Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino has been using chatbots pretty intensively the last couple years. And there are some details she’s shared about herself that chatbots seem to think are really important. For instance, Claude is obsessed with the fact that she sometimes gets up for work at 4 a.m.

It comes up constantly in their chats — apropos of nothing. So, why do large language models latch on to these random tidbits? It's the first topic in our new series “Uncanny AI.” Those moments when it becomes clear AI doesn't think like us.

Here to help us unpack what might be going on is Janelle Shane, a laser scientist who writes the AI Weirdness blog.

Anthropic settled a copyright case Monday, agreeing to pay out $1.5 billion to authors whose material had been scraped to train its AI chatbot. It comes out to roughly $3,000 per work used after legal fees and other costs. But the outcome isn’t as decisive as it seems. In this episode, what Anthropic’s decision to settle means for future AI copyright cases. Plus: What we lose when we rely on digital downloads, why Jersey Mike’s is soaring while Subway slumps, and how small business owners are handling higher trucking costs.

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Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Read the stories in today’s episode:

How business owners are grappling with higher trucking costs
Jersey Mike's filed to go public. What advantages does it have over other sandwich chains?
A GM vehicle will set you back around $52,000. Here's why that's higher than average.
In the digital era, what media do we still own?
Anthropic pays $1.5 billion to settle a copyright case
Breckenridge's dark night skies are dreamy — but they come at a cost

Canada and Mexico are getting very different treatment from the Trump administration when it comes to trade. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will travel to Mexico tomorrow for talks on revising the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Canada is not invited. In fact, it’s facing new U.S. tariffs. We dig in. Then, the transition to an AI economy could benefit some workers and displace others, but who gets to decide just how this transition will go? The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest coalition of labor unions, is demanding a role.

Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.

Marketplace Morning Report is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Stories featured in this episode:

How labor unions are tackling AI and midterm elections

Organized labor could play a major role in this year’s midterm elections. The nation’s largest federation of labor unions says it plans to mobilize 16 million voters with ties to the labor movement. "Marketplace Morning Report" host Kimberly Adams recently joined Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, at the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Summit, to discuss how the AFL-CIO is factoring in union members' concerns and opportunities regarding AI in the lead-up to the midterms. But first, Boeing eases back into the good graces of federal regulators.

Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.

Marketplace Morning Report is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Stories featured in this episode:

Boeing may soon be able to deliver two models of its troubled 737-MAX to airlines
How labor unions are tackling AI and midterm elections

The Big Tech companies driving the AI boom are expected to spend more than $700 billion on data center infrastructure this year. To finance this spending spree, they're increasingly looking to debt.

Hyperscalers like Alphabet, Oracle, and Meta have been issuing corporate bonds at a scale the industry has never seen — nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars this year so far. The bond market could be considered a less risky way than stocks for investors to get a piece of the AI hype.

To explain what the flood of AI debt means for the bond market, we’re joined by Julie Ask, an independent industry analyst at Ask Advisory.

More on this:

“The Quarter-Trillion-Dollar Onslaught of AI Bonds Is Testing Investors’ Limits” from the Wall Street Journal
“AI has taken over the stock market. The bond market is next.” from The Economist