Bytes: Week in Review — Google antitrust verdict, Trump's crypto stake, and AI angst
The Trump family took their digital token public this week. Plus, artificial intelligence is generating angst in Silicon Valley.But first, Google’s antitrust case over its search business ended this week with a punishment far short of what the government sought. Google could have been forced to sell off its Chrome browser or stop paying Apple and others to make it the default search engine. Instead, a federal judge said all the company has to do is share some of its search data with rivals.Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, a reporter at The Information, to discuss all of this and more.
Axon, a company that makes policing equipment, developed new software called Draft One that takes recordings from police cameras and uses artificial intelligence to summarize them into incident reports. Many police departments trying out the tool are not disclosing that they're using AI to write reports, according to a Mother Jones investigation. That potentially leaves both prosecutors and defense attorneys in the blind — despite safeguards Axon built into its software to prevent this very scenario, and to remove errors or AI hallucinations. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with investigative journalist Tekendra Parmar who reported the story for Mother Jones.
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Can you buy wins in sports or the AI talent wars?
Big Tech companies have been in an all-out bidding war to capture top AI researchers and engineers. Companies like Meta have reportedly been offering compensation packages in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They're the kind of eye-watering sums you usually only hear about in pro sports. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino explores whether this strategy of collecting expensive superstars will pay off for Big Tech firms looking to win the AI race.
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Is grieving with AI a healthy way to cope?
More and more people are using generative AI to “resurrect” deceased loved ones. There are tools that can turn an old photograph into a short animation or create entire "AI clones" trained on old audio, video or written diaries. These technological advancements are taking memorializing the dead to a whole new level, but is it healthy? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to psychologist Elaine Kasket, who specializes in mental health issues and technology, for some answers.
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"Organs on a chip" help researchers better understand diseases like endometriosis
Endometriosis is a condition in which the tissue that typically lines the uterus grows outside of it instead, often causing intense pain and infertility. MIT researchers are studying that living tissue on plastic chips in the lab, with bioengineer Linda Griffith leading the effort.
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