tonight on "kqed newsroom," we speak with our top education official tony thurmond about the future of education in california , and we continue our technology series with a look at the safety of driverless cars, plus generative artificial intelligence has roared onto the scene. is this truly a moment of historic change for humanity? bloomberg's emily chang joins us with her perspective. coming to you from kqed headquarters in san francisco this friday, june 2nd, 2023. welcome to the show. i am priya david clemens.

stay with us tonight for an important announcement about this program at the end of the show. at first, tony thurmond started his job as state superintendent of instruction in 2019 after representing parts of the east y in the state assembly. the states public schools are dealing with unprecedented issues exacerbated by the pandemic. literacy rates, absenteeism, and a mental health crisis among students. frenemy now is our state superintendent, tony thurmond . thank you for being with us. we will dig into these hard issues in a moment, the first would you share with me what drives your passion for education? >> education is everything for me. it seems my life, you know. growing up as the son of immigrants and having lost my only parent to cancer when i was six years old, being raised by cousins i never met until i showed up on their doorstep, i

needed a lot of help. education opened doors for me. i grew up on the free lunch program, food stamps, and government cheese. i ate so much government cheese that i thought usda was a brand name. public education was the most important program that helped my family. it has opened doors for me and it's an honor for me to be able to serve the 6 million students in our state to make sure they get quality education. >> food is a big part of that. it's not top of mind when it comes to education, but you are working very hard to provide meals for students. >> we have so many hungry kids and we don't need to. we have so many resources we can feed everyone. now in california we have a thing that means universal meals that means every student can get to meals for free. a for free without any paperwork regardless of their background or income or neighborhood. as someone who relied on the free lunch program, it's an honor to provide universal meals to every student in our state. >> students often weren't getting meals during the school closures and some of those

programs had to open up and provide those meals. which is great that california was able to do that. let's turn to the education piece of it, because we do have major learning loss from the pandemic. tell us where we stand right now? >> the situation is helpful. we are in a state where we are guaranteeing preschool for every 3 and 4-year-old. we have the ability to make sure that our students will learn to read by the third grade . we have the resources to support all these things. that is coming against the backdrop of seeing an increase in depression for our students, and we have resources. we have $4 billion in wraparound supports, counseling type programs to help them, but we have to address the trauma our students have gone through during the pandemic. we have to help them bounce back and close laden gaps that grew during the pandemic, and we have resources for every school, more afterschool programs. school is going to have a longer school year or school day, more education. we have the resources to overcome these challenges and

we will. i believe that the state of education is helpful, although we have a lot of work to go. california is providing more resources than any other state to help our students get their. >> let's put meat on the bones of some of those elements you spoke about. in terms of mental health, a survey from the aclu california action and the center to close the opportunity gap found that roghly 1/5 of students felt they were traumatized would not be the same because of the pandemic. more than 60% said they experienced an emotional breakdown. then let's turn to this reading p that you are talking about. california, you do have a goal that every california student should be able to read by third grade. you are aiming for that for the 2025-2026 school year. recent data shows that almost 60% of california's third- graders are behind on that benchmark. what are the actis you are taking to move this forward? >> for all the schools that have the most struggling readers amount we are providing them with reading coaches and specialists. as a simple as it

sounds, most people don't know how to teach reading. there are certain tried and true practices and best practices that are necessary when you are teaching reading to students from all backgrounds, including low income students and english learners. having a reading coach and a specialist to help new teachers is a critical opportunity. reading is a gateway scale. when you learn to read, you can read to arn anything. third grade is such a critical benchmark, so we want to remind parents to read to your children. the campaign, talk, read, sing, all of that makes a difference from the time our children are born. we should be reading to them, singing to them, helping them to develop a love of reading. it will carry them throughout their life. when you learn to read by third grade you are thus likely to drop out of school. wecan literally educate and not incarcerate our kids by ensuring they learn to read by third grade. i just want to put out a resource for anyone who is

experiencing depression, they can text or call 988 24 hours per day, 7 days per week peer counselor can connect you to a program. this is an experience of our lifetime. the pandemic is the toughest thing most of us will ever have to go through in her lifetime, and we've seen and increase in depression and anxiety and suicidal feelings, and we have the resources to help our students. we are in the midst of recruiting 10,000 more mental health clinicians to work in our schools. as a matter of fact, we have a scholarship for anyone who wants to become a mental health clinician or teacher. we will provide you $20,000 here in the state of california. >> when it comes to learning loss and the gap, there also seems to be a gap in let parents know about their students education. i want to point specifically to a billboard that went up in sacramento. it noted that 87% of sacramento county parents think their students do math at grade level but only 28% do. what is coming on with this gap between parents knowledge and

involvement and where students are at. also, only about 30% doing math at grade level? that seems very low. >> we can do better, and we will do better. the reality is students have struggled in math and reading since before the pandemic, especially students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. recall that the achievement gap. i call it the opportunity gap. i believe that our students can achieve, but we have to remove the barriers that her students face. we have 200,000 students in the state who are homeless, about 8000 to live on their own. hungry students, students who are marginally homeless and experiencing health issues. these things get in the way of success, but we can do something about that. i want to shout out a program called calculus roundtable. it is a program that focuses on s.t.e.a.m. education and math education. it breaks math down into ways that students find enjoyable , practical ways to learn, and exciting. we are also working to provide a class in this state called

personal finance, where students basically learn how the economy works, and we have found that by providing personal finance, not only do we help our students have a providing this kind of ther by financial literacy, you can teach algebra and other forms of mathematics in ways that students find practical and can help them be successful. we are on the path and we are going to help her students to make improvement in math and every other subject. >> in the last 30 seconds we have, let's talk about the problem we have with teachers. we do not have enough teachers. california has invested more than $1 billion into teacher recruitment. what more needs to happen so we can fill these vacancies? >> a lot of folks don't know that this is an opportunity. we have a public service announcement campaign to let folks know about the values and the virtues of becoming a classroom educator. we offer a scholarship, again $20,000. anyone interested in that can send us a note at and we will

call you back and connect you to a teacher connection progra and how to get the scholarship. this is a call to action and teachers are amongst our greatest champions, delivering for our students in our state, and every state is having a shortage, but california is leading the way, and we are leading the way to make sure we have great teachers and classified staff supporting our students. >> optimistic words from her california superintendent of instruction, tony thurmond thank you for being with us. driverless cars are already francisco streets, but let's hit the brakes for second and try to understand what this means for human drivers and street safety and whether more regulations are necessary. we are joined now by the head of city policy and government affairs for waymo and professor william riggs am a director of usf's autonomous vehicles and the city initiative. they will both join by skype. professor briggs, you are in

barcelona at an autonomous vehicles conference. thank you for joining us. we think of california as being a leader in autonomous vehicle. certainly much of the technology has been developed here. can you give us an overview of the driverless car landscape right now here in california my butt across the world? >> well, we are the epicenter of innovation here in california, and this is just one of those areas where the bay area particularly continues to lead in the development of sophisticated technology. this is one that moves us through space. the pleasure i've had here talking in barcelona at an international conference is to talk about all the great things we are doing from an innovation standpoint but also a policy standpoint, and to compare notes with other deployments around the world, including both in europe and in asia, and to basilly see if there are things that we can learn, but also to share some

of the learnings that company waymo and cruise and the other innovative organizations we have in california are, you know, have for the re of society. >> allie, you are joining us from southern california. thank you for being part of the show today. you are on the tip of the spear, and waymo has launched fleets of driverless cars in phoenix and san francisco. in phoenix, people can pay to hail one of your vehicles. here in san francisco you have free rides available until you get final regulatory approval. tell me about your goals for waymo ? will it be a competitor to uber? >> that's right. waymo operates the world's largest 24/7 public right hailing service that is fully autonomous in phoenix. if anyone lives or is visiting phoenix, you can download the app and use it to get around.

the car with no one in it will pick you up and take you to your destination. we are as you said operating a similar service in san francisco. across the two markets, they are offering tens of thousands of rides every week, and we are taking more and more people off of the waitlist and pulling them into our san francisco service all of the time. as soon as we get that final permit we will be offering paid rides just as we are in phoenix. we are very excited about that. >> please. >> i was just gog to say that yes, we are looking to add another option to people's mobility choices, and one that we think will complement the choices that are available today , to supplement public transit, supplement the taxi and other right hailing options that are out there.

regulatory peace, because you are waiting on final approval here in san francisco, and there have been several documented incidents of safety concerns. the local news outlet mission local obtained about 15 fire department incident reports documenting dangerous are nuisance situations where waymo or cruise vehicles interfered with fire vehicles or emergency scenes. waymo is asking for its self driving vehicles to be allowed to operate day or night across the entirety of san francisco at speeds up to 65 miles per hour , but city officials aren't convinced. they filed a letter saying that robo taxis aren't safer then human drivers, and they said, quote, that waymo driverless av , autonomous vehicles, have committed numerous violations that would preclude any teenager from getting a california drivers license. these are very significant words , strong words against the project you are trying to launch. tell me how waymo is addressing these safety concerns? >> sure. thank you. yes, i think it is important to note a couple of things.

one is that we welcome the public input that is part of the permitting process that we are going through. it's one of the things that makes california's regulatory process robust. i think one of the reason that he is in the eu sharing our learning and experience in california. i think that is a good healthy part of the process. it's also worth noting that there were about 20 letters of support from organizations that represent the groups that are currently unable to access transportation in the same way that a person who has a license and is able to use a personal vehicle, perhaps, and they would benefit from our technology. those in the disability community, those in the sustainability community, they recognize the tremendous value that an all electric fleet like the one that we offer will bring to california. additionally, i think something

i want to call out is the letter from sf mta hit a lot of great points, but also some inaccurate information that we are looking forward to talking to them about in the coming weeks. i think it is really important to focus not just on the anecdotal situations, which are important, and i'm happy to talk about some of those specific situations that you referenced, but also to look at the data, and to remember that today in san francisco, and in america or across the world a 94% of crashes that happen on the road are the result of human error. i have a feeling that everybody that's listening can think of someone in their life that has been impacted by a crash, perhaps a fatal crash, and the whole mission behind what we are pursuing is eliminating that human caused error in driving. so i respect and appreciate the input that we've gotten from

cities like san francisco, from sfmta, but i think it is important for us to remember that the status quo of driving today is not as safe as it should be, and that we should not stand in the way of moving towards a safer roadway future because of some of these isolated anecdotal incidents, which we recognize there is room for improvement. we are always striving to get better and to take the learnings from one vehicle and apply them across our fleet so that we can improve all the time. >> and professor riggs , what you say about these concerns about safety? what does your research tell you? >> i think what the data is really telling us is that per 1 million miles on the road, these platforms can drive safer than a human driver, and i think we should put into context that there is some politicization, there is media tantalizing this right now.

one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that we are a city in san francisco of experimentation. we've always been on the forefront of innovation, and that doesn't mean when we roll out new products they are always perfect, but what we are doing is we are changing the narrative and who has the right to travel through a city. if we are fully honest with ourselves, mta doesn't give everyone in our city the right or full access to travel. there are certain parts of trade san francisco where it is still hard to get a ride in the middle of the night, and what we are seeing from some of the deployments we are doing, and we have been studying this for over two years, we have thousands of students for example taking rides in some of the crews vehicles, and what we are seeing is a real, and i will use the word supplemental, but we are seeing complementary útrends with regards to automated vehicles really complementing public transport systems. and that is really the future that we are looking for, this

future where mobility and access to jobs and housing, mobility is like running water. i think if we use that as the benchmark, we should say yes to this transportation. we should say yes to public transportation. we should say yes to scooters and bikes and pedestrians. all at the same time. this is not ignoring some of the instances we have seen in terms of first respondes, but it is acknowledging that these are issues that we can work with companies to solve, but they are exceptions to what is not the norm of really safe driving. >> professor billy riggs from usf, thank you for joining us. ellie cason from waymo, thank you for your insight and analysis. this week, u.s. and eu officials discussed restrictions on artificial intelligence during a trade

meeting in sweden. next week, president biden and the uk prime minister also have ai concerns on their agenda as they meet in washington. generative artificial intelligence has been buzzed about as a paradigm shift for humanity, a change that will impact our work and relationships and knowledge. is this true? is this height? for a reality check, we asked bloomberg's emily chang to join us. she's a host of "the circuit ." thank you for being here. what do you make of this new technology with all of your years of experience of coloring silicon valley? >> i think there is some height, but there is also a new reality. this is incredibly powerful technology that will change the way we work, the way we live, the way we love. how many jobs is it going to create? how many jobs is it going to destroy? we don't know that. we don't know how this all adds up, but it is going to be a big change. the hype comes in is you have a ton of investors pouring money into these new tech ai companies, and they have fear

of missg out. not all of these companies are going to succeed, and that is the stuff of bubbles, the overestimating of any kind of technology, new technology platform. it's definitely a topic that i am investigating very deeply on my new show, and i'm also going to be interviewing sam altman, who is the ceo of openai, the company behind chatgpt, at the bloomberg technology summit later this month. if you're interested follow along. >> sam altman is one of 400+ people who have signed a very short letter that went out this week. it said 22 birds, mitigating the risk of extinction from ai should be a global toy 30 alongside otr risks such as pandemics and the nuclear war. we are talking about an x essential threat with this technology. >> you have the leaders of these technologies talking about the possibility of human extension, and that is scary. i think it is really significant that is not just the leaders of these companies, but leading research institutes that signed the letter. it is a little vague. it is a 22 word statement.

you have to think about the fact that right now this is algorithms. it's putting one word in front of the other. this is not magic. the important thing to note is that the technology gets better as we use it. in a way, the clock is ticking, which is why we need regulation yesterday. we need multiple stakeholders at the table, not just people like sam altman, because the reality is none of these companies are saying we are going to pause and stop building ai right now. they are trying to build a i asked her than the competition so we need multiple parties at the table to try to figure out where the guardrails will be. >> you are coming out with a brand-new show. can you tell people how to catch that? >> bloomberg television. you can also download the bloomberg app on your smartphone or tv. there will be a companion podcast as well. we are interviewing people like

the folks who work at openai , the cofounders on twitter, the most followed person on tiktok, the ceo of airbnb, the ceo of microsoft. it was a an opportunity for me to dig deeper. topics like ai are really nuanced and complicated. i wanted spend more time with these people who are building thnologies and making decisions that will impact the lives of billions and billions. >> that launches june 9th. >> june 8th. >> emily chang , thank you so much. storm accents 1985, adot park in richmond has been a haven for people who want to let their dogs enjoy nature off leash. the park is situated on the shoreline and it encompasses roughly 50 acres of land. point is a lt.pk is this week's look at somethin beautiful. [ music ]

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ i might have to check that out with my dog hamilton this weekend. but added that important message i mentioned at the beginning of tonight's show. it is with a heavy heart that i

share this news. our program will be coming to an end this month. here is kqed's president and ceo with more. >> i am president and ceo of kqed. after more than five decades , from the pioneering nightly news program, newspaper of the year in the late 60s, to the 90s and the weekly series this week in northern california posted by the bay area icon until 2012. then to "kqed newsroom" with the tweed for you and now synthesia who has carried , priya david clemens was carried the host baton. the last episode will be on june 23rd. >> there will be no increase in taxes. >> this series in all its forms has been a source for in-depth the substantiative interviews with regional, state, and national newsmakers and journalists. we've been with you for some of the most portant bay area moments from the free speech movement of the

60s, to the assassinations of harvey milk and mayor george moscone in the 70s. keeping you informed and save through the pandemic and wildfires, and prepared as you cast your vote during elections. we honor the historical significance of "kqed newsroom," and we will maintain our commitment to providing local and national news , information, and conversation whether on kqed public radio, kqed.org , on her social media channels, kqed will continue to be a place for trusted, independent, and quality programming. thank you. >> we will be honoring the legacy of the show with two special episodes. they will print on june 16th and june 23rd. we will not have a show next week. i want to say a special thank you to all of you who have

supported this program and our production team over the years. thank you for all the thoughtful messages you have sent to me. if you'd like to reach out, let me she you can do that as we do at the end of every show. you can email us at cayenne are at kqed.org you can also find "kqed newsroom" online or on itter , or you can reach me at linkedin at priya david clemens . thank you for watching and have a great weekend. we will see you back here in two weeks for part one of our series finale on june 16th. ♪

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william: an economic crisis avoided, and donald trump's reelection campaign gets more complicated. pres. biden: passing this budget agreement was critical. the stakes could not have been higher. william: a potential disaster averted after congress raised the nation's debt ceiling. plus -- >> his conduct i think is one of the reasons he is not in the white house. pres. trump: you d't want him as your president. william: to be the next florida governor ron desantis kicks off his bid by hitting the campaign trail and sparring with former president trump. but the former president also faces another kind of threat, new developments in the investigation of his handling of classified documents.