Would you trust a cancer screening by artificial intelligence?

Depending on whom you ask, a bill passed by California lawmakers last week could either save us from imminent AI doom or strangle innovation in Silicon Valley. The bill, SB 1047, is one of the first significant attempts to regulate artificial intelligence in the U.S. It’s supported by some high-profile voices in tech like Elon Musk. But critics say the regulation could stifle growth in Silicon Valley. On the show today, Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is taking a closer look at the arguments for and against SB 1047 with Chase DiFeliciantonio, a reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle, who has been following the bill’s journey through the Legislature.

Dark patterns are everywhere on the web. These are design tricks that manipulate users in some way and prompt them to give up information, money or just more of their time. A recent study from the Federal Trade Commission found three-quarters of all subscription apps and websites use at least one dark pattern, and a majority use multiple such tricks. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Yanely Espinal, who covered the topic in this week’s episode of “Financially Inclined.” She said some common dark patterns include advertising that doesn’t look like advertising, online forms that come with check boxes pre-selected and something called confirm shaming.

Generative artificial intelligence can write essays and solve complicated math problems, but can it tell a decent joke? The BBC’s Megan Lawton says comedians who performed at this year’s fringe festival in Scotland are putting AI to the test.

This week: a report from venture capital firm SignalFire seems to show that despite all its problems, San Francisco is still the place to be for tech startups in the artificial intelligence space. Plus, why Meta is scrapping plans for a superpremium mixed-reality headset and aiming for a lite version instead. But first, the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France has sent shock waves through the tech world. Durov is facing a number of criminal charges. French authorities allege he is liable for illicit activities conducted on the encrypted messaging platform, including child sex abuse and drug trafficking, essentially because of a failure to moderate content. The case highlights longstanding tensions in the tech world between public safety and free speech. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on this week’s tech news.

U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed that Iran was behind the recent cyberattack on former President Donald Trump’s election campaign. Using an approach called spear phishing, hackers sent personalized emails to campaign staff containing malware that allowed them to access private information and then leak it. Déjà vu, right? Javed Ali, a former senior counterterrorism official and a professor of practice at the University of Michigan, says Russia created the blueprint for this kind of attack. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked him for his reaction to Iran adopting the strategy.

By now you’ve probably heard that generative artificial intelligence has the potential to supercharge the spread of disinformation in this election year. But with 68 days until Election Day, we haven’t seen the kind of widespread AI misinformation campaigns that experts warned about. Instead, as Will Oremus pointed out in a recent analysis for The Washington Post, we’ve seen a whole lot of silly AI-generated memes. He told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that the most recent examples are coming from one particular presidential candidate.

The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, passed in 2022, would be among the most sweeping pieces of legislation to protect kids from online harms — if it hadn’t become tangled up in court. The law has two basic requirements: first, that tech companies analyze and report on whether their products are harmful for children; second, that they minimize how much data they collect from those under 18. Earlier this month a federal appeals court found that first part likely violates the First Amendment, and upheld a lower-court decision blocking that part of the law. But it vacated an injunction on the second component, the part dealing with data privacy. The decision could point a way forward for similar laws, many of which have also run into legal challenges, Aaron Mackey, free speech and transparency litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

The social media platform X recently launched a new artificial intelligence feature for premium users: Grok-2, an AI model that can also generate images. And the outputs are a bit less censored than you might see with other similar tools. Experimenters online have been able to generate images of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris brandishing guns, Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette and some far more disturbing tableaus. Grok claims to avoid images that are pornographic, excessively violent or intended to deceive and added it’s cautious about representing content that might infringe on existing copyright. But the guardrails certainly seem to be on the looser side, in keeping with owner Elon Musk’s hands-off approach to content moderation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Adi Robertson, senior tech and policy editor at the Verge, about Grok-2 and what she found while she tested the AI’s limits.

On today’s show: Google deals with another legal headache. A federal appeals court revived a class-action lawsuit that had been dismissed concerning privacy violations by its Chrome browser. Plus, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has partnered up with another media brand, Condé Nast. But first, we can’t ignore the biggest happening of the week — the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the party formally nominated Vice President Kamala Harris for president with the help of big names in entertainment. Rapper Lil Jon revving up the presentation of the Georgia delegation’s votes was just one viral moment that came out of the convention. What didn’t come out of the gathering, though, were clear indications of the Harris campaign’s tech policy platform. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, about what that platform might look like.

New faces are mingling among the party faithful and the swarm of journalists at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. In a bid to reach younger, more online voters, the DNC invited 200 content creators to cover the convention. One of them is Malynda Hale, who’s been sharing her experience with her more than 50,000 followers on Instagram. Creators like her, she said, have their own part to play at the event. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Hale how it’s been going at the convention.

Peter Shankman, a pioneer in modern PR, marketing, advertising, social media, and customer service, profiles the famously nice executives, entrepreneurs, and companies that are setting the standard for success in this new collaborative world.

He explores the new hallmarks of effective leadership, including loyalty, optimism, humility, and a reverence for customer service, and shows how leaders like Jet Blue's Dave Needleman, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Steve Jobs of Apple, Ken Chenault of Amex, Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, and the team behind Patagonia harness these traits to build productive, open, and happy workplaces for the benefit of their employees, themselves, and the bottom line.

Lonely Leadership

What are leadership struggles? Many leaders act as if the point they’ve reached in their careers was easy to reach. From my perspective, as I progressed throughout my career, I ran into many different struggles. These struggles are some that I believe every leader will encounter. Rather than hiding these struggles from you, I will be putting them out in the sunlight for all of you to see. I have come to realize that all leaders are alike. As much as we think we are different, we are not as unique as we think. We all share the same struggles. On today’s show, I will be discussing the various struggles all leaders face and how to counteract them.

The first leadership struggle I’ve encountered is lonely leadership. As you progress through an organization it gets harder to find people that understand you. Great leaders are told that transparency is a must. Be transparent. Share things with others around you. While transparency holds importance, is it always the answer? Transparency is only important to a point. There are some things you should not be transparent about.

You should never be transparent about your self-doubt. Being open about your struggles with employees can cause them concern about your organization. Secondly, never be transparent about your opinion of others. Especially key stakeholders. They will find out. My philosophy is to never burn a bridge no matter what. This decision has come back to benefit me throughout my career.

Thirdly, never be transparent about confidential information shared with you. I’ve seen may promising leaders sidelined because of issues of integrity and trust. Building a reputation of integrity as a leader is crucial. It can be lost in just one decision. Don’t make that mistake. This will shatter your career. Being a leader is lonely. Who can you share things with? Your spouse? Not always. I remember when I was at Teligent and we were the hottest new thing. We were on the cover of Business Week, Forbes, WSJ, NY Times etc. My wife was at her hairdresser one day, and the hairdresser was drilling her about information on Teligent. He assumed she had access to confidential information and was getting aggressive. After that, me and my wife came to an agreement to protect her. I do not share any confidential information with her. Never. She doesn’t want to be in that position.

Is there anyone you can be transparent with? Your coach or mentor. Let your board/shareholders know that you have a coach or mentor. If you’re going to share confidential information with someone, they should sign a non-disclosure agreement. All of this said, you will be lonely as a leader. It comes with the position. Do you have someone that you can be transparent with?

What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here

Will the skills that helped you reach your position keep you there? These things will not keep you here or progress you in your career. Look at me for instance. My specialty is technical work. I have not touched technical work in 15 years. I had to learn new skills in order to advance. How did I learn those different skills? Right out of college, I was told by my mentor Bob that in order to find success, I had to broaden my playing fields. I knew my specialty very well, but I needed to have a variety of experiences. What did I do? I rotated in marketing, sales, finance, IT, etc. I did everything. While these experiences broadened my knowledge, it wasn’t enough. What were the skillsets that brought me to success?

• Organization design - How do you structure a team? You have to be willing to adjust in order to create a successful organizational structure.
• People Reading - Each person is unique and you have to commit to learning them.
• Consensus Building – Learn the individuals and their objectives. I do one on one calls with each member of my board before meetings. This helps me to get a better grasp on the thoughts and feelings of each member.
• Objective Setting – How do you set good objectives? use OKR’s/make sure they are clear and measurable. Grant autonomy letting your experts use their skills to achieve ultimate success.

Consequences of Ideas and Statements

Ideas and statements made as a leader have consequences. Things will get taken out of context and all the sudden they become the “new law”. When I was CEO at Cable Labs, I told my team that the most common statement they would hear was “Phil said”. In many cases what I said was misinterpreted or misused. The best proof point of this in my career is press coverage. If you google my name and read the articles on the first 16 pages of google, not a single article got the situation 100% correct. At Cable Labs, we had issues with the press pushing out false information. This caused employees to start worrying about the longevity of our Colorado office. I had to call a meeting with my all my employees to address this issue. I made a commitment to my staff that day that they would hear from me first, and not the press. In fact, this created a new culture at Cable Labs called the “no surprise rule” to constantly remind my employees of this. Why do I do this? Because ideas and statements can be a disaster. You need to be hyper-vigilant about what you say, how you say it, and how you operate. Are you conveying statements the right way?

Creative Self-Doubt

What is the number one skill leaders are expected to have? Creativity/ ingenuity leading to product, service, and operational innovation. Many leaders get promoted to a leadership role because of innovation they are credited with. Look at Nobel Laureates. There is a trend of peaks seen from the recipients of Nobel awards. One in their mid-twenties and one in their mid-fifties. The question comes down to this. Do you still have your creativity?

What type of innovator are you?

Conceptual Innovators - “Think outside the box,” challenging conventional wisdom and suddenly coming up with new ideas. Conceptual innovators tend to peak early in their careers.

Experimental Innovators - Accumulate knowledge through their careers and find groundbreaking ways to analyze, interpret and synthesize that information into new ways of understanding. The long periods of trial and error required for important experimental innovations make them tend to occur late in a Nobel laureate’s career. Success comes from recognizing that as an innovator we need to shift from the conceptual to the experimental.

Let’s connect; I am on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. If we do connect, drop me a note and let me know. The email address is feedback@philmckinney.com or you can go to PhilMcKinney.com and drop me a note there. If you are looking for innovation support go to TheInnovators.Network or want to be challenged to develop the next big idea, check out our Disruptive Ideation Workshops. Don’t forget to join our Innovators Community to enjoy more conversations around innovation.