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.

More on everything we talked about

R1-Omni from Alibaba

“Alibaba Releases AI Model That Reads Emotions to Take On OpenAI” from Bloomberg

“Waymo expands its robotaxi service again, this time to parts of Silicon Valley” from CNBC

“Uber teams up with Waymo to start selling driverless rides in Austin, Texas” from The Associated Press

“Industry takes aim at science cuts” from Axios

“3-10-25 Letter to Secretary Lutnick re NIST” from tech industry and advocacy groups