Big Tech is doing well, but is it doing good? Silicon Valley had its detractors even in the heady days of zero-interest Obama-era techno-optimism, but our present feels more urgent and complicated.

Extinction risk has turned public sentiment against artificial intelligence, even as AI spending props up the stock market. Data centers are a key political issue, and Elon Musk, after announcing a supposed step back from political spending, has trained his money cannon on critical midterm races.

Deeply skeptical depictions of recent tech history are ruling the multiplex right now, and just today, two AI companies committed to giving parts of themselves away to benefit the public. It feels like a long time since most people assumed these innovations, in and of themselves, were meant to benefit the public.

We’ll pull some of these threads below, but first, about those interest rates… — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

The Federal Reserve has two objectives: minimize inflation and maximize employment. It pursues these goals at Federal Open Market Committee meetings — one of which will happen in a little over a week — where it can tinker with the interest rate.

While the Fed might not raise interest rates at this meeting, it will certainly have to do so eventually to combat inflation. September’s inflation data showed that over the last year, the consumer price index rose 3.7%, the producer price index rose 6.3%, and the importer price index rose 8.1%.

But while higher interest rates can help fight inflation, they also impact the labor market. Recently, the Fed hasn’t been quite so focused on jobs, though.

“The thing I’ve been telling people is just that the labor market is actually, frankly, quite boring right now,” said Preston Mui, senior economist with the advocacy group Employ America.

Mui pointed out that boring isn’t bad.

“There are parts of it that are sluggish, such as wage growth and hiring ,” Mui said. “But we’re not seeing any sort of imminent collapse either. And so I think that’s why the Fed feels comfortable shifting its focus towards inflation.”

If the Fed raises rates, some industries are likely to shed jobs — like housing.

“Street Fighter” won the box office this weekend, but the real story was “You Can See Everything.” The documentary about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes sold out thousands of screenings during its limited release, earning the biggest gross for a non-music doc since “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

It’s one of several films this fall trying to understand the tech backlash of the last decade. There’s “The Social Reckoning” about the Facebook Files scandal, the documentary profile “Musk,” and the forthcoming “Artificial,” a film about OpenAI that Amazon refused to release because it was so critical. Sperling has reported on Hollywood’s tech fascination for the New York Times, and broke down each title for us. 

I scored tickets to a sold-out showing of “You Can See Everything” yesterday, and I really can’t recommend the film enough. To say more would spoil the experience, but if you’ve seen the movie there’s a wealth of fascinating supplemental reading for a “Marketplace” fan.

John Carreyrou broke the Theranos story open, and we interviewed him at the release of “Bad Blood,” his definitive book about Holmes’ fraud. He also wrote about his experience watching the film for the New York Times (gift link) . Another interesting review came from Tyler Shultz, one of the whistleblowers inside Theranos. It may not surprise you to learn he had some notes on how Holmes told her own story before going to prison.