Student loans are back, US travel is whack, and, AI, please, step back

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's ... Indicators of the Week! Our weekly look at the some of the most fascinating economic numbers from the news.

On today's episode, we investigate falling foreign travel to the U.S., why student loan default collections are back, and why maaaaaaaybe being so friendly with our AI chatbot pals has a cost.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:02.0	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
0:13.6	I'm Daryne Woods, and I'm joined today by the wonderful Whalen Wong.
0:18.0	Oh, hey, that's me.
0:19.0	And the amazing Adrian Maher. And I guess by default,
0:22.6	that leaves me. So we've been doing this a long time, and we have such a great bond together.
0:30.3	I was thinking we should have a name, like the Chat GP3. That's good, right? If we were sponsored by OpenAI.
0:39.1	Thank you for not saying no.
0:40.8	The actual response from JetGPT was,
0:43.1	that name is fire emoji.
0:45.0	Really?
0:45.7	Of course it would say that.
0:47.4	In any matter,
0:48.2	we combine our as-of-now unnamed collective
0:50.7	for one reason today.
0:52.9	It's Indicators of the Week's Indicators of the Week.
0:56.3	Indicators of the Week!
0:58.7	It is that show where we quantify the world of business and tech and financial things.
1:05.6	On today's episode, we've got plummeting travel to the U.S., more student loan repayments, and servile AI chatbots.
1:13.3	My goodness.
1:14.1	Don't what?
1:15.0	Three minds, one feed, infinite takes.
	...

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