Vibe coding is having a moment. The buzzy new phrase was coined earlier this year by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy to describe his process of programming by prompting AI. It's been embraced by tech professionals and amateurs alike. Google , Microsoft and Apple have or are developing their own AI-assisted coding platforms while vibe coding startups like Cursor are raking in funding. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Clarence Huang, vice president of technology at the fin...
May 08, 2025•8 min
E-commerce sites like Temu and Shein might not be quite as cheap as they were a week ago now that tariffs are kicking in on even small-dollar imports. But these platforms known for selling low-cost goods from China have also sought to cut costs on delivery. They contract in the U.S. with companies like UniUni, which promises to dispatch packages for $3 or less — well below the industry standard. How UniUni delivers on those low rates is the subject of a recent investigation by reporter Theo Wayt...
May 07, 2025•8 min
In an internal memo to his staff in April, Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman wrote that “AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it's coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call. It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person - AI is coming for you.” Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kaufman, about his "radical candor" on the subject and how he wanted to spur them to think creatively about how ...
May 06, 2025•8 min
People are using chatbots in all kinds of ways — to search the web, get help with an online purchase, sometimes even for counseling. But there's a lot about this human-AI interaction we don't fully understand. Do these chatbots effectively combat loneliness or worsen social isolation? The answer — so far — is complicated, according to Cathy Fang, a second-year PhD student at MIT Media Lab who, along with researchers from OpenAI, studied how chatbot use affects human social and emotional wellbein...
May 05, 2025•8 min
Meta launches its own, dedicated AI app that could go head to head with the likes of ChatGPT. Plus, a massive data leak put California Blue Shield members' most sensitive medical details at risk. And how is the health tech investment sector navigating all the recent economic uncertainty from the Trump Administration’s latest trade war? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino and Christina Farr, managing director at Manatt Health, explore all these topics on this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week i...
May 02, 2025•12 min
When President Jimmy Carter died late last year, the foundation that runs Wikipedia noticed something unusual: the flood of interest in the late president created a content bottleneck, slowing load times for about an hour. Wikipedia is built to handle spikes in traffic like this, according to the Wikimedia Foundation, but it's also dealing with a surge of bots scraping the site to train AI models, and clogging up its servers in the process, the organization’s chief product and technology officer...
May 01, 2025•9 min
Canada's liberal party and its leader Mark Carney are set to remain in control after the country held federal elections Monday. They were the first since Canada adopted the Online News Act in 2023, which requires online content providers — like social media platforms — to negotiate some sort of "fair" payment to news publishers in exchange for using their content. They can also do what Meta did — block news from their Facebook and Instagram platforms altogether. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Cari...
Apr 30, 2025•7 min
One of the most powerful tools in the fight against climate change is the money sitting in investment portfolios - especially the trillions of dollars invested on behalf of public retirees. That’s money that could continue to fund fossil fuel development, or help pay for climate solutions instead. New York City has implemented an ambitious Net Zero plan for its public pensions. That plan includes divesting from some fossil fuel companies and investing billions of dollars in climate solutions. On...
Apr 29, 2025•4 min
Leyla Isik, a professor of cognitive science at Johns Hopkins University, is also a senior scientist on a new study looking at how good AI is at reading social cues. She and her research team took short videos of people doing things — two people chatting, two babies on a playmat, two people doing a synchronized skate routine — and showed them to human participants. After, they were asked them questions like, are these two communicating with each other? Are they communicating? Is it a positive or...
Apr 28, 2025•6 min
It's the last Friday in April and it's time for Marketplace Tech Bytes Week in Review. This week, we'll talk about how the Federal Trade Commission is suing Uber over its subscription service. Plus, how the VC world is navigating the uncertainty created by the trade war. But first, a nonprofit pivot is facing some challenges. Open AI, the maker of ChatGPT was founded about a decade ago as a nonprofit research lab. It's now looking to restructure as a for-profit — specifically, a public benefit c...
Apr 25, 2025•13 min
TikTok is going to be testing a new crowd-sourced fact-checking system called Footnotes. It’s seems similar to the Community Notes systems already in use on other social media, such as X and Facebook. TikTok is also keeping its current fact-checking systems in place. The way these community systems generally work is, say someone makes a post stating "whales are the biggest fish out there." Another user could add a note saying "actually, whales are mammals, and here's a source with more informati...
Apr 24, 2025•7 min
The use of algorithmic software in setting residential rents has come under scrutiny in recent years. In 2024, the Joe Biden administration sued real estate company RealPage, alleging that its algorithm, which aggregates and analyzes private data on the housing market, enables landlords to collude in pricing and stifles competition. There's no word yet on what the second Donald Trump administration's Justice Department will do with this case. But in the meantime, some cities are banning the use ...
Apr 23, 2025•8 min
We've sometimes wished we could have our own Wendy Rhodes, the performance coach at the hedge fund on the TV show “Billions.” Most workplaces, however, aren't bringing in billions and can't afford a Wendy. But an upskilling platform called Multiverse uses artificial intelligence to provide personalized, on-the-job guidance. Its AI coach, Atlas, helps workers expand their abilities and keep themselves relevant in an economy that makes skills obsolete faster than ever before, says Ujjwal Singh, ch...
Apr 22, 2025•11 min
Developers of mobile apps have "room for improvement" in making their platforms fully accessible for disabled users, according to a new report from the software company ArcTouch and the digital research platform Fable. It looked at fifty popular apps and assessed them for features that improve accessibility like screen reading, text size adjustability, voice controls and multiple screen orientations. The apps were tested by disabled users who reported a poor or failing experience almost three-qu...
Apr 21, 2025•9 min
NVIDIA gets caught up in the trade war, the titans of Twitter/X debate intellectual property law — and the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust case against Meta kicks off in court. We're digging into all of it on today's Tech Bytes: Week in Review. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, about what we learned in week one of Meta's monopoly trial.
Apr 18, 2025•10 min
Flying cars have been a staple of science-fiction visions of the future for ages. Perhaps most famously in “Back to the Future II.” The film may have overshot the mark a bit with Doc and Marty McFly navigating full-on air highways in 2015. But Utah is pushing for the technology to take off by 2034, when the state hosts the Olympic and paralympic winter games. We're not exactly talking about flying Delorians or vehicles you'd recognize as a car, but rather small, lightweight aircraft for travelin...
Apr 17, 2025•4 min
China is responsible for most of the world’s processing of rare earth metals and minerals, but its new export restrictions have raised the stakes for U.S. efforts to build its own supply chain and processing industry. Barbara Arnold, a professor of mining engineering at Penn State, says there are options, but they require time, development and investment.
Apr 16, 2025•6 min
Surveillance technology like automated license plate readers has become commonplace in policing. They've made it easier to locate stolen vehicles and track suspects, but they've also raised concerns about civil liberties. Cardinal News Executive Editor Jeff Schwaner took a 300-mile drive through the state to see how often his car would be recorded. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Schwaner about his experience and issues related to privacy and who has access to the data....
Apr 15, 2025•8 min
One area where artificial intelligence has been swiftly adopted is software coding. Google even boasted last year that more than a quarter of its code was generated by AI. But the technology is also generating challenges to the traditional technical job interview, where candidates are given programming problems as a way to assess their skills. And lately it’s become apparent that a lot of applicants are using AI to give themselves a boost, according to recent reporting from Business Insider's Am...
Apr 14, 2025•8 min
The tariff rollercoaster has created a lot of uncertainty in the tech industry. We're digging into how its playing out for makers of consumer tech, e-commerce platforms and AI. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, about all these topics for this week’s Tech Bytes.
Apr 11, 2025•10 min
Etsy, the online marketplace known for selling one-of-a-kind handmade items, is hoping that artificial intelligence can boost sales of those crafty creations. The site has been selling less stuff and recently announced a plan to double down on high-quality and unique merchandise over cheap and mass-produced. Now, it's launching AI-curated product collections, based on trends like island luxe or maximalism. They build on the work of human trendspotters, using AI to scan the site and tag thousands...
Apr 10, 2025•8 min
After President Donald Trump's launched his “Liberation Day” tariff agenda, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite stock index suffered its biggest plunge since March 2020. The so-called Magnificent 7 — Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla — lost a combined $1.8 trillion of market value in two days. The tariff-induced downturn in business conditions is likely to be temporary, according to Daniel Newman, CEO and chief analyst at the Futurum Group, a tech research and advisory firm. N...
Apr 09, 2025•10 min
Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. The company started as a small software startup co-founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in an Albuquerque, New Mexico, garage. It went on to revolutionize personal computing, business productivity and now — it hopes — artificial intelligence with its big investment in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Microsoft has set about integrating the technology across its products, and it recently unveiled a slew of upgrades to its Copilot AI assistant. Th...
Apr 08, 2025•10 min
Rising demand for electricity, largely to power the artificial intelligence boom, has stirred a resurgence in nuclear energy. Older plants like Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania are being brought out of retirement, but there’s also investment in smaller-scale reactors with different designs. The fresh interest in nuclear generation has also renewed discussion about how to build these facilities ethically, in other words, with an approach that’s sensitive to the needs of the community and the wor...
Apr 07, 2025•10 min
OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT — keeps raising more money, this time in a $40 billion round led by SoftBank. We’ll get into the strings attached in Marketplace “Tech Bytes — Week in Review.” Plus, what’s going on with Tesla’s sales slump? And how much is its polarizing CEO, Elon Musk, to blame? But first, the clock is ticking on a TikTok sale. The extended deadline, which may or may not be a real deadline according to President Donald Trump, is coming Saturday. As of this episode’s recording, the...
Apr 04, 2025•10 min
There’s been mounting concern in recent years about the harms of social media use for kids. The sites can be addictive, ripe for cyberbullying and contribute to increased rates of body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression. The growing evidence has led at least a dozen states to pass laws attempting to restrict access to online platforms for kids. The Kids Off Social Media Act, a bipartisan bill in the Senate, would bar minors under 13 from social media. But despite the risks, there can be benefits...
Apr 03, 2025•6 min
Registration for the H-1B visa lottery closed last week. The tech industry has long been the biggest beneficiary of this program for specialized workers. But uncertainty has been spreading due to the Trump administration’s restrictive stance on immigration policy. Even legal immigrants have felt the crackdown. It’s led some companies to advise their H-1B holders not to leave the country for fear that they could be barred from returning. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Gerrit De Vy...
Apr 02, 2025•12 min
Yes, Napster is still alive and kicking. The peer-to-peer file-sharing company that became synonymous with music piracy in the early 2000s was bought by a company called Infinite Reality Labs last week for about $207 million. It’s the latest in a string of attempts to revive the brand. After it was shut down by the courts in 2001 and declared bankruptcy, Napster returned as a music subscription service, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens and now a virtual reality-metaverse destination. Market...
Apr 01, 2025•6 min
Chinese President Xi Jinping is pushing for the country to be a global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030 as Beijing competes with Washington to gain an edge in advanced technology. The release of AI chatbot DeepSeek, which stunned industry experts in January, gave a boost to China’s hopes of catching up to the U.S. despite restrictions on the advanced chips used to power AI.
Mar 31, 2025•5 min
AI company Anthropic recently added web search to its chatbot Claude. It joins other artificial intelligence tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT in delivering one clear answer to a web search query instead of pages and pages of links. Plus, 23andMe declared bankruptcy. So what’s gonna happen to all that genetic data? But first — the Signal group chat heard round the world. A Trump administration official appears to have inadvertently invited a journalist into a conversation about sensitive nationa...
Mar 28, 2025•10 min
