Marketplace Tech With Molly Wood

Graphics processing units are essential to training and deploying artificial intelligence models, but they don’t come cheap. Big Tech companies like Meta, Microsoft and xAI have spent billions, amassing hundreds of thousands or even millions of them. For those without such deep pockets, access to this kind of computing power has gotten out of reach. Recently, the state of California launched an initiative called CalCompute to look into building its own public GPU cluster for startups and non-profit researchers to use. There are similar public compute pilots in New York state and at the federal level. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino tells us more.

Beijing is making it easier for global science and tech talent to visit or do business in China. Chinese officials opened a new K visa for graduates in science, technology, engineering and math to do research and start companies. This comes as the U.S. is cutting research grants and choking H-1B talent visas. Overseas, analysts say America’s loss could be China’s gain. But within China, there is a lot of anger over the K visa. Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak explains from Shanghai.

In his new book, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales writes ”in the early years of the internet, we were right to be bullish about people and the technology. Our capacity for social connection, community and cooperation can deliver amazing things. But the very same human nature can deliver atrocities.”Wales’s says he wrote this book to help combat a crisis of trust in society that is leading to the rise of authoritarianism. Marketplace’s Nova Safo asked him about the main lessons he learned from building Wikipedia into a highly-relied-upon source of information.

There are a lot of trending videos of people using face recognition tools to find cheating partners on dating apps. On TikTok, for example, videos have gone viral about people explaining how to use the tools like Cheater Buster, plus other staged videos of supposed partners catching their significant other on Tinder.Joseph Cox, tech reporter at 404 Media, looked into the sudden rise of these services and the risks they pose to privacy.

OpenAI released its new web browser, Atlas, in a bid to become our main conduit to the internet. Plus, we learned this week that Amazon may be planning to expand its use of robots and shrink its use of humans at its warehouses. And this week's disruptive outage at Amazon Web Services reminded us of just how much we depend on cloud computing, even for a good night's sleep. Marketplace’s Nova Safo discussed all of this with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at the venture firm Collab Capital, for this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

The promise has been titillating: quiet, electric taxis taking off vertically, floating over urban traffic. The consulting firm McKinsey says in a matter of five years, flying taxi fleets could rival airlines in size.Well, maybe. It's already taking longer than predicted. Marketplace’s Henry Epp has been tracking the industry and its evolution.

Artificial intelligence holds a lot of promise for tribal nations — as a force multiplier for hard-to-staff departments, a tool to better serve tribal citizens, and even to aid in the revitalization of Indigenous languages and culture.But, as with all applications of AI tools, data security concerns loom. And some nations are adopting the new technology quicker than others. For an overview, Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Savannah Peters, who covers Indigenous communities for Marketplace.

AI chatbot adoption is moving rapidly. We can already ask the tools to help us find local restaurants, a good deal on an item we’re looking to purchase. And soon, we’ll even be able to buy products from Walmart through ChatGPT. But as more people turn to AI for search and shopping, what happens to small businesses that traditionally depend on web searches and online reviews?

California has enacted a law requiring rideshare giants Uber and Lyft to collectively bargain with their drivers. Because the drivers are technically independent contractors, they otherwise would not have federally-protected labor rights like full-time employees. The new state law could be a game changer.Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Levi Sumagaysay, reporter at CalMatters, who helps sift through the details of the law.

AppleTV+ ditches the plus in its name. Plus, Walmart announced an e-commerce deal with OpenAI so customers can shop through ChatGPT.But first, Instagram announced what it called PG-13 settings for teen accounts. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to discuss all these topics and more.