Marketplace Tech

With all the fanfare surrounding AI these days — the utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares — it can be hard to see the technology as simply a tool that anyone can use to improve their lives.

That's what tech columnist Christopher Mims at the Wall Street Journal focuses on his new book "How to AI: Cut Through the Hype. Master the Basics. Transform Your Work.” In it, he outlines two dozen “AI Laws” for how consumers and organizations should think about AI.

First up: AI is an assistant, not a replacement.

Is AI a bubble? It's the trillion-dollar question in the economy. So Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino decided to look to history for some answers in this week’s special episode of “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” McCarty Carino spoke with David A. Kirsch, a historian and management professor at the University of Maryland. He’s also co-author of the book "Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation." He and Brent Goldfarb looked at patterns over 150 years of technological breakthroughs, from broadcast radio to rayon and came up with a model of the conditions that most often lead to bubbles.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino takes a tour of Redwood Material’s new R&D Lab with CTO Colin Campbell. Redwood, an EV battery recycling startup, is now offering off-grid, renewable energy grids to AI data centers and it’s looking to scale up its operations in this AI boom.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Paul Vixie, vice president at AWS Security and an early internet innovator, about the rapid buildout of fiber optic networks during the dot-com boom, and what happened when the bubble burst.

529 Bryant St. in Palo Alto, California, is home to a key landmark in tech history. Now owned and operated as a data center by Equinix, the building has been a networking hub to a variety of firms, including the earliest telephone switch board operators and early internet firms like Alta Vista. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino visited the data center to learn more.