Marketplace Tech With Molly Wood

This week, Meta is reportedly laying off 10% of its workers. But in the meantime, it's also capturing their mouse clicks to train its AI models. Plus, Roblox settles with states over child safety concerns. But first, Apple's CEO is stepping down. The company announced this week that CEO Tim Cook is moving on from that role after about 15 years. His successor is John Ternus, a senior vice president of hardware engineering at the company. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, a columnist at The Information, about all these headlines for this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

Lawmakers around the U.S. are moving to restrict data center development. Maine, for example, recently passed what's being called the country's first statewide ban on data centers. The measure would prohibit building any new data centers until late 2027.As of this taping, Maine's governor, Janet Mills, was reportedly still undecided on whether she'd sign the bill. And 13 other states are also considering bans on data center development, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Tony Pipa of the Brookings Institution talks more about how much of the pushback has to do with the speed with which data centers are popping up.

The social media company Snap recently announced it’s laying off about 1,000 workers — 16% of its employees. The company said these changes will reduce costs by more than half a billion dollars and help establish a path to net income profitability.This move comes after one of Snap's investors, Irenic Capital Management, wrote a public letter to the company outlining what it needs to do to “save” the company and cut costs.Snap has been a public company for nine years. It's had just a few non-consecutive profitable quarters. Sarah Kunst, a general partner at the venture capital firm Cleo Capital, explains more about when a company has to be consistently profitable.

The Wayback Machine is a project of the Internet Archive. It sends out web crawlers to take snapshots of the internet, creating a digital library of web pages. But now, some news publications are blocking its crawlers over concerns that AI companies will access the Wayback Machine’s publicly available archive and then train their AI models with the content.Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes talked about this with Andrew Deck at Harvard's Nieman Lab.

California became the first state to regulate embodied carbon in its building code. That’s changing the construction industry even beyond the state border. More than a third of planet-warming emissions come from buildings and construction. Marketplace’s The rest of it is what’s called embodied carbon. That’s the emissions that it took to make the steel, concrete, glass and insulation, and put them all together. Caleigh Wells looked into what California’s new regulations could mean for builders in this episode of Marketplace Tech, hosted by Stephanie Hughes.

This week, Spotify is letting its users buy physical books. Plus, Amazon acquires the satellite service provide Globalstar. But first, state lawmakers in Illinois are considering a bill that says developers of large AI models can’t be held liable for critical harms caused by those models, as long as the developer doesn't intentionally or recklessly cause the harm and has published a safety protocol on its website.A representative from OpenAI testified in favor of the bill; meanwhile, Wired reported this week that Anthropic is pushing for either major changes to the legislation, or for it to be killed completely. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, about all these headlines for this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

The share of older workers is on the decline — about 37% of people age 55 and above are now active in the labor force. About a decade ago, it was around 40%.The pandemic chased some older workers out, and others can simply afford to retire. Another factor that's causing some to exit? The emergence of artificial intelligence. Learning how to interact with it as a tool, maybe even as a colleague, seems like a headache to some. So, they’re choosing retirement instead.Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Weber, who’s been covering the phenomenon.

Routers, computers, web cameras — they all connect to the internet. And they can be infected with malicious software that lets someone else take over. The device becomes a bot, essentially.A group of these devices networked together then becomes a botnet. And these botnets can then be used for nefarious purposes, like distributed denial of service attacks, without the device owners even knowing about it.Cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs recently wrote about several large botnets including one called Kimwolf that compromised more than three million devices.

State governments invest their money a lot like a person might. Some treasuries, some mutual funds, a dash of corporate bonds, all intended to grow over time. Now, some states are looking to cryptocurrency as an investment. In 2025, at least nineteen states considered laws allowing some state funds to be invested in digital assets. Three states — Texas, New Hampshire, and Arizona — actually passed laws around this, according to a review by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes talked about this interest from states with Liz Farmer, senior officer at Pew Charitable Trusts, who explained why crypto is appealing to some state investors.

Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes was shopping recently with her seven-year-old who was drawn to a “Relaxolotl,” a tea infuser shaped like an axolotl. And it had a label: “designed in Rhode Island, by people.” Genuine Fred makes the relaxolotl. President Jason Amendolara told “Marketplace Tech” the company adopted the saying over a decade ago, before artificial intelligence was really in the conversation. It was meant to signal there were real humans behind the ideas. But now, the phrase has taken on new meaning. Genuine Fred does use AI as a tool, but Amendolara says people are still at the center of its design process. That made us wonder: Could human involvement be highlighted more by brands in the future? Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes discussed that with New York Institute of Technology professor Colleen Kirk, who has studied how people respond to marketing messages created by AI.

This week, a Wisconsin city votes to restrict future data center development. Plus, the astronauts on Artemis II take their journey to social media. But first, Anthropic announced this week it has a new AI model called Claude Mythos Preview.The company says it’s extremely good at finding security vulnerabilities. So good that Anthropic is not releasing the model to the general public. Instead, it is granting access to a group of over 40 companies and tech organizations, a collaboration called Project Glasswing.Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Joanna Stern, founder of the media company New Things, to discuss all these topics and more.

For years, consumers have worried about how the private sector — namely, big tech — handles their personal data. Now a new survey from the Center for Democracy & Technology suggests a large majority are also concerned about how the federal government uses their data.Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic technology at CDT, to learn more.

As humans have integrated artificial intelligence into their daily lives, there is growing concern that AI is doing the bulk of the thinking.According to the paper: “Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender,” by Gideon Nave and Steven Shaw of the Wharton School of Business, they’ve deemed it a “cognitive surrender.”“Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Shaw, a postdoctoral researcher at Wharton, about their findings and the possible impacts for the future human cognition.

In the U.S., battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars have been more expensive than their gasoline-powered counterparts, costing about $8,000 more on average. Experts say EVs are poised to achieve price parity with internal-combustion engine vehicles in just a few years though, because the single costliest part of an EV — the battery that powers it — is getting cheaper.

Four months after Australia’s landmark law that banned all minors under the age of 16 from creating or owning social media accounts, the California legislature is trying to follow suit.But free speech advocates worry that these laws will infringe on the First Amendment rights of many kids and even adults. However, Aaron Mackey, the free speech and transparency litigation director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, says there is growing sentiment to regulate and protect children from the harms of social media. “Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Mackey about how we can still protect kids and consumers without restricting free speech.

On this week’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” Big Tech operations in the Middle East from companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft could be targeted by Iran. And California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a new AI executive order with a not-so-thinly veiled message to the Trump administration. But first, Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX reportedly took a first step towards a highly anticipated initial public offering this week. The company made a confidential filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that potentially puts it on track to go public at a more than $2 trillion valuation in June. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at WIRED, to learn more.

It is day 34 of the internet blackout in Iran. But while it is the longest in their history, it does not mean that Iranians are without internet.In Iran, there is the global internet, and then the intranet, or National Information Network, which is controlled by the Iranian government. Right now, only the NIN is available, and Iranians have been digitally isolated from the outside world, according to Amir Rashidi, the director for digital rights and security at the Miaan Group, a human rights nonprofit.“Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Rashidi about the current status of internet connection in Iran.

In rare verdicts, juries in New Mexico and Los Angeles sided against multiple Big Tech companies last week.In Los Angeles, Meta and Youtube were found liable for intentionally creating addictive products, while in New Mexico, Meta was found to have violated state law and misled consumers on child safety guardrails.The result of these two cases will ripple to the thousands of pending cases against Big Tech companies across the country and could impact future legislation. “Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Eric Goldman, co-director at Santa Clara University’s High Tech Law Institute, about the verdicts.

The promise of artificial intelligence is that it will take on all the boring tasks we don’t want to do and free us up to do the fun, high-level work. But managing the AI tools can be its own kind of work. A new study from the Boston Consulting Group found that when workers have to closely monitor and manage their AI tools can cause cognitive exhaustion, which they dubbed “AI brain fry.”Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Matt Kropp, managing director and senior partner at BCG and one of the co-authors of this new study.

In baseball, calling balls and strikes is a kind of art form. Now, a little more science is being added to the artistry. Major League Baseball has introduced the automated ball-strike, or ABS, challenge system. If a batter, catcher, or pitcher disagrees with the human umpire's call, he can tap his hat. Then, the ABS system uses cameras to say whether the pitch was indeed in the batter's strike zone. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Nola Agha, professor of sports management at the University of San Francisco, to learn more.