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Two new monuments in Montgomery, Ala., are meant to provoke racial reckoning in public spaces. The creators hope they can serve as a counternarrative to monuments intended to glorify the Old South.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The debate over removing Confederate memorials from the public square has been part of the national conversation for a decade or more. Now two social justice groups are putting up new interactive monuments to try to provoke racial reckoning. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: More than a million people have visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., since it opened four years ago. It's a project of the Equal Justice Initiative that remembers thousands of lynching victims. Their names are etched on 800 steel blocks, one for each U.S. county where racial killings occurred. The monuments hang from an open-air pavilion on a hilltop overlooking the Montgomery skyline.

(SOUNDBITE OF PARK AMBIENCE)

ELLIOTT: Now director Bryan Stevenson is expanding the memorial.

BRYAN STEVENSON: We call this new section Community Reckoning because it's the way in which communities are asking localities to kind of reckon with this history.

ELLIOTT: Lynching violence was local, Stevenson says. Here, visitors can learn more about some of those killings. Detailed stories appear on historical markers that look like the ones you might see along a highway. They are duplicates of ones that local groups have erected around the country, based on research from the initiative.

STEVENSON: This one is in Brighton, Ala. It's about a Black man who was lynched for trying to organize Black workers to get better pay. And as we...

ELLIOTT: There are markers from Orlando, Denver and Tulsa. The new exhibit also includes a sculpture by the artist Branly Cadet called "Arise." It shows community activists. One is speaking into a bullhorn; others appear in prayer or reflection. Stevenson says the models for the piece were all descendants of lynching victims.

STEVENSON: They represent the work that people in communities are doing each and every day to get their locality to reckon with the history of violence that took place.

ELLIOTT: According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 300 community coalitions have put lynching markers in 20 states. But Stevenson says the effort has not been embraced everywhere.

STEVENSON: It's been harder in some communities than others. But I think that's just the nature of trying to respond to a 400-year history of silence. And so I'm not even surprised by the resistance. And you see this new - some of these new efforts to try to ban the teaching of history. But I think that's always been the reaction to progress.

ELLIOTT: He points to the emergence of Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction and the violent resistance to the civil rights movement. Activists say the country is at an inflection point again, as more people find their voices after the racial justice protests of 2020.

(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMMING)

ELLIOTT: Another monument is newly on display in Montgomery, also aimed at advancing the social justice conversation. It's a sculpture called "Blank Slate" by the Ghanian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, my God, I can't believe this is happening now.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: OK, so go ahead and engage with the sign.

ELLIOTT: Four figures are stacked to represent the historical suffering of African Americans. An enslaved man in shackles is at the base, supporting a Black Union soldier, a noose around his neck. Above him is a woman with a baby on her back. She carries a beacon and holds up an interactive sign that receives messages via a Wi-Fi signal.

MORRIS SINCLAIR: She's holding a blank slate, which means that you can write whatever you want to write on the sign.

ELLIOTT: That's Morris Sinclair with the Blank Slate Movement. He says it embodies resilience.

SINCLAIR: It's like almost as if the civil rights movement has just begun again with the new generation.

MICHELE BROWDER: I'm energized by it.

ELLIOTT: Michele Browder leads civil rights tours in Montgomery.

BROWDER: To see this woman with a baby on her back, holding a lantern, lighting the way, to, you know, the continuation of this movement to let us be free.

ELLIOTT: The "Blank Slate Monument" is touring the country and will be in Montgomery for three months at the Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Memorial Center. The memorial center's director, Tafeni English, says this sculpture comes as a counternarrative to Confederate monuments and as a response to new state bans on critical race theory instruction and the teaching of what some politicians consider divisive concepts.

TAFENI ENGLISH: How is it that you want to hold on to one segment of history and silence the other?

ELLIOTT: Montgomery bills itself as both the cradle of the Confederacy and the birthplace of the civil rights movement, and there's rich history around nearly every corner. But it's taken decades for sites associated with the slave trade, for instance, to get equal attention to those that glorify the Old South. Now they do.

Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Montgomery, Ala.

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Social justice groups' monuments are a counternarrative to Confederate memorials

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Two new monuments in Montgomery, Ala., are meant to provoke racial reckoning in public spaces. The creators hope they can serve as a counternarrative to monuments intended to glorify the Old South.

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Joy Morales-Bartlett could finally see an end to her decadeslong student debt by the end of this year.

But her ability to pay it off now rests in the hands of the Supreme Court.

More than 40 million borrowers like Morales-Bartlett were eligible to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt under President Joe Biden's one-time student loan forgiveness plan.

With a remaining balance of $19,000, the former University of California, Santa Barbara, student applied to the program as soon as it opened, with high hopes. Morales-Bartlett received an email from the U.S. Department of Education two weeks ago saying her application had been approved.

But instead, her debt and that of roughly 16 million applicants who were also approved may never be forgiven if the Supreme Court sides with lower courts in Republican-led states that blocked the program. A ruling is expected next year.

NBC News spoke to a dozen student loan forgiveness applicants nationwide, ages 24 to 60, who had hoped for relief from their crippling debt - which has left some struggling to afford medical expenses and basic necessities and others unable to buy a home or start a family.

"It's disheartening," said Morales-Bartlett, 46, a former teacher from California who has been paying off her $89,000 in student loan debt the last thirty years and is currently dealing with health-related issues. "We've done the right things this whole time, and we are being punished for it."

The Biden administration has since closed the application process until the court decides the program's fate sometime next year.

Meanwhile, the pandemic-era federal student loan repayment pause has been extended while the government awaits the court's decision.

Struggling 'until the day I die with this crappy debt'

The onerous cost of higher education is a persistent challenge as communities continue to encourage college completion, especially for groups such as Latinos who lag in the number of adults with college degrees, with recent gains set back by the pandemic.

Going to college is credited with greater opportunities for socioeconomic mobility.

For Daisy Pérez, 49, earning a college degree and becoming a registered nurse helped her family get out of poverty and "at least make ends meet," her daughter Cristher Estrada-Pérez said.

Estrada-Pérez said her mother may never be able to pay off the $90,000 in student debt, which includes a Parent Plus loan for Estrada-Perez's college tuition.

"She's never going to be able to own a home and earn enough to retire," Estrada-Pérez, 32, said.

The crisis has left parents and their adult children grappling with how to pay off student debt, which has been steadily rising in the U.S. for more than a decade, reaching $1.745 trillion this year. The average federal student loan debt nears $30,000.

Estrada-Pérez, who is also the executive director of the Student Loan Fund in Connecticut, which helps predominantly Black and Latino borrowers navigate their debt, is paying off $80,000 for her student loans.

As Federal Pell Grant recipients, Estrada-Pérez and her mother stand to get $20,000 in debt forgiveness if the Supreme Court rules to keep Biden's program. But still, that barely covers the interest rates their loans have accumulated over the years, she said.

Estrada-Pérez, who majored in history at St. Joseph's University in West Hartford, had aspired to become a lawyer, but "I couldn't think about what my debt would look like if I even attempted to go to law school."

Lisa Brown, 60, of North Carolina remembers paying for college at the University of Southern Maine with her parent's help about four decades ago, when tuition was about $3,000 a year. Now, attending a four-year university can cost $25,000 to $55,000 a year on average.

After earning a bachelor's in psychology, Brown returned to school in an attempt to improve her job prospects. She graduated from Walden University in 2002 with a master's in forensic psychology.

This time around she ended up with $40,000 in student loan debt, which has almost doubled to about $70,000 over the past decade because of compounded interest. Brown also has a $17,000 Parent Plus loan - federal loans that parents of dependent undergraduate students can use - from when her 31-year-old son was studying sound engineering at an art institute in Boston.

At Brown's age, medical bills are also starting to pile up, she said. Even with insurance, she is still paying a $2,600 balance from an operation she had two years ago.

"I'm going to struggle until the day I die with this crappy debt," said Brown, who is looking for work. "If they're going to make us continue to pay ... then don't make getting jobs harder for older people." If approved, Brown could receive up to $10,000 in loan forgiveness under Biden's program.

Brown's son still has about $50,000 in student debt despite being one of the thousands of North Carolinians who received some student loan relief as part of a multistate settlement with Navient, one of the nation's largest student loan servicers, over allegations of unfair and deceptive student loan servicing and predatory lending practices, according to North Carolina's Attorney General Josh Stein's office. He also applied to the currently blocked student loan forgiveness program and is waiting to hear back.

The unresolved student debt crisis has many borrowers questioning whether the ends justify the means. Esther Jean-Marie is one of them.

The 30-year-old of Haitian descent graduated from the University of Hartford in 2015 and went on to complete a master's in nonprofit management and philanthropy to increase her chances of making a livable wage and "set myself up for success," she said.

After working multiple jobs to pay for college, Jean-Marie achieved her dream of doing nonprofit work, but still ended up with $88,000 in student debt.

First-generation college graduates such as Jean-Marie, Estrada-Pérez and Morales-Bartlett tend to have lower incomes and accumulate less wealth, on average, compared to those with a parent who has a bachelor's or higher degree, complicating their ability to repay loans, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center analysis.

'I needed time'

Alexis V. said she survived an act of sexual violence while studying business administration at the University of Southern California. She ended up taking a health leave and graduated in December 2013, a semester later than expected.

"It cost me thousands of dollars just because I needed time to process the trauma of sexual assault," Alexis, who now has $55,000 in student debt, said.

According to a survey on sexual violence and student debt from the Sexual Violence Prevention Association, her experience is not unique. Experiencing sexual violence often leads to higher student loans and increased difficulty repaying the debt, founder and CEO Omny Miranda Martone said.

Alexis has been approved to receive $10,000 in loan forgiveness under Biden's program. While it's still significantly less than what she had hoped, as the first in her Filipino family to go to college, "I'd be better able to support my parents. My dad could hopefully be less stressed about retiring."

The current pause on student debt repayment due to the pandemic has helped. It made it easier for Alexis to afford living on her own. For Martone(who uses they/them pronouns), not having the financial strain of repayment allowed them to pursue their goal of starting an organization to prevent sexual violence.

It also helped Jean-Marie and Nick Marcil of Pennsylvania afford long overdue fixes to their cars.

Marcil, 24, would get about half of his roughly $18,000 in student debt forgiven if the Biden federal loan forgiveness program is allowed to go into effect. He earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in education from West Chester University. Still living with his parents, he was hoping to be one step closer to financial freedom and to being on his own.

'I feel like it'll never go away'

Since the program was put on hold, borrowers spoke of feeling their hopes fade that the Biden administration would be able to prevent the states from blocking the measure.

"There is compounded distrust from the public that this can even work," Brianna Dunlap, who has a $123,000 student debt, said. She had applied for another student debt cancellation program but a change in the requirements precluded her from getting relief. Still, the 32-year-old from Connecticut reluctantly applied for the program and is waiting to hear back.

Regardless of whether she qualifies, Dunlap would still be left with a six-figure debt. "How could I plan on having kids and paying for their future when my own student debt future is completely unknown?" Dunlap said, explaining why she and her husband are considering not having kids.

For Illinois resident Megan Stemm-Wade, the payments she has made toward her $39,000 student debt since finishing school in 2014 have barely lowered her balance, since most of it goes toward interest. "It feels like it'll never go away," she said. Her hope is that the student debt program will finally help her take a meaningful step forward.

Thomas Gokey, a policy director at the Debt Collective, a membership-based union for debtors, said the secretary of Education has authority to "cancel student debt in the event of an emergency" under the HEROES Act of 2003 and "to compromise and settle student loans for any reason" under the Higher Education Act of 1965, which in part regulates how the secretary may administer existing loan forgiveness programs.

The Biden administration did use the HEROES Act, but by putting in place an application process, Gokey said, it opened the door for Republicans to challenge the program in court. The application was made to exclude a small number of student loan borrowers (about 3%) who earn over $125,000 from receiving relief during the first two years of the pandemic, Gokey said.

"But the entire program is now at risk," said Gokey, who applied to the program hoping it would forgive a fourth of his student debt.

In response to a query from NBC News about the administration's next steps as the program remains on hold, the Department of Education pointed to previous statements by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announcing the extension of the student loan repayment pause. Last week, the White House said in a statement the loan forgiveness program is " legal, supported by careful analysis from administration lawyers," and stated that Biden "will keep fighting against efforts to rob middle class families of the relief they need and deserve."

Carol Deas-Lopez, 60, a clinical psychologist from California, said she began doing advocacy with the Debt Collective as a way to cope with "the depression and anxiety that goes along with financial stressors like these, which have the capability of rendering me or anyone else homeless or seriously wipe us out financially."

Deas-Lopez qualified for the Biden program's maximum of $20,000 in federal loan forgiveness. But with over $300,000 in debt, she sometimes wakes up in the middle of night "just kind of in terror about the whole thing," she said.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the program, close to 20 million people would have their debt fully canceled, according to the Biden administration.

"That's a big deal," said Estrada-Pérez. "It's about economic justice. We're borrowers who are not just struggling with student debt payments, we're struggling with inflation, cost of living."

Morales-Bartlett would be one of those 20 million people who would be debt-free through Biden's program. It would lift a huge weight off her shoulders after having to quit her job due to health reasons - and already using up her retirement savings.

"I hope," Morales-Bartlett said, "that the court finds a way to not stand in the way of this anymore."

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Student loan borrowers thought they were getting relief. Now, courts have put their lives on hold.

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"It's disheartening," said a woman who's been paying college debt for about 30 years and was approved for the Biden federal student loan forgiveness program - which is now held up.

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The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States has dropped to the level it was in 2004, and Mexicans are no longer a majority of this population. This decline is due mainly to a large drop in the number of new unauthorized immigrants, especially Mexicans, coming into the country. The origin countries of unauthorized immigrants also shifted during that time, with the number from Mexico declining and the number rising from Central America and Asia, according to the latest Pew Research Center estimates.

Here are five facts about the unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S.

There were 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2017, representing 3.2% of the total U.S. population that year. The 2017 unauthorized immigrant total is a 14% drop from the peak of 12.2 million in 2007, when this group was 4% of the U.S. population.

The number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants declined since 2007, while the total from other nations ticked up. Mexicans made up less than half of all unauthorized U.S. immigrants (47%) in 2017 for the first time, according to the Center's estimate, compared with 57% in 2007. Their numbers (and share of the total) have been declining in recent years: There were 4.9 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2017, down from 6.9 million in 2007.

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Meanwhile, the total from other nations, 5.5 million in 2017, ticked up from 2007, when it was 5.3 million. The number of unauthorized immigrants has grown since 2007 from both Central America and Asia. There were 1.5 million Central American unauthorized immigrants in 2007 and 1.9 million in 2017. This growth was fueled mainly by immigrants from the Northern Triangle nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The number from Asia, 1.3 million in 2007, rose to 1.5 million in 2017.

At the same time, the number of unauthorized immigrants from South America and Europe decreased between 2007 and 2017. Other large regions (the Caribbean, Middle East-North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world) did not change significantly during that time.

The U.S. civilian workforce includes 7.6 million unauthorized immigrants, representing a decline since 2007. Between 2007 and 2017, the number of unauthorized immigrant workers fell by 625,000, as did their share of the total U.S. workforce over the same period. In 2017, this group accounted for 4.6% of those in the U.S. who were working or were unemployed and looking for work.

Six states account for 57% of unauthorized immigrants: California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. From 2007 to 2017, individual states experienced different trends. The unauthorized immigrant population decreased in a dozen states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon. In five states, the unauthorized immigrant population rose over the same period: Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Dakota and South Dakota.

A rising share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade. About two-thirds (66%) of unauthorized immigrant adults in 2017 had been in the U.S. more than 10 years, compared with 41% in 2007. A declining share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for five years or less - 20% of adults in 2017, compared with 30% in 2007. In 2017, unauthorized immigrant adults had lived in the U.S. for a median of 15.1 years, meaning that half had been in the country at least that long.

Note: This is an update to a post originally published on Nov. 18, 2014.
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5 facts about illegal immigration in the U.S.

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The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States has dropped to the level it was in 2004, and Mexicans are no longer a majority of this population. This decline is due mainly to a large drop in the number of new unauthorized immigrants, especially Mexicans, coming into the country.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolekraft/2023/08/21/why-the-public-strongly-supports-paying-college-athletes/?sh=31ca3841b08e

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The Sportico/Harris poll shows a majority of people support players like Myan Williams of the Ohio ... [+]
Getty Images

When student-athletes in 2021 were finally provided the chance to earn money from their name, image and likeness, some feared it would be the end of college sports as we knew it.

Fast forward two years, and the majority of Americans seem ready to let them bank even more bucks.

Nearly 70% of U.S. adults said college athletes should be able to receive direct compensation from their school when asked in a survey conducted this summer by Sportico and The Harris Poll.

"It's about time," sports attorney Luke Fedlam, founder of Advance NIL, said. "We have seen over the last 20 years the explosion in the commercialization of college sports. Look at the NCAA [March Madness] tournament. So much money is being made on student-athletes' abilities. The idea that people are still coming around to is understanding and believing college athletes should receive compensation just makes sense."

The poll, which surveyed 2,018 people nationally from Aug. 11-13, found 67% agreed college athletes should receive direct compensation from their universities, while 74% of respondents supported athletes' ability to profit from NIL.

"I think it's good that athletes are getting their share," Ohio University sports business professor B. David Ridpath said. "People are starting to come to the realization that not only is it inevitable, it's really the right thing to do."

NIL became part of the sports landscape in June 2021 when the NCAA Board of Directors lifted NCAA restrictions on athlete payments for everything from sponsorships to personal appearances.

That same month, the Supreme Court voted unanimously that the NCAA can no longer limit education-related benefits that colleges offer athletes beyond tuition, including computers and internships. As part of what's known as the Alston ruling, schools are now allowed to annually provide athletes with as much as $5,980 in education-related compensation.

Fedlam said the amount of money being poured into and flowing from collegiate sports has made it clear they are no longer purely about amateurism and love of competition. That means the move toward paying college athletes is an inevitability, not a debate.

"If college sports were solely about education and the benefits that could come from that, college sports would look entirely different," Fedlam said. "Do we ruin college sports when we pay tens of millions to schools for broadcast rights, when March Madness makes $1 billion, when schools on the West Coast are aligning with Midwest and East Coast conferences to earn more compensation? That's where sports have come."

The survey also revealed 64% of respondents think college athletes should become university employees, an idea NCAA president Charlie Baker shot down at the April LEAD1 Association's annual spring meeting, proclaiming, "I think student-athletes want to be student-athletes, and it's up to us to figure out how to make that work for them in a variety of environments and in circumstances that are different."

Democrats were much more in favor of direct compensation for college athletes than Republicans (78%-56%), while people who follow college sports favored the change at 78%, compared to 56% for those who do not follow sports closely.

More than 80% of respondents ages 18-41 supported athlete payments, while people over age 58 were just 48% in favor.

Ridpath said it sounds good in theory to allow athletes to be paid while in college, but to older fans more set in their ways, it is clearly far less accepted.

"The younger demographics are much more savvy than we were because they have access to more information," he said. "This is the reality now."

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Why The Public Strongly Supports Paying College Athletes

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Nearly 70% of U.S. adults said college athletes should be able to receive direct compensation from their school when asked in a survey conducted this summer.

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http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2004/obninsk.html

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Fifty years ago, at 5:30 pm, 26 June 1954, in the town of Obninsk, near Moscow in the former USSR, the first nuclear power plant was connected to an electricity grid to provide power to residences and businesses. Nuclear energy had crossed the divide from military uses to civilian applications.

To mark the milestone, an International Conference on Fifty Years of Nuclear Power - the Next Fifty Years will be held in Obninsk 27 June - 2 July 2004. Nuclear power´s past, present and future is on the agenda, as leaders and experts from industry, government and non-governmental organizations alike reflect on lessons learnt over the past five decades, and consider improvements to electricity supply in coming decades.

Nuclear generates about 16% of all electricity in the world, a position it has held since nuclear's share of the power market peaked in 1987. The conference is organized by the IAEA and hosted by the Government of the Russian Federation. Some topics to be discussed include:

Operating experience, planned projects and requirements for future nuclear power growth;

Non-electricity developments - such as using nuclear reactors to produce clean water by desalinating seawater;

Public communication;

Nuclear safety and security developments;

Design and development of advanced nuclear systems;

Nuclear energy and sustainable development; and

Nuclear fuel cycle and waste management.

The IAEA will soon be releasing more detailed information on the conference and the changing future of nuclear energy. Please contact the IAEA Division of Public Information for details.

1939. Nuclear fission discovered.

1942. The world´s first nuclear chain reaction takes place in Chicago as part of the wartime Manhattan Project.

1945. The first nuclear weapons test at Alamagordo, New Mexico.

1951. Electricity was first generated from a nuclear reactor, from EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor-I) at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho, USA. EBR-I produced about 100 kilowatts of electricity (kW(e)), enough to power the equipment in the small reactor building.

1954. The Obninsk reactor near Moscow, produces 5000 kW(e) or 5 megawatts (MW(e)), enough to power 2,000 homes. A typical nuclear power plant today is about 1000 MW(e), enough for 400,000 homes.

1970s. Nuclear power grows rapidly. From 1970 to 1975 growth averaged 30% per year, the same as wind power recently (1998-2001).

1987. Nuclear power now generates slightly more than 16% of all electricity in the world.

1980s. Nuclear expansion slows because of environmentalist opposition, high interest rates, energy conservation prompted by the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, and the accidents at Three Mile Island (1979, USA) and Chernobyl (1986, Ukraine, USSR). The Three Mile Island accident was the first major accident at a civilian nuclear power station. It had no radiological effect on public health but increased opposition to nuclear power, and the large financial loss further discouraged new nuclear investment. The Chernobyl accident was much more severe. The accident broadened opposition to nuclear power and brought the USSR´s nuclear expansion to a halt.

2004. Nuclear power´s share of global electricity generation holds steady around 16% in the 17 years since 1987.

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From Obninsk Beyond: Nuclear Power Conference Looks to Future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fifty years ago, at 5:30 pm, 26 June 1954, in the town of Obninsk, near Moscow in the former USSR, the first nuclear power plant was connected to an electricity grid to provide power to residences and businesses. Nuclear energy had crossed the divide from military uses to civilian applications.

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Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence.

He told the BBC:"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI.

But others are less gloomy about AI's prospects.

The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.

Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next.

Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.

"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said.

"Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."

But others are less pessimistic.

"I believe we will remain in charge of the technology for a decently long time and the potential of it to solve many of the world problems will be realised," said Rollo Carpenter, creator of Cleverbot.

Cleverbot's software learns from its past conversations, and has gained high scores in the Turing test, fooling a high proportion of people into believing they are talking to a human.

Rise of the robots

Mr Carpenter says we are a long way from having the computing power or developing the algorithms needed to achieve full artificial intelligence, but believes it will come in the next few decades.

"We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it," he says.

But he is betting that AI is going to be a positive force.

Prof Hawking is not alone in fearing for the future.

In the short term, there are concerns that clever machines capable of undertaking tasks done by humans until now will swiftly destroy millions of jobs.

In the longer term, the technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has warned that AI is "our biggest existential threat".

Robotic voice

In his BBC interview, Prof Hawking also talks of the benefits and dangers of the internet.

He quotes the director of GCHQ's warning about the net becoming the command centre for terrorists: "More must be done by the internet companies to counter the threat, but the difficulty is to do this without sacrificing freedom and privacy."

He has, however, been an enthusiastic early adopter of all kinds of communication technologies and is looking forward to being able to write much faster with his new system.

But one aspect of his own tech - his computer generated voice - has not changed in the latest update.

Prof Hawking concedes that it's slightly robotic, but insists he didn't want a more natural voice.

"It has become my trademark, and I wouldn't change it for a more natural voice with a British accent," he said.

"I'm told that children who need a computer voice, want one like mine."

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind

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Prof Stephen Hawking, one of the world's leading scientists, warns that artificial intelligence "could spell the end of the human race".

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10 Key Facts about Student Debt in the United States

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While investing in a college education has undeniable, lifelong economic benefits, excessive levels of student debt can impose hefty financial burdens on borrowers.

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Opinion | Modern Zoos Are Not Worth the Moral Cost (Published 2021)

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Many of them aspire to be good civic institutions that care for animals on their grounds and in the wild. But is it really worth their captivity?

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74 Million Reasons to Give

Support The 74's year-end campaign with a tax-exempt donation and invest in our future.

" Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds have hit their lowest scores in decades." When the recent NAEP long-term trend results for 13-year-olds were published, the reactions were predictable: short pieces in the national press and apologetics in education blogs. COVID-19, we were told, was continuing to cast its long shadow. Despite nearly $200 billion in emergency federal spending on K-12 schooling, students are doing worse than a decade ago, and lower-performing students are today less capable of doing math than they were 35 years ago.

What is striking has been the pervasive weariness evident in the commentaries on the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The news was heralded as " alarming," " terrifying" and "tragic." As for responses? At the end of his piece on the results, AEI's Nat Malkus concludes that "nothing less than Herculean efforts will make up for such shortfalls" - but on just what those efforts should be, he was silent. Writing for The 74, political scientist Vladimir Kogan concludes that "the new federal data send a clear message that we must do better" - but, once again, nothing about how.

Other responses have been predictable. In her blog, Diane Ravitch wrote: "Will politicians whip up a panicked response and demand more of what is already failing, like charter schools, vouchers, high-stakes testing and Cybercharters? or [sic.]will they invest in reduced class sizes and higher teacher pay?" Her response points to a familiar split in the education policy community: On the one hand, the defenders of public education blame chronic underfunding of schools and of teacher salaries in particular, and an overreliance on teaching to the test. On the other, their conservative critics point to lack of school choice, poor teacher preparation programs and (more recently) the woke invasion of classrooms.

Both sides are partially correct, of course: In multiple states, a heavy reliance on local property taxes to pay for education creates regressive per-pupil funding, meaning that more dollars go to the education of more affluent students. Teacher preparation still relies too much on textbook theory instead of clinical practice (a vital switch the medical profession made a century ago). Tests, especially in reading, are poorly designed (e.g., "Hamlet was confused because ... A, B, C or D - circle the right response"). Too many parents are stuck sending their children to underperforming schools.

NAEP Scores 'Flashing Red' After a Lost Generation of Learning for 13-Year-Olds

But these are just symptoms. Factors beyond the schoolhouse door - the legacy of race-based redlining, the underfunding of health care for the worst off, the lack of support for child care and parental leave, and other social and economic policies - remain hugely impactful. But inside the education system itself, the fundamental cause of poor outcomes is that education policy leaders have eroded the instructional core and designed our education system for failure.

Pre-K is a wild West, with the result that students enter kindergarten with large gaps in their readiness to learn. Children aren't seriously assessed until they are 8, by which time it's too late for sustained intervention - the gaps never close. Meanwhile, curricula, tests and teacher education programs exist in deep silos, creating a fragmented system where teachers aren't trained to teach the materials their schools use and tests don't test students' mastery of those materials (with a tiny exception in Louisiana).

Almost uniquely among advanced industrialized nations, U.S. school systems disconnect testing from student incentives. State tests are used to evaluate schools but are often irrelevant to students: Only 11 states still require high school exit exams for graduation, and there are often alternative pathways for those who fail the test. We don't link the results of high school exit exams to college admissions - instead, using grade-point averages and tests like the ACT and SAT, which are disconnected from course curricula. Speaking of GPA, we have steadily inflated grades at school and college: We simply call success what was once failure.

We have also created a preferential ranking of subjects. Student achievement in reading and math, and, to a lesser extent, science, get all the attention, while students who are drawn to robotics, graphic design, the arts, environmental science, etc., can't take high school assessments that count for entry into higher education. At the same time, with a few shining counterexamples, our career and technical learning options are a pale shadow of the world's best: While Switzerland designs exacting pathways from school to employment with options for a return to higher education, America shunts millions of students into dead-end experiences, where they discover that their CTE has failed to provide an employment-ready credential. Many of these same students end up at community colleges with extraordinarily low graduation rates.

Perhaps in response to two decades of disappointing results, academic achievement itself is increasingly out of fashion. Critical thinking, metacognition, grit and positive mindset, and "21 st century skills" are in - competence in mathematics, not so much. It seems to have escaped us that students cannot think critically about nothing in particular; mastery of content is a prerequisite.

New NAEP Scores Reveal the Failure of Pandemic Academic Recovery Efforts

The turn away from academics is rocket-propelled by a genuine problem. American teenagers stare at social media on a screen almost nine hours every day, with one result being surging loneliness and depression. Many American school systems have reacted by putting social and emotional learning at the top of the agenda. Few would argue that students shouldn't be given effective support - putting mental health counselors in large high schools, for example, makes sense. But the pretense that there is a new science of SEL is largely pablum. When you chase it to ground, what it means is that teachers should encourage, not discourage, students: a poor test result calls for more effort, not the conclusion that the child is bad at math. Such wisdom has been available for 2,000 years.

To top it all off, the American K-12 education system spends at least $30 billon per year on educational technology with essentially nothing to show for it. As it was for the introduction of radio, then TV, then computers, so it is likely to be for artificial intelligence - the latest great hope to circumvent and supplant effective, inspiring teaching of children by a human being.

As we have sown, so shall we reap. The unique sense of achievement that a student experiences when she or he masters a rigorous skill, digs into deep knowledge, creates a piece of writing or art, completes a challenging science assignment or piece of music - this is all being washed away. We are tired of bad news, and our instinct is now to punish, or at least ignore, the messenger. But our students are desperately the worse for the mess we have made of their schooling.

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America's Education System Is a Mess, and It's Students Who Are Paying the Price

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Steiner: The fundamental cause of poor outcomes is that policy leaders have eroded the instructional core & designed our education system for failure.