Business, Spoken

Facebook Wednesday announced changes to how it asks users for permission to collect their personal information, in order to comply with strict new European privacy rules. But critics say Facebook’s new offerings seem designed to encourage users to make few changes and share as much information as possible. The European rules, called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, go into effect May 25th and will apply to any companies that collect or process data on individuals in the EU. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

More than a decade after the first iPhone was released, it suddenly dawned on us that we could be addicted to our smartphones. We'd certainly developed quite the habit: Almost 50 percent of people say they couldn’t live without their phones, which we check every 12 minutes and touch an average of 2,600 times a day. "Likes are “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure” that can be as empty as they are alluring. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As public attitudes towards Silicon Valley and Big Tech continue their rapid pivot from admiration to vilification, the current occupant of the White House has sought to lead the chorus. Several weeks ago, he launched a tweet-driven crusade against Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos, accusing the company of ripping off the US Postal Service and harming Americans by not collecting more sales tax. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

During Mark Zuckerberg's over 10 hours of Congressional testimony last week, lawmakers repeatedly asked how Facebook makes money. The simple answer, which Zuckerberg dodged, is the contributions and online activities of its over two billion users, which lets marketers target their ads with razor precision. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Woodman School is a tiny, whitewashed schoolhouse lodged in a remote clearing in Montana's Lolo National Forest. It has a total of 35 students, and in January, all of them got the same assignment: Write a letter to local lawmakers explaining why you want internet access at school. “If we had internet, we could do tests at our own school and not have to get bussed to Lolo and take tests on their computers,” scrawled one Woodman third grader on a sheet of looseleaf. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Google’s heavy investment in artificial intelligence has helped the company’s software write music and beat humans at complex board games. What unlikely feats could be next? The company’s new head of AI says he’d like to see Google move deeper into areas such as healthcare. He also warns that the company will face some tricky ethical questions over appropriate uses for AI as it expands its use of the technology. The new AI boss at Google is Jeff Dean. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Somewhere between my eighth and eighteenth turmeric lattes, I realized I was dangerously close to falling for TED. The annual conference, which gathers elite technologists, thought leaders, scientists, economists, futurists, visionaries, activists, physicists, poets, enthusiasts, academics, entertainers and billionaires has a binary reputation: For anyone who hasn’t been, it’s an object of easy mockery. For anyone who has, it’s a religion. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you are part of the rarified group of tech insiders who mostly live in the Bay Area, your perception of Mark Zuckerberg is different. You have likely done business with Facebook: your company’s been bought by it, or you’ve been crowded out of a promising market when Zuckerberg decided to launch there. You’ve driven past Zuckerberg’s San Francisco compound in the Mission, or given birth at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Modern life is one big photo shoot. The glassy eyes of closed-circuit TV cameras watch over streets and stores, while smartphone owners continually surveil themselves and others. Tech companies like Google and Amazon have convinced people to invite ever-watching lenses into their homes via smart speakers and internet-connected security cameras. Now a new breed of chips tuned for artificial intelligence is arriving to help cameras around stores, sidewalks, and homes make sense of what they see. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the last two months Michael Marks has turned down a dozen offers to make keynote speeches at conferences. His company, construction startup Katerra, is three years old, but the attention surge is very recent. “Construction technology has gotten kinda buzzy,” he says. That may be. But more likely, interest in Katerra has spiked because in January, the company landed an astounding $867 million in venture funding led by the SoftBank Vision Fund. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices