Gradu-AI-tion Day
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s an awkward time to have a Department of Education that seems so disinterested in, uh, education. It’s leaving teachers to grapple with how to integrate artificial intelligence into the classroom—if at all.
Guest: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Madeline Ducharme, Patrick Fort, Rob Gunther and Paige Osburn.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence. |
| 0:10.0 | There is this video supercut that I love. |
| 0:14.0 | AI is rewriting production as we sit here. |
| 0:19.0 | I know it. Deal with it. |
| 0:21.2 | Like I said, it's a tool. |
| 0:23.2 | You may have seen it by now. |
| 0:24.7 | It's over jaunty music, and it's from our buddies over at 4-04 Media. |
| 0:30.2 | It's of people booing a series of college graduation speakers when they talk about AI. |
| 0:37.4 | The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. |
| 0:48.5 | And when I sat down with Randy Weingarten, I wanted to ask her about it. |
| 0:53.0 | Randy is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, |
| 0:56.0 | and she is thinking a lot about AI right now. |
| 0:59.6 | The generation that's graduating from college right now is really rattled. |
| 1:05.6 | Now look, Randy represents her union. |
| 1:08.3 | She knows that AI could be a threat to her teacher's jobs. |
| 1:12.1 | But she's not wrong that no one, |
| 1:14.9 | especially people entering the workforce right now, |
| 1:17.6 | knows exactly what to do about it. |
| 1:19.9 | I think what you're seeing is a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear |
| 1:26.3 | juxtaposed against a very laissez-faire attitude by this |
| 1:32.3 | administration about AI, basically saying let the billionaires and let big tech do whatever |
| 1:38.0 | it wants to do, regardless of what happens with the climate, regardless of what happens with, you know, job displacement. And I think |
... |
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