didn't get a whole lot of bang for their buck. But first, a tech issue that was actually on the ballot: data centers. More than 40 jurisdictions...

OpenAI's new teen-appropriate version of ChatGPT may not be living up to its promises, according to an independent evaluation. The new mode is supposed to have stronger guardrails for sensitive topics, automatic parental alerts and a study tool that won't just give kids the answers to their homework. But the nonprofit Common Sense Media evaluated the tool and found it poses "unacceptable risks." T...

This story includes references to suicide, self-harm and mental health crises. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline . Available 24/7. A growing number of lawsuits accuse AI companies of harming users — alleging chatbots have encouraged self-harm, reinforced delusions, or failed to recognize signs of distress....

Interpol estimates scam losses totaled almost $500 billion globally last year. In many cases, it’s not just one bad actor but an entire network of scammers. And Cambodia has become a major hub for the industry. Last year, the U.S. issued more than 100 sanctions tied to fraud operations in the country. Reporter Leila Goldstein takes us behind the scenes of an abandoned scam compound in southeast Ca...

In September, OpenAI said that its models had solved one of math's famous Millennium Prize problems. Then, the lab dropped more than 700 papers tackling another 400 complex problems with more breakthroughs to come. These developments have caused something of an existential crisis in the math world. But Alex Kontorovich, a professor of math at Rutgers University, says they're a gift. More on this:...

Anthropic formally filed to go public this week and about a third of its paperwork is dedicated to potential risks — including political ones. We'll get into it on today's “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Plus, it’s a big week for big tech earnings: Microsoft pleased investors with a more restrained approach to AI spending, but still announced it’s offering buyouts to 60,000 employees. Meanwhile, Goo...

Consumer electronics and AI data centers need memory chips. But there are only a handful of companies in the world that make them. The surge in demand has caused memory shortages and price spikes for everything, including our all-important smartphones. Gerrit Schneemann is principal analyst at Counterpoint Research, which recently reported global phone prices have jumped by an average of 15%, and...

Halloween haunts have long relied on a little technical wizardry to bring their terrors to life —from lighting and animatronics to digital decorations. But these days, the technology behind those scares is getting increasingly sophisticated, and the spectacles more elaborate. We got a glimpse behind the scenes at the Hollywood Haunted Hayride, put on by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment in Los Angele...

Urgent concerns about losing control of AI have burst into the national conversation recently after the OpenAI hack of the open-source AI platform Hugging Face , the high-profile resignation of an Anthropic researcher , and other AI insiders sharing alarmingly high p(doom) figures — that is, the probability that AI kills us all. An event listing for a picnic beckoned people in the AI scene to spen...

Donna Guthrie had obituaries on her mind after her brother passed away in May. She recently celebrated her 80th birthday and started wondering how she might be remembered. So, she asked ChatGPT to write her obituary. It's the topic of today's “ Uncanny AI ,” our regular segment about our sometimes unsettling experiences with this tech. Plus, we asked Michelle Huang, a technologist and artist who e...

Apple's long-awaited iPhone Duo launched this week, and everyone has the same question: can you see a crease? Joanna Stern, founder of media company New Things, has been putting it to the test for her newsletter. She's tried apps, phone calls, cameras. But, she really wanted to know if the much-hyped folding phone would stand the test of time. She hired a hardware designer to build a machine that...

At Alaska News, you can find stories about the new summer sales tax rate in Juneau , a man ticketed for killing a bull moose out of season and about 20 other hyperlocal items a day. Much of the coverage is generated by an AI agent called Walter, as in Cronkite, the famous newsman. Nathaniel Herz, a human executive editor at the local alt weekly the Anchorage Press , wanted to learn more. So, he as...

When Bumble went public five years ago, the dating app known for being a friendlier place for women was valued at $14 billion. But the dating business, the tech industry and the stock market have changed a lot since then. And shares declined 90% from their peak. Now, the company is going private again. It's being acquired by private equity firm Ithaca Holdings, with two new CEOs taking the helm. S...

More and more people are turning to chatbots to search the web. But researchers are finding these systems can be gamed. We wanted to understand more about how AI chatbot search results can be manipulated, so we called up someone who studies these things for a living: Xiyang Hu, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, where he leads the Generative Learning and Augmented Decision Lab. Mo...

You might say the 2026 midterms are the first big AI election. The technology has become a key political issue, it’s a significant source of fundraising and it’s also helping power campaign ads. Plus, generative AI is being looked to by voters as a tool for sorting through the deluge of information, especially in places like California where there are 14 ballot propositions to research. Marketplac...

It's been a bit of a rocky week in tech markets, particularly for companies heavy on debt. We'll get into it on this week’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Plus, the king of streaming, Netflix, announces plans to cut around 6% of its staff. And on Wall Street, AI skills could be your ticket to a raise. Here to discuss is Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital. More on th...

Europe may have weeks of paid vacation, quaint walkable cities and incredible, affordable local wines. But there's something the continent lacks (besides ice cubes and AC): shiny, new Big Tech products. Take Apple's revamped Siri, Meta's Muse or OpenAI's competing AI assistant dots. They've all launched in the U.S., and in some cases other markets. But largely, not in the EU, which has a network o...

New AI features are quickly rolling out in the apps we use every day — from Google’s AI-generated search summaries to Meta’s Muse agent. But there's a big gap between what these tools can do and what most consumers find useful. The vast majority use free versions of chatbots, for searching the web, not running swarms of agents to manage their lives. Kate Moran, a user experience researcher at Gibb...

An increasing number of schools are offering classes and even majors and minors in the art of influencing. Charlie Randall is a senior pursuing a double major in theater and content creation at Arkansas Tech University, which launched their digital content creation degree about three years ago. He hopes to use the degrees to break into voice acting.

There's a growing market for AI models that promise to recreate the experience of interacting with a lost loved one. They're sometimes called generative ghosts, and they're the topic for today's “ Uncanny AI ,” our series about sometimes-unsettling experiences with this technology. Jack Manning, a Ph. D. candidate studying information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been looking...

President Donald Trump named a new superhero-sounding AI task force this week dubbed the “Super Intelligence Force.” It's led by Jay Clayton, the new AI Czar and also director of national intelligence. Plus, Democrats in the Senate blocked a bill to address data center energy costs ahead of the midterm elections, and a new poll shows Americans are not feeling too great about how our leaders in gov...

It started when Kalie Robins posted an Instagram video with her kid. Meta's built in AI chatbot, Muse, started prompting her to ask questions about her daughters and personal life, which sent her down a social-media-privacy rabbit hole. Robins took to her feed — at the time, with only a few hundred followers — to share her experience. “It starts pulling completely separate information for each of...

OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife recently backed out of a planned $25 million donation to Leading the Future, an artificial intelligence-focused political action committee. Brockman said the PAC had become a “distraction” at OpenAI. But only after the executive had already given an initial $25 million. AI-focused PACs are spending big to shape competing visions for AI policy in the midt...

The AI industry appears to be getting more serious about safety. Leaders of top companies signed a non-binding agreement at the White House Sept. 30, laying out standards and best practices for responsible development of advanced AI. OpenAI delayed the release of its latest model due to safety concerns . And Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the sector to slow things down and "pace the frontier...

We've been hearing a lot about the threat of out-of-control of AI in recent weeks; mostly, from the people making the technology. There was the Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon, who publicly quit and kicked off the whole discussion. Others, including that company’s CEO Dario Amodei, chimed in with alarming appraisals of AI's existential risk. Making sense of all this as an outsider can sometimes fee...