♪ lisa: tonight on "pbs news weekend"... with artificial intelligence on the rise, new concerns about conditions for the people that power this growing industry. then... short supply -- parents still struggling to find baby formula now face other shortages, like baby tylenol. we look at what's happening. and... the story of a trailblazing air force pilot who helped pave the way for nasa's black astronauts. jermaine: he's always getting this pushback, people questioning if he's there only because he's black, and he's under immense scrutiny. ♪ >> major funding for "pbs news weekend" has been provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer

cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no contract plans, and our u.s.-based customer service team can find one that fits you. to learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. ♪ >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions -- ♪ and friends of "the newshour." ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public brdcasting and by contritions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. lisa: good evening and hello,

i'm lisa desjardins. john yang is away. some interstates out west remain shut down and today yosemite national park announced it will be closed until mid-week due to the snow, wind and freezing winter weather that is still paing a wallop. los angeles' iconic hollywood sign was shrouded in fog and snow as the storm made its way across california. at higher elevations there were blizzard conditions in some places. to the eas michigan was thawing out after a massive ice storm. almost 400,000 people are still without power. president biden has ordered federal teams to go or-to-door in east palestine, ohio making sure families there have what they need in the wake of the toxic train derailment that happened three weeks ago. last night, hundreds of worried residents packed a local high school auditorium to hear activists and attorneys, including erin brockovich, raise potential dangers and litigation. africa's largest democracy, nigeria, held its presidential election today.

from the start there were reports across the country of delayed poll openings, stolen ballots and even violence. ali rogin reports. >> we must vote! ali: across nigeria today, voters worried that an election delayed would mean democracy denied. nafisat: yeah i'm really disappointed because they said it would start at 8:00 a.m. and up 'til now, i think it is 12:00 p.m., we have not started casting over votes. ali: many polling places opened late. others came under attack. this associated press camera was filming as shooters opened fire at this location in lagos, then fled with ballot boxes. voter: can you see what's happening now? they want to make sure they suppress others from voting. this is unfair, this is madness, this is not civilization. ali: nigeria's election commission had touted new measures this year to reduce election fraud and corruption,

and they said polls would stay open late to make up for the delays. amidst the chaotic scenes, some optimism remained, especially among young voters. odinko: so many people came out. they want to take back their country that is why they all , turned out to vote. so me, i was excited, like i woke up this morning and i was so excited and i was like history is going to be made today. ali: nigeria hasn't had an election this competitive since it became a democracy in 1999. bola tinubu represents the current ruling party, and atiku abubakar is the candidate for the primary opposition party. both men are in their seventies and seen as old guard politicians. then there's peter obi, a former state governor who has mobilized young people, and is the first third-party candidate who stands a chance at victory. mr. obi: it's an existential election. the country is going through a very difficult time. ali: those difficulties include cash and fuel shortages, sky-high unemployment and instability fueled by terrorists and violent insurgents.

the election results were already expected to take several days. butoday's chaos likely means nigerians will have to wait even longer to know who will serve as their next president. for "pbs news weekend," i'm ali rogin. lisa: in the u.s., concern about suicide in the u.s. military has risen so much that an independent government committee is recommending the pentagon launch new rules around weapons. the committee, appointed b congress last year, recommends waiting periods for purchasing firearms on military property, raising the minimum age for purchasing guns and ammunition to 25, and requiring anyone living in military housing to register all privately owned firearms. 66 percent of all active-duty military suicides involve the use of firearms. it may soon be easier to test for the flu and covid-19. the fda has approved the first combination test for both diseases that can be used at home.

nasal-swab results appear in about 30 minutes and the kits will not need a prescription. and a passing of note: the cotry's first arab american senator, james abourezk, died last night at his home in sioux falls, south dakota. raised by lebanese parents on an indian reservation, abourezk served single terms in the house and senate in the seventies. while in office, the democrat fought to prevent the separation of native american families, and was an outspoken critic of u.s. foreign policy in the middle east. james abourezk was 92 years old. still to come on "pbs news weekend"... what's causing the shortages of some kids medicines and baby formula? and... the pioneering pilot who first tried to break nasa's racial barrier. >> this is "pbs news weekend" from weta studios in washington,

home of the pbs newshour weeknights on pbs. lisa: artificial intelligence comes in many forms, and whether you realize it or not, it is now woven into things we see and touch every day. things like googling anything or tagging a friend on facebook. filing your taxes using turbotax, and even using your p's speak to text feature. ai is all over the headlines these days as societies confront the growing technology. this week, the u.s. copyright office ruled that a.i. images cannot be legally protected. china launched a cradown on the popular ai program chatgpt and "the new york times" recently published a rant by microsoft's new ai chat feature, which tried to convince the writer to leave his wife. thought by many to be powered only by computers, ai often relies on a massive human workforce, and there are significant questions about the treatment of those workers. joining us now to discuss is sonam jindal with partnership on ai, a nonprofit coalition

committed to the responsible use of artificial intelligence. i want to start with just understanding the basics here. what are these jobs exactly that people are doing that keep artificial intelligence working? sonam: yeah, absolutely. artificial intelligence products and models require massive amounts of dat so to make it very simplistic, a computer system or an ai algorithm doesn't know on its own whether or not something is a cat or dog. it needs to be told what is a cat or a dog. therare people who go through images and label them. cat, cat, dog, dog. and over time, the algorithm can understand it. and that is true of all ai models. all of them require data and humans to look at that data and classify it. lisa: can you help us understand where these people work? i thought ybe this would be ca centers, but it is not. what parts of the world and what kind of workplaces are we talking about?

sonam: this work is done across the globe, but a lot of this work is done in the global south because frankly, there's eaper labor there. and a lot of this is done over digital platforms. so people are dog this work sometimes in their own homes, sometimes they go in in person, but a lot of it is digitally arbitrated. lisa: what do we know about the actual content that these workers are sifting through and trying to get a computer to understand? sonam: yeah, [14:57:01]so it really depends on the ai model that companies are trying to build. so, for example, if you have a health care company trying to build an algorithm, an ai model to understand whether or not someone has breast cancer based off their images, people might be looking at radiology images to understand if someone has cancer or not d then train the model so that the algorithm can actually understand and make predictions based off of the images. but people have to look through that data first. a lot of the work that people have to do sometimes means that they have to interact with toxic content.

so one of the reasons why search and social media are usable is because we see information that we want to see. but th requires people looking through information that we don't want to see. lisa: talking about the conditions then for this industry, am i right that there are really no standards for how these workers are treated, and what about the pay? how does that work? sonam: i think part of the problem is that we when we think about artificial intelligence, we get really excited that there's technology involved and it's automated and there aren't people involved. d i think part of that narrative is that we forget that humans are central to this work. oftentimes they face very low pay. sometimes this work is done for pennies. they have uncertainty of whether or not they will get paid. and there's really not a lot of power to contest those decisions. lisa: these workers are almost in sort of an isolated intellectual factory of sorts. you know, part of the thing in my mind is often we think ai

, that means machines taking over human jobs. what do we know about how many jobs that ai could provide, how important this area could be in terms of labor around the world? sonam: absolutely. yeah. as ai becomes a bigger part of our economy, these are the jobs that are going to enable it to be built. and i think that that's sort of like one of the biggest takeaways in this is that artificial, what we call artificial intelligence, is not really artificial intelligence. it's human intelligence that we're putting and embedding into data so that we can all benefit from that collective intelligence. so it's really important that we start valuing that intelligence for what it is worth. this is a labor force that's going to grow or the demand for this labor is going to grow. it is important that we recognize the important contributions that these workers are making so that we can develop better ai. lisa: briefly, do you see a path toward figuring out standards for figuring out how to establish even basic workplace rules for these workers? sonam: yeah, absolutely.

one of the things that my organization and partnership on ai does is try to work with different stakeholders across the industry, academia and civil society, to figure out how do we actually improve conditions for these workers, what are the guidelines that we should be following? and ultimately, it's important that that becomes regulated and codified and mandated, and there are formal protections for this class of workers. in the meantime, we have a set of guidelines and resources available for any ai developer to start using today so that they can start incorporating considerations for workers into their day to day practices as they're setting up their projects. lisa: sonam jindal in the partnership for ai. we certainly have benefited from your human intelligence today. thank you. sonam: thank you. ♪ lisa: from formula to medicine,

parents of infants and school-age kids are being battered by a wave of shtages. ali rogin has more on what's missing on store shelves and how it's impacting families. ali: to name a few -- the baby formula shortage is now in its second year. supplies of children's tylenol and motrin are still recovering from a brutal flu season. and the antibiotic amoxicillin is also in short supply. and adderall, the medication primarily used to treat adhd, is increasingly hard to find. parents and caregivers are going from store to store, calling pharmacy after pharmacy to find these things that their children urgently need. for more on what is causing these shortages, we turn to to chabeli carrazana. she's the economy reporter for the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom that covers gender politics and policy. chabeli, thank you so much for joining us. let's start with the baby formula shortage. it started about a year ago after a major recall and a factory closure. so where do things stand now? chabeli: at this point, we are

seeing supply of formula start to come back to shelves. but if you're a parent in most parts of the country, you're finding that those shelves are still pretty bare. and what we're seeing is sort of this mismatch of pockets of the country where that shortage is more acute and other areas where it has come back significantly. and just this week, we saw some more formula recalled from enfamil, which the fda is saying will hopefully not worsen the situation significantly. but it's definitely still a huge problem. ali: there's also the issue of children's tylenol and motrin. there have been shortages of those medicines since at least december of last year. what's the latest with that and why is it happening? chabeli: so wi those, we hear that it's really demand driven, right? we have heard from johnson and johnson, who's the main manufacturer of these medications, that this cold, flu, covid-19, rsveason from the fall really, really ramped up the demand for these medications. we had people who were buying

them proactively and now we are seeing parents buying alternatives, generics, different forms. i think that situation is getting a little better, but it's still definitely with us as well. ali: and the antibiotic amoxicillin is also in short supply. that, of course, treats bacterial infections, not viruses. what's behind that? chabeli: what's happened with amoxicillin is, again, we're seeing a demand driven shortage. and again, we are seeing that pediatricians are switching to different antibiotics to help kids. but what that's causing is a cascade effect. and so that is really just layering and layering and layering on top of all of these otr shortages that are happening at the same time. and they're all affecting really sort of the same group of people, right? kids and caregivers. ali: yeah, absolutely. and i want to get to the effect on caregivers in just a second. but the last individual shortage that we want to talk about today is adderall. are there any similar factors that go into that shortage? chabeli: there are. there's a lot of through lines

here, right, with all of these. with adderall, it's really interesting because we saw throughout the pandemic some relaxed rules around prescribing a controlled substance like adderall. so if you were you seeing a doctor through telehealth, you could get adderall through a prescription on telehealth, which previously you were unable do. we also had people at home who were more sort of aware of each other as parents were realizing, wow, you know, maybe my child has adhd, let me get this checked out. and of course, supply chain issues, i should also say, is part of this also happened with adderall. and so we again, have a situation where the's many more prescriptions of adrall and there's only a set number of medications that are available each year because it's a controlled substance. ali: and chabeli, lastly, you've been talking to parents about how they've been dealing with these things. what are they telling you and what are some of the things they're doing to deal with it in their own homes? chabeli: i think the tenor of the conversations with parents is really one of desperation, right?

when we talk about formula specifically, that is an item that has no alternative. this is the only food that some children have access to. and so really, it's been a lot of desperation. we've seen a lot of parents helping each other across the country. there's facebook groups that have popped up for formula and for other things as well, where they're essentially sending each other these items across the country when they find them. and to total strangers. so these parents are just kind of cobbling it together, driving to store after store after store after store, sending family members to drive to stores and trying to find it. and i should say that there are families that are able to do that. and there are also low-income families for whom that oion is not available. so it really is an untenable situation and one that just doesn't necessarily seem to be ending anytime soon. ali: chabeli carrazana, with the 19th, thank you so much for your time. chabeli: thank you. ♪

lisa: and finally tonight, the last in our series, "hidden histories." space exploration has long fascinated humans -- from the fantasy of the ancient greeks to the reality of moon landings last century. venturing into space is about pushing into new frontiers and not just the technological. tonight we bring you the story of pilot and astronaut candidate, ed dwight. john: ed dwight had sky high dreams from the time he was growing up ithe midwest. jermaine: so dwight's first love was art actually. he drew and traced cartoons newspapers from a small child, but his second passion was airplanes. john: jermaine fowler is the author of the humanity archive. jermaine: he hung around his local hanger. and so he begins cleaning t airplanes when he's five and six years old. john: being arod all-white group of aviats piqued dwight's interest in flying, but in segregated kansas city, kansas it was hard to imagine a future for himself in the air.

jermaine: one day he's delivering newspapers and he saw air force pilot dayton ragland, a black man fr kansas city, on the front page of a black newspaper called the call. and this is kind of when the light bulb went off, like i could be a pilottoo. john: after earning an associate's degree in engineering, dwight joined the u.s. air force and trained to become a test pilot. he was stationed in texas, missouri, and arizona -- and on the side earned his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering. michael cassut is an author and space historian. michael: the air force at its test pilot school started creating what they called a space school that would allow you to be more qualified to fly for nasa. john: through it all, dwight had one goal in mind -- to become america's first black astronaut. jermaine: there was one time in 1962 where dwight, he's flying this f-104 starfighter nicknamed the chrome javelin. this is a supersonic aircraft that reaches the edges of the

earth's atmosphere. and it's very dangerous up there. you could black out, you could crash, you could die. and, you kno he's ready for this thrill. he really wants to become this astronaut. john: it was the early 1960's. america was roiled by the civil rights movement and captivated by the space race with the soviet union. white house officials had a stake in dwight joining nasa's all-white astronaut corps. michael: the kennedy administration had made it clear to the higher ups of the air force that they were interested in having a black air force officer not only go through the school, but then become a candidate to be a nasa astronaut, to be part of the apollo program. ed: we, to the onlooker, i suppose you could say this is definitely a sign of progress for the negro in the country. i personally think that i would like to thinabout it as an individual, rather rather than me being a negro. john: dwight was thrust into the media spotlight. michael: you had ebony and other

magazines and newspapers talking about him while he was basically probably just trying to keep his head down and do a good job as a student. john: but nasa was not immune to the nation's racial tensions. jermaine: chuck yeager, who ran the edwards air force base, he did not want him there from the very beginning. so he's always getting this pushback, people questioning if h's there only because he's black and he's under immense scrutiny. john: still, dwight persisted. he completed the rigorous training, and -- with a recommendation from the air force -- applied to become a nasa astronaut. nasa spokesman: i guess you all know why you're here today and while we're here we'd like to introduce the new group of 14 astronauts. john: future apollo astronauts buzz aldrin, alan bean, and eugene cernan were among those selected. dwight did not make the cut. michael: he left a year later, resigned his commission and went on tbusiness and a new life. john: dwight retired from the air force, moved to colorado and turned to a childhood passion he'd left behind.

jermaine: he didn't make history as an astronaut, but he makes it in the form of art. so he has all these great historical monuments all across the country, from atlanta to denver to washington, d.c. john: it took until 1983 for a black american to go into space, when guy bluford was a space shuttle challenger mission specialist. nine years later, mae jemison became the first black woman in space aboard the shuttle endeavor. dwight paved the way for both of them, even though his own dream of space flight was never fulfilled. for "pbs news weekend," i'm john yang. ♪ lisa: that's our program for tonight. i'm lisa desjardins. for all of us at "pbs news weekend," we are grateful to spend part of our saturday with you. we'll see you soon. >> major funding for "pbs news

weekend" has been provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular haseen offering no contract wireless plans to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team c find a plan that fits you. for more, visit consumercellu lar.tv. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and stitutions -- ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

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