We are taking a look at how the tech industry is pushing back against federal cuts to artificial intelligence and science. Plus, Waymo is expanding its self-driving services in Silicon Valley. But first, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba this week released an AI model called R1-Omni, which the company says can read human emotions. Alibaba shared a demo on the coding platform GitHub that accurately described a character as being angry and experiencing fear. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at venture firm Collab Capital, to break down these stories.

This week, we’ve been exploring the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, we spoke about what might happen with futurist Amy Webb, the CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group. She predicted, among other things, that we would give up more personal data around our health and location. Then on the show in 2021, she said more definitively that privacy was dead. This week, Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Webb again. They discussed the current state of digital privacy, the lessons not learned from the pandemic and, as Webb sees it, the victory of politics over planning.

In the spring of 2020, 77% of American public schools moved to online distance learning when the pandemic hit, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to the pandemic, you could say that schools were trickling into the digital age. Then, when COVID changed everything, they were basically tossed into it. Some educators adapted quickly, like Bebi Davis, who was working as a vice principal in Honolulu at the time. She’s now principal of Princess Victoria Kaiulani Elementary. Going totally virtual, she said, meant introducing an onslaught of technology — videoconferencing, classroom management software and messaging systems. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes asked Davis about the school system’s experience adopting so much tech all at once.

Five years ago today, after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, there was a widespread shift to remote work for many workers who were considered nonessential. And people had to get used to seeing their colleagues mainly on a screen. In recent years, some companies have required employees to return to the office full time. But remote work remains a major part of many people’s lives, far more than in 2019. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Anita Blanchard, a professor of psychological and organization science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, about what’s lost when workers don’t interact in the same physical space.

March 11 marks five years since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus officially a pandemic. Tracking the virus has been key to understanding where outbreaks are occurring and one tracking tool that had been mostly on the shelf prior to the pandemic is wastewater surveillance. That’s pretty much what it sounds like — testing what we flush down the toilet which eventually lands in what’s known as a sewer shed. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with molecular virologist Marc Johnson at the University of Missouri about the advantages of wastewater surveillance. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

In this week’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” TSMC announced it’s investing an additional $100 billion to make chips in the U.S. Plus, a co-founder of the social media platform Reddit joins a bid to buy TikTok. But first, let’s talk about the stock market. A number of tech companies watched their stocks sink this week, when new tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada were put in place. That volatility continued when President Donald Trump backtracked on the policy, at least temporarily. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, to unpack these stories and more.

Today, we’re wrapping up our series “The Infinite Scroll,” where we look at kids’ lives on social media and the risks and rules they face. One approach some states take to creating rules to mitigate risk is known as an age-appropriate design code, a law that puts the onus on tech companies to design products that keep kids safer when they’re on the internet. California passed its Age-Appropriate Design Code Act in 2022, as did Maryland last year. Both have been challenged by lawsuits from the tech industry. State Delegate Jared Solomon, a sponsor and lead author of the Maryland law, explained to Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes that the oversight effort attempts to prevent manipulation by algorithms. He hopes the industry will begin to “think differently about how they design their products.”

On our new series “The Infinite Scroll,” we’re looking at the rules and risks of kids using social media. Artificial intelligence is showing up on these platforms in the form of chatbots, digital characters you can text or talk with. Today we explore what can happen to youngsters who interact with them. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes discussed the subject with Meetali Jain, founder and director at the Tech Justice Law Project. Her organization is involved in a lawsuit against Character.AI, an app that enables users to create and communicate with these bots.