Marketplace Tech

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.

The prediction market platform Kalshi announces new rules this week. Plus, the Department of Labor introduces an AI literacy course. But first, a jury in Los Angeles this week found that Meta and YouTube were negligent in what’s being called a landmark case.

The social media companies were accused of intentionally designing their platforms to be addictive, which caused harm to a young user’s mental health. The companies were ordered to pay $6 million in damages — and they’ve told media outlets they disagree with the verdict and are exploring their legal options.

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.”

It's been two years exactly since the Francis Scott Key Bridge here in Baltimore was hit by a container ship, the Dali, causing it to collapse. When it fell, the state lost a well-traveled highway that served commuters as well as truckers moving goods around the port of Baltimore. Now, the state is rebuilding the bridge. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Jim Harkness, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation Authority, about how the new bridge will incorporate new technology.