Business, Spoken

This August, some of the world’s best professional gamers will travel to Vancouver to fight for millions of dollars in the world’s most valuable esports competition. They’ll be joined by a team of five artificial intelligence bots backed by Elon Musk, trying to set a new marker for the power of machine learning. The bots were developed by OpenAI, an independent research institute the Tesla CEO cofounded in 2015 to advance AI and prevent the technology from turning dangerous. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over the last year, YouTube has faced a seemingly endless number of controversies over disturbing and problematic videos—including ones published by PewDiePie, the site’s most popular vlogger—that were often found to be running advertisements from major companies. In response, YouTube tightened its ad policies, hired new moderators, and took steps to assure advertisers that its platform was brand safe. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Lucas Duplan, who founded Clinkle and made it into an object lesson in Silicon Valley overhype, is plotting a return. He has raised money from his family and outside investors for a venture fund focused on backing enterprise-software startups, WIRED has learned. The fund will operate out of New York and has backed at least two companies in which Duplan is involved. One of those companies is a cryptocurrency project focused on employee rewards called Universal Recognition Token (URT). Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Supreme Court just paved the way for broader collection of online sales taxes. That's probably good news for Main Street and bad news for smaller online retailers. But it just might be good news for larger online retailers---especially Amazon. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Silicon Valley is in the middle of an awakening, the dawning but selective realization that their products can be used to achieve terrible ends. In the past few months, this growing unease has bubbled up into outright rebellion from within the rank and file of some of the largest companies in the Valley, beginning in April when Google employees balked at the company's involvement with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program called Project Maven. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As an immigration attorney working along the US-Mexico border in McAllen, Texas, Carlos García says he’s seen “a lot of sad stuff” over the years. But what he encountered at the McAllen federal courthouse Tuesday left him lost for words. “You walk into the courtroom and there are 90 people waiting to be prosecuted for illegal entry,” he says. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

“Fighting technology means fighting human ingenuity,” an IBM software program admonished Israeli debating champion Dan Zafrir in San Francisco Monday. The program, dubbed Project Debater, and Zafrir, were debating the value of telemedicine, but the point could also apply to the future of the technology itself. Software that processes speech and language has improved enough to do more than tell you the weather forecast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In many US cities, ride-sharing is a commodity. Both drivers and riders pull up Uber and Lyft interchangeably on their phones, weighing which to use based on price and wait time. That’s a problem for ride-sharing companies. In an industry where new apps like Via, Juno, and Gett are coming online regularly, riders have myriad choices. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In December 2014, John Rust wrote to the head of the legal department at the University of Cambridge, where he is a professor, warning them that a storm was brewing. According to an email reviewed by WIRED, Rust informed the university that one of the school’s psychology professors, Aleksandr Kogan, was using an app he created to collect data on millions of Facebook users without their knowledge. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Has Apple monopolized the market for iPhone apps? That's the question at the heart of Apple Inc. v. Pepper, a case the Supreme Court agreed to hear Monday, which could have wide-reaching implications for consumers as well as other companies like Amazon. The dispute is over whether Apple, by charging app developers a 30 percent commission fee and only allowing iOS apps to be sold through its own store, has inflated the price of iPhone apps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices