Marketplace Tech

The ongoing government shutdown has caused a lapse in the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act,a law that's key to protecting the nation against major cyberattacks. Plus, OpenAI this week made a huge investment in chipmaker AMD, the latest in a round of blockbuster deals. And Google said it will be updating its smart home devices with its advanced artificial intelligence, Gemini. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, about all these headlines on this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

A recent study of nearly 20,000 University of California, San Diego Health workers found cybersecurity training reduced the likelihood of successful phising attacks by just 2%. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Ariana Mirian, senior researcher at the cybersecurity firm Censys and co-author of the study, who explained that many workers are just not taking those training programs seriously enough.

AI slop is pointless content shared online like fake images and videos. A new study in the Harvard Business Review wants us to consider a variant: “workslop,” or AI-generated reports, emails and more that are sloppily crafted. The authors of the study say 40% of workers they surveyed have encountered workslop. And that's costing time and money. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with social psychologist and vice president of BetterUp Labs Kate Niederhoffer, who co-authored the study. She said workslop harms interpersonal work relationships, such as when one employee receives an AI written report from another.

The number of scams involving job postings and offers nearly tripled between 2020 and 2024, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The change translates to more than $500 million in reported losses. These scams have proliferated on legitimate job boards and you might have even received some via email or text message — fake recruiters reach out with “enticing” offers which are too good to be true. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Mark Anthony Dyson, author of the Job Scam Report newsletter, about how to spot scams.

Algorithms, which are just sets of instructions expressed in code, are harder to restrict than physical goods. But, as Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino reports, governments — including the U.S. — have long tried to prevent their export.

California passed a sweeping law setting up new AI safety rules this week. Meanwhile, YouTube settled a lawsuit brought by President Trump over account suspensions in the wake of the January 6 capitol riot. And an AI-generated “actor” stirred up controversy in Hollywood and pretty much everywhere else. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, to learn more about all these stories on this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

So far this year, LA defense tech companies have raised $4 billion in funding — more than double last year's haul, according to Los Angeles Times tech reporter Queenie Wong. She told Marketplace’s Nova Safo that venture capital firms are increasingly embracing military-focused tech.

The role of artificial intelligence in mental health care is an unsettled issue. States including Illinois, Utah, and Nevada limit or ban the use of AI for therapy. And researchers say such conversations can sometimes veer off course and even be dangerous. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Jenna Glover, chief clinical officer at the mental health care platform Headspace, which launched an AI assistant, Ebb, last year.

Colleges and universities are dealing with a growing problem of college admission essays being written by artificial intelligence. Rather than try to figure out which essays are AI-generated, some schools are turning to an alternative approach: Have students submit a video instead. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Anne Kim, senior editor at Washington Monthly magazine who recently wrote about this new strategy that's gaining steam in higher education.

Researchers at several universities tested how successful artificial intelligence can be at political persuasion, and found some AI chatbots were 40-50% more successful than a static message at getting people to change their views. And those views often stayed changed weeks later. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with David Rand, one of the researchers involved in the study who’s also a professor of information science and marketing management at Cornell University.

On this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Nova Safo speaks with Axios tech policy reporter Maria Curi about the details and lingering unknowns of President Donald Trump's new, $100,000 fee on incoming H-1B visas, how secret service authorities dismantled a network of more than 100,000 SIM cards that could have been used to disrupt communications on a massive scale and why French fans of the video game franchise “Tomb Raider” were up in arms over an AI-generated voice.

The EV tax credit expires September 30, and Americans have been rushing to take advantage before the deadline. But according to reporting from Marketplace’s Henry Epp, many dealerships are facing new friction when processing tax credits with the IRS. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Epp about the new IRS requirements and how dealerships are handling the changes.

Tony Pietrocola, president of the cybersecurity company AgileBlue, says cybercriminals are using artifical intelligence to generate deepfake video and audio calls, making the cyber threats more sophisticated and harder to catch.

There’s a race going on among tech firms — big and small — to join in the construction of what President Trump has dubbed the Golden Dome, a missile defense system similar to Israel’s Iron Dome. Tens of billions of dollars in military contracts are at stake. In fact, the total cost might be in the trillions and the project could stretch a decade. The technology and scale needed to make this all happen is, so far, largely unproven. And a whole host of tech firms are trying to show that they can help with the very complex undertaking. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Sheera Frenkel, reporter at the New York Times, about some of the tech that would make this whole system work.

Here’s cautionary tale for you, out of China, about a young woman who says she fell in love with an artificial intelligence chatbot. There have been well-publicized instances of people seeking companionship from chatbots and it leading to tragedy. In this instance, it caused heartbreak. The story involves the Chinese AI firm Deepseek which, earlier this year, launched a chatbot that's almost as good as its American rivals. Soon after the launch, a young woman began a conversation with that chatbot. Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak takes the story from there.

Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, joins Marketplace’s Nova Safo to break down all of these headlines. This episode was produced by Jesús Alvarado.

During the 2024 election, the cryptocurrency industry, including political action committees, accounted for nearly half of all of the corporate money going into the election, according to the watchdog group Public Citizen. That spending helped make Congress and the Trump administration more friendly to the crypto industry. Now, in the run-up to the midterms, the AI industry wants to replicate the crypto sector’s success. AI companies are amassing millions of dollars to help candidates that favor light regulation over AI. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Amrith Ramkumar, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal who recently wrote about this new pro-AI PAC network.

There’s a new class action lawsuit against Amazon Prime Video that’s once again elevating the question of ownership in the digital age: Who actually owns a movie, a song, a video game?Buy a physical copy, like a CD or DVD, and the answer is obvious. But buy a digital copy, and the answer gets very complicated. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at the University of Michigan and author of the book “The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy,” to learn about the current state of digital ownership.

A recent report put out by the tech giant claims its AI model consumes very little electricity and water for a single query. Emma Strubell, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technologies Institute, says that might not tell the whole story. This episode was produced by Jesús Alvarado.

Borders may be invisible to most shoppers, but for businesses, they often mean delays, extra costs, and reams of paperwork. And amid Trump’s trade war, global trade is now faster and more complex than ever. Those new pressures have sparked a boom in new "customs tech" companies promising to speed things up. The BBC’s Leanna Byrne reports.