Marketplace Tech With Molly Wood

Chipmaker NVIDIA reported quarterly earnings this week and they were strong - better than expected, even. NVIDIA's sales rose last quarter by over 50% though its data center business was a little softer than expected. So why did share prices fall? Plus, OpenAI says it's updating ChatGPT to better handle mental distress. And Spotify is sliding into our DMs. The music streamer has launched a messaging system on its platform. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, about all these headlines for this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

President Donald Trump called out countries trying to regulate U.S. tech companies earlier this week, warning they could face new tariffs. The White House has struck a provisional trade deal with the European Union, but tensions remain over the bloc's sweeping tech laws, like the Digital Services Act, which requires platforms to moderate illegal content and disinformation.

Job growth in the economy has slowed, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed are growing. It makes the indignities of the modern hiring process even more frustrating for those in the market. Job-seekers are navigating a gauntlet of automated application systems set up to whittle down the hundreds — sometimes thousands — of applicants. Only for many to never hear from a human. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino has more from the front lines of algorithmic application hell. 

Across Europe, postal services are grappling with declining letter volumes, amid a rise in digitalization. In Demark, where the decline has been particularly steep, the publicly-owned national postal service, PostNord, is bringing an end to 400 years of letter deliveries, to focus solely on parcels from 2026. And while a private firm will step into the gap, letters are a shrinking business. So as digitalization grows, do letters have a future? The BBC’s Adrienne Murray reports from the Danish capital with more details.

A survey of about 1,500 workers showed AI has been a useful tool for repetitive work. But some respondents want more — sometimes, more than the technology is capable of.In this episode, Marketplace’s Meghan Mccarty Carino speaks with Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson about the disconnect between workers' wants and AI's current role in the workplace.

On this week’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” Meta is under scrutiny on Capitol Hill after an investigation revealed troubling policies about how the company's chatbots can interact with children. Plus, the White House has officially joined TikTok, despite a looming deadline next month in the on-again-off-again effort to force the app's Chinese owners to divest or face a nationwide ban. But first, the Trump Administration itself is looking to claim a 10% equity stake in a different tech company - the chipmaker Intel. That stake would be in exchange for the grant money it was promised under the Biden Administration's CHIPS act. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to learn more.

Last month, a band called The Velvet Sundown surged in popularity on Spotify with its 70s inflected rock. Yeah, it was all generated by AI. Synthetic music is getting better and better, leaving a lot of human artists concerned that their original work could be used to feed the machines that might take their jobs. Now some researchers are fighting back with a tool called “MusicShield.”

Wearables aren't just for tracking steps or monitoring heart rates anymore. In AI-crazed Silicon Valley, a new crop of tech-enabled accessories has taken hold… and they could be listening to everything we say.

Marketplace’s Jennifer Pak recently attended the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. She asked Chinese AI firms what they think about the humans who might lose jobs to their AI products.

Esports is a multi-billion dollar industry, with players making millions by getting good at video games. But while traditional athletes, usually, retire into coaching, managing or being a pundit, what does an esports player do when they’ve hung up their controller? The BBC’s Will Chalk files this report from the U.K.

On today’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Perplexity AI has offered $34.5 billion to buy Alphabet's Chrome browser, despite the fact the tech giant hasn't said it's for sale. Plus, the reviews are in for OpenAI's highly anticipated GPT-5 model and they're kinda…mixed. But first, President Trump gave chipmakers Nvidia and AMD the green light to sell their less powerful semiconductors in China, in exchange for a 15% cut of sales revenue. The deal is already raising eyebrows and legal questions.

China’s labor market is known for being intense, especially in the tech sector. For years high profile tech workers have embraced the “996” schedule – that's 9am to 9pm six days a week.And recently, Silicon Valley startups have reportedly been leaning in to the “996” grind themselves. So now China is taking it up a notch.

Implementing AI in government agencies — where the public goes for things like food stamps and unemployment or disability benefits — could come with tradeoffs, according to a recent report by the Roosevelt Institute. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino sat down with Samantha Shorey, who authored that report on AI and public administration.

In recent years, the Transportation Security Administration has been piloting facial recognition at security checkpoints. But opting out of getting scanned can be complicated, according to a recent report from the non-profit Algorithmic Justice League. Joy Buolamwini is president of the organization and co-authored that report.

U.S.-based data centers are expanding at a fast pace, thanks largely to the boom in generative artificial intelligence software and cloud computing. But they’re also reportedly causing environmental issues and other problems for their neighbors. The BBC’s Michelle Fleury reports from Georgia on how the boom in data centers is raising environmental and sustainability concerns from the people who live near them.

OpenAI’s new open-weight models are designed to run on a local computer and can be fine tuned by users. A Tech Transparency Project report shows Google dropped more than 50 DEI-related groups from its funding list. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the company’s investment to build up its supply chain in the domestically. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, to discuss all of this and more.

Section 1033 of the Dodd Frank Act was finalized at the end of the Biden administration and would require banks to give consumers free access and control of their personal banking data.The rule had met legal pushback from the bank industry and the CFPB under the Trump administration planned to scrap it. But last week, the bureau said it will instead rewrite Section 1033.Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discusses the news with Rohit Chopra, who served as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when the rule was finalized in 2024.

Marketplace’s Alice Wilder has been waiting for a love letter from her boyfriend to arrive at her home since March. But it’s not just her — years of financial troubles and political turmoil mean that those still sending letters are experiencing longer delivery times. Today, Wilder explores how email has eaten into USPS’ letter traffic since 2008 and whether a romantic email could ever replace the intimacy of a handwritten letter.

A new national study from groups including Gallup and the non-profit Jobs for the Future found that relatively few employees have any influence over how new technology is adopted in the workplace. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Molly Blankenship, director of strategy and impact at Jobs for the Future, about what that means for employers and employees as technology like generative AI becomes more common in the office.

As autonomous vehicles become more common, cities are grappling with how to keep robotaxis from interfering with emergency response efforts. Julia Pickar reports on how Seattle is trying to fix this problem.