captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: wall street's growing rap sheet. big banks plead guilty to rigging currency rates, paying billions in fines. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. also ahead this wednesday: osama bin laden's bookshelf declassified. a glimpse into the al-qaeda network, through its leader's documents, books and letters. >> woodruff: plus, advances in artificial intelligence that could make your job obsolete. robots that can think faster and smarter than humans. >> going forward we may see automation unfold in a top heavy pattern where a lot of the best jobs are the ones to be impacted.

>> any kind of white collar job sitting at a computer at a desk, those are going to be very sesupportible to this. >> ifill: those are some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your life and become you're own chief life officer.

>> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: the crisis of migrants stranded at sea in southeast asia took a dramatic turn today. indonesia and malaysia agreed to accept thousands of the refugees. many, like more than 400 rescued today, are rohingya muslims fleeing persecution in myanmar and bangladesh. malaysia's foreign minister announced they will no longer be denied entry. >> indonesian and malaysia agreed to continue to provide humanitarian assistance to those

7,000 irregular migrants still at sea. we also agreed to offer them temporary shelter provided that the resettlement and repatriation process will be done in one year by the international community. >> ifill: in washington, the state department said the united states is willing to take more of the refugees, and help other governments with their own resettlement efforts. >> woodruff: islamic state militants seized an ancient city in central syria today, raising fears they'll destroy roman ruins. the target was palmyra, which is famed for its 2,000-year-old temple, theater and colonnades. meanwhile, in iraq, government troops said they fought off an attack near ramadi, as isis tries to consolidate gains there. >> ifill: iran's supreme leader has laid down a new red line in nuclear talks with world powers. ayatollah khamenei spoke at a military academy today, and insisted inspectors will never interview iran's nuclear scientists.

>> ( translated ): no wise person in the world would allow that. they hide their scientists and even keep their names confidential. the rude and shameless enemy expects us to make the way open for them to come here and talk and negotiate with our scientists, such permission will, under no circumstances, be given. >> ifill: khamenei also rejected giving inspectors access to military sites. the nuclear talks are under way in vienna, with a deadline of june 30. >> woodruff: in another development, iran moved to avert a confrontation at sea, with saudi arabia. the tehran government said it will not try to send a shipload of humanitarian aid directly to yemen, under military escort. instead, the ship will go to djibouti, for a u.n. inspection. from there, it would sail to a yemeni port controlled by shiite rebels. the saudis have warned against any effort to send arms to the rebels. >> ifill: an estimated six million germans faced tough commutes today, after drivers of

passenger trains walked off the job. at stations around the country signs and displays alerted travelers to the strike, while drivers demonstrated for higher wages outside. it's the ninth such walkout in 10 months. >> woodruff: back in this country, the national security agency will have to curtail its bulk collection of phone records, starting friday. the justice department issued that warning today, with parts of the patriot act set to expire june 1. it came as kentucky senator rand paul, a republican presidential candidate, tied up the senate speaking against the patriot act. >> ifill: president obama is calling climate change a threat to the nation's ability to defend itself. he addressed graduates at the u.s. coast guard academy in new london, connecticut. and, he cited everything from crop losses that feed conflict, to rising sea levels that swamp naval bases. >> i'm here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to

our national security and make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. so we need to act, and we need to act now. >> ifill: the president said those who deny a human role in climate change are placing the country at risk. >> woodruff: the state of nebraska is on its way to abolishing the death penalty, after lawmakers voted to repeal it today. in a new twist, conservatives supported the measure, citing the costs of injection drugs and legal appeals. maryland, in 2013, was the last state to end capital punishment. >> ifill: a crackdown on prescription drug abuse swept across the deep south today. agents from the drug enforcement administration raided clinics pharmacies and other sites in arkansas, alabama, louisiana and mississippi. it's part of a nearly year-long operation.

>> woodruff: and on wall street stocks struggled to make any headway. the dow jones industrial average lost 27 points to close back below 18,300. the nasdaq gained less than two, and the s&p 500 slipped two. >> ifill: still to come on the newshour: big banks plead guilty for rigging currency rates worldwide. a rare window into osama bin laden's personal life and the al-qaeda network. scientists link the deepwater horizon oil spill to dolphin deaths in the gulf. winners and losers as more robots take over jobs. is there a path to recovery for struggling black colleges and universities? and, female spiritual guides in morocco working to empower women and stop violent extremism. >> woodruff: big banks and their behavior are again at the heart of a new criminal case brought by the department of justice and other authorities today. five major institutions pled guilty to rigging currencies and manipulating the foreign exchange market. the banks also agreed to pay

more than $5 billion combined in new penalties. the fines were some of the biggest brought to date by the federal government. the banks were accused of manipulating the world's largest and least-regulated trading market where trillions of dollars change hands. among those pleading guilty: j.p. morgan chase, citigroup barclays, the royal bank of scotland and u.b.s. at a press conference in washington, attorney general loretta lynch spelled out how the rigging worked. >> starting as early as 2007 currency traders at several multinational banks formed a group that they dubbed the cartel. it's perhaps fitting that they chose that name, as it aptly describes the brazenly illegal behavior that they were engaged in on a near five- year basis. almost everyday, for more than five years, traders in this cartel used a private electronic chat room to manipulate the spot market's exchange rate between

euros and dollars, using coded language to conceal their collusion. >> woodruff: let's learn more about how this worked and punishment that is and is not being handed down. keri geiger is covering the storyfor bloomberg news and joins me now. welcome again to the newshour. you were saying this is an historic first what happened today. how so? >> well it's really is a fascinating case. i mean to put it into perspective, one year ago we had no banks on with the that had ever pleaded guilty to criminal charges. and today, we have eight banks in total. we've had two banks last year deutsche bank earlier this year, and today specifically we have five more banks. so it really shows a shift in how the dufs department of jfs is doing enforcement actions and policing with the. they're taking much harsher penalties for criminal activity that maybe a year or two ago may

not have warranted a guilty plea. >> woodruff: tell us more about what is going on. we heard a little bit of it from the attorney general and how they called themselves "the cartel." how does this work? >> so you have a hand full of traders at each of these five banks, as loretta lynch said, participate in these chat rooms. and basically, what they do is coordinate really large multi-million-dollar currency exchange orders for their client on when they're going to execute those orders. all at the same time they're going to 53 and sell large orders of the same amounts of cirns, and what that did was drove the price of the currency either up or down right before the end of the closing day. so they were actually able to manipulate the currency markets. this is actually an antitrust case. so these banks of guilty of colluding to manipulate the foreign exchange market, and it's very rare that you see a financial institution that actually has to plead guilty to

any charges, much less an antitrust charge. >> woodruff: so it sounds faz there's no question the people involved knew what they were doing was wrong, was illegal. what about higher-ups, keri geiger? did they know what was going on? and if they didn't, why not? >> well, i mean, this calls into the question of basically how banks compliance works. these wall street banks are huge, giant operations, and it looks like that the senior executive at these bank addition not know this activity was going on. i'm sure if they did it would have been stopped because they, obviously, don't want illegal activity happening at their banks. but larger problem is it's become virtually impossible, as we've seen over the last couple of years with all these enforcement actions against wall street, to police every individual that's working in these banks. and so you have the result of today where you have five banks pleading guilty to very serious criminal charges, you know, without the knowledge of senior-- you know, senior executives don't have the knowledge that this is going on. >> woodruff: but they knew big money was being made in these

departments, in these divisions. >> right. it's very difficult to tell how much the banks actually profited off these trades. it looks like these trades were basically done for the individual trader's benefit as opposed to larger profits for the banks. >> woodruff: keri geiger, why no individual charged? we know there are some names named in what the government said today but this is a fine on the institution. why aren't they going after the individuals involved? >> we fully expect that there will be charges against the individuals. those case take a little bit long tore develop. they require cooperation from both the banks, as well as individuals involved in this. so we absolutely do expect the department of jfs to come down with individual charges in this case. >> woodruff: and what about penalties? over $5 billion. you add that to what they were find, i guess last november. it's about $9 billion all together. how much of a hit is that on the accounts of these banks.

>> surprisingly while the numbers are very big and the banks obviously don't want to be shelling out this much money for fines, they are very small. they have been provisioned quarter after quarter, basically what the banks do is they set aside this money each quarter with the expectations that they're going to have to pay it out. they've been under investigation fair long time. so they've been preparing for these fines for a long time. and it doesn't really hurt the bottom lines. and typically on the days these big settlements are announced-- and we've seen this with other settlements on other banks-- the share price goes up or stay flat. it typically doesn't hurt the share prices either. so it's difficult to tell if these large fines coupled with guilty pleas actually do deter bad behavior at these banks, even though they're necessary to prosecute for these crimes. >> woodruff: it certainly does raise that question. keri geiger with bloomberg news we thank you. >> thank you.

>> ifill: today, we found out a bit more about al qaeda leader osama bin laden,including what he wrote, what he looked for in recruits and what was on his bookshelf. the information was revealed in a stack of documents released this morning by the director of national intelligence. osama bin laden remained fixed on attacking the united states until his death, and he urged al-qaeda's affiliates to put aside rivalries, in service of the larger fight. those insights can be gleaned from the material made public today, as mandated by congress. the director of national intelligence says it was seized after the terror leader was shot dead by navy seals on may 2, 2011. within the trove, a list of what the seals found on what they called bin laden's bookshelf, including: "imperial hubris," authored by the c.i.a. officer who headed the search for bin laden, and "obama's wars" by bob woodward. the release follows a recent

article published in the "london review of books" by long-time investigative reporter seymour hersh. >> our president ordered the raid, the seals carried it out, they did kill bin laden, they got in and out successfully and the rest of it is sort of hogwash. >> ifill: hersh says that, contrary to the official u.s. account, pakistan knew about and kept bin laden in the garrison town of abbottabad, that the u.s. coordinated the raid on his compound with pakistan, and that, in fact, very little useful intelligence was seized. the white house has flatly denied those claims. >> the story is riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods. the former deputy director of the c.i.a., mike morell, has said that every sentence was wrong. >> ifill: in all, officials made 103 bin laden papers and videos public today. they said the timing was not connected to the hersh story.

one hand-written letter, a missive to one of his wives, translated by the u.s. government, is titled "my will," and says: "if i get killed, and you want to return to your family, then that is okay, but you have to raise my children properly." another letter turns out to be a job application to join al qaeda. would-be jihadis are instructed to "write clearly and legibly." and they are asked: "who should we contact in case you become a martyr?" for more on what was contained in the bin laden documents, we turn to, brian fishman a research fellow at both the new america foundation and the combating terrorism center at west point. and, greg miller, who covers national security matters for the washington post. greg miller, you spent the day poring through all of these documents. what did you see after having covered this issue for so long that surprised and enlightened you? >> actually, there was one document in there that really jumped out at me and it was sort of something i stumbled through

reading through. it's a document-- it's a letter, basically, bin laden sends to one of his wives who had been hiding in iran. in it, he is making plans or trying to make arrangements for him to join him in pakistan, and he reveals that the isolation there has gotten so bad and the security worries so bad that he had thought about moving thought about leaving that compound, and this was just months before that u.s. raid. and it just sort of shows, you know if that-- if he had followed through on that-- and it's not clear that he had taken any additional measures to do so-- the post-9/11 history we're all so familiar with now might have gone very differently. >> ifill: brian fishman you spent a lot of time reading various previous trawrchs of these documents, or similar documents that have been released. some of the letters that are contained in there are mundane. some of them are chilling. some of them reveal paranoia. >> yeah, absolutely. i think the mundane letters the sort of banality of the process

of organizing a terrorist group like al qaeda actually is something we've seen over and over and over again. after we invaded afghanistan in 2001 we found similar documents with application processes and saw the same thing, actually in al qaeda in iraq and the islamic state of iraq in 2006 and 2007 with their foreign fighters. the thing that really jumped out to me about these documents is that osama bin laden was clearly engaged in the process of managing his network up until, you know, just a few months before he was killed. we saw a lot of letters primarily to a man named abdal rahman in 2010 and 2011. it's interesting even as osama bin laden became more isolated in that safe house in pakistan-- and as gregg said, he had concerns about that process-- but jihadis and members of the al qaeda network clearly still saw him as this sort of final arbiter of disputes. and that's a really interesting dynamic because only osama bin

laden sort of had the authority within the movement to play that kind of role. and we think about his successor after he was killed, al-zawahiri hari, it's not clear he has the same kind of authority and the movement to project that kind of leadership even though he isn't heard from very often. >> ifill: greg miller, there have been these questions as we reported raised about the circumstances of bin laden's death, the of and whether the way the united states has told the story is accurate but these documents don't really speak to that? >> i mean, to the extent that these are-- that these are messages from bin laden in which he makes no reference to being detained by pakistani authorities or under their thumb in any way or even concerned about pakistanis agencies like the i.s.i. he's communicating with his followers, as brian said. he's active until the very-- until shortly before the very end. he is trying to run this terror

network. he's making plans, expressing ambitions, not behaving like somebody who has been in the the custody of the i.s.i. for four or five years. >> ifill: and greg miller tell us a little bit about the process here. why are we just declassifying these documents now? >> well, the u.s. officials said today that this was in the works for some time and in fact, this is the second or third time that the u.s. has declassified documents from that compound. i mean we saw right after the raid there was a good deal of information released. and then in the years since even more material has come out. but i mean, the d.n.i. said today this is part of an ongoing process and we're going to see additional trarchs like this over time. >> ifill: brian fishman his view was to focus on the united states but not so much on what we have seen happen since his death which is the rise of isis and different groups succeeding and eclipsing al qaeda in the place where he used to control.

>> yeah i mean, i think osama bin laden had concerns about trying to establish states whether it was in iraq, whether it was in north africa in somalia. he was worried that his affiliate organizations and his followers would get bogged down in sort of the banalities of administration and having to worry about fund raising and doing those sorts of things, and those would detract from the larger mission which he saw as getting the united states, forcing the united states to lose its will to support muslim governments in what he considers the islamic world. and so, you know because what bin laden bees is that you have to take the united states on the of-- or believed-- is that you have to take the united states out of the picture before you can topple those governments and then stand up new states in societies. and he worried that his followers were sort of jumping the gun and trying to establish political hierarchies before the time was right. >> ifill: and greg miller

let's talk about those books on his bookshelf that we heard about today. what do they tell bus him? did he have enough of a grasp of english, for instance, to have actually been able to read those books? >> u.s. officials believe he had the ability to understand and read english at a basic level. we didn't mention it, but he was clearly a fan of brian's. he had a number of the center at west point's reports in his trove. most of these books, obviously are, nonfiction. a lot of them are about u.s. institutions and critiques of u.s. policy, basically a student of u.s. foreign policy. and it looks like when you look through these titles, he's trying to search for vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities in everything from the federal reserve to u.s. balloting fraud to u.s. military strategies, and just sort of messaging vulnerabilities of the united states. >> ifill: greg miller of the "washington post" and brian fishman at the new america foundation and the combating terrorism center at west point,

thank you both very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: now, the lasting impact of america's biggest offshore oil spill. it comes as officials are grappling with a new spill along the coast of southern california near santa barbara. it began yesterday when an onshore pipeline ruptured. slicks are now spanning a total of nine miles and the line was operating at full capacity when it broke. today, a new study by researchers at the national oceanic and atmospheric administration looked at why dolphins died in such large numbers after the deepwater horizon spill of 2010. it was the strongest link yet to the spill and the deaths of bottlenose dolphins. more than 1,000 dolphins have died in the gulf since 2010. the spill lasted nearly three months, spewing millions of gallons of oil and chemicals into the gulf of mexico.

we get the latest from william brangham, who weekend viewers will recognize, and is now here with us as our newest newshour correspondent. >> thanks, judy, great to be here. >> woodruff: let's talk about what researchers are saying. what do they say these new studies show? >> what they're saying is that this has been the first definitive link where they can directly connect the death this massive die-off of dolphins-- i think 1200 than00 dolphins-- linking those deaths directly with the oil spill. scientists have been studying these dolphins for several years, ever since the spill occurred. this is the first time they've said, we now know why they died and in such large numbers and it's because of the deepwater horizon disaster. >> woodruff: b.p. is pushing back, of course. they are saying there's no proof that there's a connection from the oil that came out of the deepwater horizon rig. what do scientists say about that? >> that's true. this has been b.p.'s argument all along, and in fact they've

also pointed out that there were die-offs of dolphins that happen all the time on the gulf, and that actually some of these dolphins had died off before the spill even occurred. but scientists went to great lengths today to say that they looked at all the other factors that have caused die-offs in the past, and that this particular spill, the impact the oil has had on marine mamams, they can directly connect it to the dolphips that they've seen. and in fact the research that they did showed in the areas where there was more oil in the water, more dolphins died, areas where there was less oil less dolphins died. >> woodruff: are the bottlenosed dolphins still dying off, or was this a one-time phenomenon? >> the deaths have deaths have occurred ever since the spill began all the way to the present day. the current study only looked at a couple of yiers after the spill, and what they did is examined 46 particular dolphins that died and they were quickly able to catch them on the beaches of the gulf and they analyzed their tissues and found lung and adrenal gland problems. so this is-- they think this may be an ongoing problem but this

study just looked at this particular period. >> woodruff: and do they offer an explanation for why they're seeing this with the bottlenosed dolphins but not with other animal species-- crab, fish, shrimp, and so forth. >> the impact on those other species may occur. they just haven't found the data on them yet. the reason that dolphins, scientist says, are particularly acute ways to understand this is that if you think about how a dolphin lives, they're mammals. they breathe air. so during the spill, they come to the surface to breathe. they entertain area of the water where the oil is sitting, and so they take a huge, deep breath with their blow hole suck oil and chemicals into that, them they take a deep dive and hold that breath for a very long period of time. they're particularly able to, in essence, suck in the oil and cause great deals of problems. also, the scientists were able to all throughout the spill find these dolphins. they were able to go out and find them-- they're very large

mammals swimming around in the water. they can observe them, they can capture them and do tests on them when they're alive and when dolphins die they wash up on the beaches unlike other animals that might die and fall to the ocean floor. a dolphin washes up on a beach, people pay attention. they call in local officials officials and scientists can quickly examine them before the tissue deteriorates. >> woodruff: i know people are going to listen to this and ask what about those other animals? are they saying nothing is going to happen down the line to them, and particular he what about the potential seafood in the gulf? >> that, of course, is always a concern of consumers all over the country. there are current research projects going on under sea turtles to see the impacts on them, and several other gulf species. as far as the food that we eat the shrimp and the crab that we're used to, the f.d.a. and all of the national government scientists that look at this have declared that those animals, at least the impacts that we would experience by eating them, those seam to be

fine and have-- we've been given the green light to eat gulf seafood again. >> woodruff: but the research is ongoing, meantime. >> correct. >> woodruff: william brangham thank you and again welcome to the newshour. >> thank you so much, great to be here. >> woodruff: we have a note to add. late today a $211 million settlement was announced between transocean which is the opener of the deepwater horizon rig and business and individuals claiming damages from that 2010 gulf of mexico oil spill. >> ifill: have you ever worried you might lose your job to a robot? hari sreenivasan finds it could well happen, with advances in artificial intelligence, or a.i., transforming the workforce. that's the latest report in our series on invention and innovation, "breakthroughs."

>> sreenivasan: in a closely watched "brains vs. artificial intelligence" poker match, held in pittsburgh earlier this month, humans pulled off a slim win over a computer program named claudico. >> alright. >> good job. >> good games, guys. >> sreenivasan: tuomas sandholm a computer scientist at carnegie mellon university, created the algorithms that run claudico's a.i. >> those algorithms figure out how you should act strategically; how do you avoid or deal with humans trying to deceive you and how do you deceive humans. >> sreenivasan: sandholm predicts claudico will be able to beat its human opponents within one to five years, much to the chagrin of bjorn li, the leading poker player in this tournament. >> when that happens, poker will pretty much be dead. >> sreenivasan: but putting pro poker players out of work is not what sandholm focuses all his time on. there are other things that claudico can already do better than humans. >> so in my lab we developed an algorithm for solving the

matching program for the nationwide kidney exchange. for 60% of the transplants in the u.s., and there twice a week, our algorithms make the transplantation plan for the whole country without any manual intervention. with the scarcity of organs, the ai is making decisions in an optimal way. >> sreenivasan: matching the right kidney to the right patient is one example of an algorithmic artificial intelligence. but there are much larger demonstrations hitting the road- quite literally. daimler has developed a prototype - dubbed the "freightliner inspiration truck" that's being test-driven across nevada. the hope is that computer driven trucks can reduce the number of accidents. there are currently 5,000 fatalities a year involving trucks. drivers would function more like pilots, overseeing computerized systems. but it begs the question: what jobs will survive in a new economy, driven by automation?

remember ken jennings, the "jeopardy!" game show champion who lost to i.b.m.'s watson in 2011, he says the writing is on the wall. here he is in a ted talk. >> and i remember standing there behind the podium as i could hear that little insectoid thumb ticking. and you could hear that little tick, tick, tick, and i remember thinking, this is it. i felt obsolete. i felt like a detroit factory worker of the '80s seeing a robot that could now do his job on the assembly line. and it was friggin' demoralizing. >> sreenivasan: it's not just quiz show contestants that are at risk, as more and more jobs are automated. jennings' experience could be a harbinger of things to come for american workers. that's the argument made in a new book, "rise of the robots: technology and the threat of a jobless future," by martin ford. >> going forward we may see automation unfold in a kind of top heavy pattern; where a lot of the best jobs are the ones to be impacted. lawyers, pharmacists, certain areas of medicine like pathology

& radiology; any kind of white collar job where you are sitting at a computer or a desk; the people who you might call office drones; those are going to be very susceptible to this. >> sreenivasan: and, there could be major disruptions to the u.s. economy says daphne koller. she's an a.i. scientist, and also president of the massive online learning company coursera. >> we are already starting to see jobs that were thought of as intelligent, being outsourced to computers. for example, a large part of a paralegal's job, which is hunting down the relevant references for a particular problem is something that you would have thought requires intelligence. now there are pretty good software systems that do-- not 100% of a paralegal's job but 80% to 90%. >> sreenivasan: will artificial intelligence software do to the paralegal what the tractor did to the farmer? >> it is quite likely that that will happen. i think that there will be entire job categories that will go away.

>> sreenivasan: we humans have always been resilient. with each industrial revolution we've adapted, creating new jobs with new technologies. >> the optimistic perspective is that this will happen here and that the jobs that will be created will by nature be higher and more cognitively interesting jobs that are beyond the spectrum of what artificial intelligence can do. >> sreenivasan: leaving the less interesting jobs to robotic helpers like botlr, an automated bellhop cruising the halls of the aloft hotel. is that such a bad thing? stuart russell, who directs the ai lab at the university of california at berkeley, doesn't think so. >> some people think that inevitably every robot that does any task is a bad thing for the human race, because it could be taking a job away. that isn't necessarily true. you can also think of the robot as making a person more productive and enabling people to do things that are currently economically infeasible. a person plus a robot, or a

fleet of robots, could do things that would be really useful for us. >> sreenivasan: a perhaps simple example, cleaning up graffiti. >> in many, many cities graffiti is just left because it's too expensive, but if i had a team of robots that i could take around the city with me and point them to what needed to be cleaned up, i could get 10 times as much done. and there would be positions for graffiti cleaning supervisors, which didn't exist before. >> sreenivasan: graffiti cleaning supervising robots might exist in the future but our economy is already evolving. there are plenty of jobs that didn't exist 10 years ago that are now in high demand, in fields like digital marketing and data analysis. in fact, according to mckinsey & company, the united states faces a shortage of data analysts. almost 190,000 people are needed to analyze and understand big data. but will those jobs ultimately be filled by people or by "deep learning" machines? "deep learning" is a new type of a.i. that relies on "neural networks.

they're computer programs modeled after the human brain and nervous system. >> hey guys. how's the training page looking? >> sreenivasan: at the palo alto office of metamind, engineers are using the technology to help computers see by quickly identifying images and placing them in categories. the software can also understand nuance in the written word. richard socher is co-founder and c.t.o. he says the technology will aid humans, not replace them. >> if you can bring the intelligence of the smartest people in the field and instill it in an algorithm with deep learning, you can really help people. >> sreenivasan: one example, he says, is in the field of medicine. >> if the best doctors in the world train an algorithm to find various different problems in c.t. scans and x-rays mammograms for instance, you could build an algorithm that is almost as good as the best doctors in the world. a human can only look at so many mammograms in their lifetime. an algorithm could look at

millions and millions and eventually find subtle things that may have not been that obvious to the human eye. >> sreenivasan: so, how will society adapt to a computer intelligence that can do work that until now, only humans could? >> what people have going for them that computers as of yet do not, is the incredible adaptability of the human mind. the ability to learn new skills. the ability to really adapt to unexpected situations. what we really need to do is to help people become even better at that. >> sreenivasan: just like in a high stakes poker game, we don't know what the outcome will be. we humans are raising the stakes as we continue to drive advances in ai technology, it will be up to us to stay at the table. for the pbs newshour, i'm hari sreenivasan. >> woodruff: watch more stories from our thinking machines series on our website pbs.org/newshour.

>> ifill: its' that time of year when students, their families and friends celebrate graduation, then immediately turn to worrying about their futures. some colleges and universities are worrying too. graduating students at south carolina state university walked into the school's stadium with all the usual pride and glee of commencement day. but mixed in with the pomp and circumstance, was a cloud of uncertainty about the future of south carolina's only public historically black university. the commencement speaker senator tim scott, did not hesitate to raise it. >> let me say first and foremost that without any question, my prayers are with south carolina state university for financial success and for peace and for >> ifill: the school's mounting financial troubles include a nearly $23 million deficit and, since 2007, a 40% drop in enrollment. only months ago, state

legislators briefly proposed closing the orangeburg school for two years to balance the books. south carolina state is one of about 100 historically black colleges and universities in the nation, and among those struggling to survive. in pennsylvania, cheyney university is facing its own multimillion dollar deficit. and washington, d.c.'s howard university shed 200 staff members last year and announced 84 more layoffs this spring. many of the schools have shed students as well, and operate without the cushion of the endowments and alumni donations that elite, predominantly white schools rely on. state lawmakers last week turned to the worlds of finance and academia for a new interim board of trustees for south carolina state. gilda cobb-hunter has represented orangeburg in the state house for 24 years. >> we needed someone to recognize the importance of

check and balances, accountability, transparency. there was a real systemic problem at south carolina state, a problem that has gone on for 25 or 30 years. >> ifill: interim president w. franklin evans hopes confidence in new leadership could lead to more state funding. but he conceded that is not the only solution. >> we're looking at rightsizing across the campus, even looking at our facilities and making sure that we are maximizing our facility use in our building and optimizing every bit that we can so we're not wasting any money wasting resources. >> ifill: he's also looking to build on the school's strongest academic programs, like one in nuclear engineering. kenneth lewis heads that program, the only one of its kind in south carolina, and says it supports the kinds of students historically black universities have focused on. >> a lot of our kids are rural kids from small towns, rural towns in south carolina where

they might not have calculus for example. we spend a lot of time with those kids, developing them encouraging them, and strengthening their background. >> ifill: darian james graduated summa cum laude from the program this year, and is heading to the university of wisconsin to pursue a ph.d. in biomedical engineering. >> it taught me to get comfortable at being uncomfortable. it pushed me, it challenged me so going to any other school i feel like i can make it. >> ifill: south carolina state's new trustees met for the first time today. >> ifill: how can these schools rise to the challenges facing higher education today? for that, we turn to johnny taylor, president and c.e.o. of the thurgood marshall college fund. thank you for joining us. we just heard the president of south carolina state talking about optimizing and right sizing and words which sounds like it comes from "how to fix a school?" how does south carolina state do so poorly when other schools do so well?

what's the root problem? >> the root problem is about leadership, and it's not just the staff leadership but it's also governance. so the board leadership and the staff leadership. and by the way, that happens to be the case at many institution not just h.p.c.u.s. but at its core. if we don't fix the problem-- and it's a people problemue can throw as much money as you want at an institution, if they have the wrong sort of governance and the wrong professional staff then all the dollars in the world won't solve the problem. >> ifill: are h.p.c.u.s uniquely at risk? >> yes largely because we were first historically underfunded. check, have that. but then we continue to live-- i don't think we've had a real discussion about the appropriate new mission for h.p.c.u.s. what is their market? who are they services? >> ifill: what is that? as you sit here and set out on a mission to educate young black students, what should the mission be? >> so at its core it is

educating african american students. i mean, that is the point of having a historically black college and university but we've got to identify majors and programs that are relevant to the market. you know what are employers looking at hiring? if students are majoring in particular majors that are no longer relevant to the market then they're not doing their jobs. these kids are incurring significant amounts of student debt to get a degree and if you go out and that degree doesn't pay off then fails, and, therefore, there's no incentive for other students to come to the university. >> ifill: has the education landscape in general shifted as well? we used to say in the black community if somebody else caught a cold we caught you pneumonia. is that the the case as well for h.p.c.u.s. >> somewhat but there's been such disruption in higher education generally. you have majority institution going out of business and struggling as well. you have a school like sweet briar down in georgia stlairg

jcht announced its last graduating class. they have a $100 million endowment. the business of higher education has changed so significantly that this is not unique to h.p.c.u.s. to be fair we're historically underfundd and to the your point, the rest of the world gets a cold and we get pneumonia paz we have been historically underfunded but that is not unique to the h.p.c.u. space. >> ifill: we have done a lot of reporting on this program about online education. has that changed the responsibilities, the goals, what the structure should be for an underfunded university? >> everything has changed. there has been such disruption. think about it. who would have thought 50 years ago there would be a university of phoenix, and all the online for-profit institutions. and many students are attending reputable institutions with full on-line degrees. so yes, that has totally changed the game. i am on the board of the cooper union in new york very well known highly selective institution that this year for the first time ever had to start

charging reputation. >> ifill: it used to have a reputation of everything being free. >> is that happening at a school with a $700 million endowment you can only imagine what happens at the h.p.c.u. where i inning the aggregate many of our institution don't have a $700,000 million education. >> ifill: do many of them rely on government funding? does it have an effect as well? >> significantly. 80% to 90% ultimately emanate through the federal government for pel grants certain loan programsprograms to build infrastructure, grant programs from various federal agencys. yes all of the institution, even private institutions, rely heavily on federal and state funding. >> ifill: where does it work and where does it work? >> the schools that have figured it out. claflin university sits next to south carolina state. it's not a question of rural versus city or black versus majority. it's about leadership. at its core, our institutions

have got to get the right boards of governors, boards of trustees and those individuals have to select right leaders and those leaders have to execute their plans. >> ifill: what is the public interest in fixing h.p.c.u.s and not folding them into larger mainstream organizations. >> despite all we hear about h.p.c.u.s, they represent just 3% of all higher education but graduate 20% of all african americans with undergraduate degrees. the point is what happens to america, especially when the president's north star goal is too increase the number of college graduates if those institution went what, then america has a problem, not just black america. >> ifill: johnny taylor, president of the thurgood marshall college fund, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> ifill: we have more on south

>> woodruff: next, combating extremism. it's a subject we've been exploring closely recently. tonight we focus on morocco, where newshour special correspondent kira kay got special access to a group of women on the frontlines of an unusual effort to win over hearts and minds. her story is produced in partnership with the bureau for international reporting. >> reporter: nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood in the moroccan capital of rabat, this school is the nerve center of an ambitious government program aimed at providing what is being called spritual security. here, morocco is training imams to lead prayers in the country's many mosques. but sitting next to them, 100 women. they are not imams, that word is reserved for men. these students are studying to become mourchidat, meaning spiritual guides. they will deploy across the country with a twofold mission: to raise women's status in moroccan society and combat extremist thought. >> ( translated ): i always felt

i was made for this work. it's a dream come true! >> reporter: fatima ait saleh is a recent graduate of the mourchidat program. >> ( translated ): as you know religion can be a double-edged sword. that is why our mission as mourchidat is to show a tolerant islam, a moderate islam that advocates dialog and acceptance of others and how to stay far away from extremism. >> reporter: the mourchidat students are an elite group: only 10% of applicants are accepted; all must have already completed a bachelor's degree. they study 30 hours a week for a year, topics ranging from fundamental islamic texts to moroccan civil law to how to write a good research paper. >> ( translated ): these issues that are connected to women, we need to approach them through the perspective of islamic law. >> reporter: morocco takes special pride in the innovation of using women to spread religious messages when imams and even father's can't. >> ( translated ): the risk of terrorism can begin within the family.

>> ( translated ): the mourchidat is above all a woman a mother, a sister. her role within the family is very sacred. she has influence in her environment. for her influence to work in the right way, she needs to be fully equipped and well positioned. that's why she learns the social sciences and also good skills of communicating with men and women. >> reporter: zohra sebbtawi is from a city in the north of the country that has been a hotbed for extremist recruitment. >> ( translated ): the more we delve into it, the more we realize how sensitive our mission is, because we must correct misconceptions of islam by people who pretend to know about it, but only put the religion in trouble. >> reporter: morocco, which is a strong u.s. ally, sits in north africa, a region plagued by terrorist groups and failed states. moroccan islam is rooted in mystic sufi traditions and is considered moderate.

morocco's king is revered as a descendant of the prophet mohammed, making him not just a monarch but a spiritual leader. this promotes religious and political cohesion but also gives the government power to sometimes muzzle dissent. but terror has come here: the casablanca bombings of 2003 killed 33 people and have been called morocco's 9/11. 17 people, mostly tourists, died in marrakech in 2011. an estimated 1,500 young men have joined the islamic state. the moroccan government is fighting back by promoting a state-branded islam. issandr el amrani is with the international crisis group. >> more than probably any other arab country, morocco has invested in this and thought this is something that will pay off in the long term. trying not just to control religious discourse but using that control to prevent

radicalization, to de-radicalize to some extent. >> reporter: recent graduate fatima and her partner hanane dahi are two of the 500 mourchidat already working in the field. they spend their days in mosques and other public spaces. their speeches are a surprising blend of traditional religious sermon and feminist activism. >> ( translated ): perhaps in our history women have faced some injustice because of a misunderstanding of islam. but all women should be aware of their important status: they are entitled to buy, sell, mortgage, own everything! >> ( translated ): the number of women going daily to the mosque is higher then the men. women and kids are more faithful. we mourchidate are trying to take advantage of this presence. >> reporter: noufissa rachidi has been attending these meetings for six years. >> ( translated ): previously we women wasted our time in trivial

conversations. now we encourage each other to understand our religion. if women benefit from this program, then there is no doubt that all of society benefits, because mothers are our primary educators. >> reporter: the mourchidat also do outreach in the country's public schools. fatima particularly relishes her time working with young people. today she is sharing her favorite poem about the prophet mohammed, and drawing real-world lessons from its text. >> ( translated ): honesty leads to heaven. when we are honest in our life, allah will recognize us as a trustworthy person. >> ( translated ): protecting the youth from extremism is a part of our mission. they are adolescent. it's a crucial stage. the values we are teaching them might make it easier for them to avoid bad influences. >> reporter: fatima's husband mohamed sees his wife as something of a trailblazer. >> ( translated ): i'm proud of her work. she's serving her country.

i acknowledge that there are still some people who think a woman's place is only within her home. but those old convictions are changing. >> reporter: and now, morocco is expanding its spritual security program beyond its borders spending millions to bring in imams from other countries for study, most notably from mali which has been grappling with an islamic insurgency. this imam saw his home city of timbuktu overtaken by radicals. >> ( translated ): this program is rescuing muslims from the tight spot we are in. if islam is truly understood, security will come, justice will come, peace of mind will come. >> reporter: and upstairs from the malians sits a first class of imams from france. initiated before the charlie hebdo attacks but now taking on new relevance. there is some political gain for morocco as well, says analyst issandr el amrani. >> morocco is not a rich

country, it is not particularly a military powerful country. it serves, i think, everyone's purpose to have this government say well, we have a counter- extremism solution. and we have a model to export. this is part and parcel of moroccan diplomacy. >> reporter: and he questions how effective these programs even the mourchidat, truly are given the high level of islamic state recruitment. >> would it be a lot more if there hadn't been these programs? it's a very hard thing to measure, i think. it's also not clear really the extent to which that kind of state discourse is really that popular in those most problematic areas where you find at least a tendency towards extremism. and i think that's especially the urban peripheries. >> reporter: but back at the mourchidat school, there is firm belief among current students that their mission is urgent. >> ( translated ): this training

doesn't just serve my nation, it has international importance. the west has a bad image of islam, and we have a role in changing that. i swear i am losing sleep when i hear our professors say we are the guardians of the religion! >> reporter: these 100 elite women will graduate in december and fan out across the country perhaps hundreds of miles from their families. they say they are up to the challenge that awaits them. for pbs newshour, this is kira kay, in rabat morocco. >> ifill: on the newshour online, how might an expectant mother's zip code affect her child's future? economist john komlos has argued on our making sense page that income inequality begins at birth. today he expands on his theory saying it actually begins in the womb. you can read his latest essay on our home page pbs.org/newshour. >> woodruff: tune in this

evening, tonight on the pbs series "nature," "the sagebrush sea," an ecosystem that covers parts of eleven western states where oil and gas drilling are colliding with efforts to save the sage grouse. the u.s. fish & wildlife service must decide by september whether the rare bird should be protected under the endangered species act. that's tonight on most pbs stations. and on charlie rose, george clooney talks movies and life. >> ifill: and that's the newshour for tonight. on thursday, from fish to nuts. an economic look at california's historic drought. i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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