Today's Show Transcript

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COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hello and happy Thursday, happy Fri-Yay Eve. I'm Coy Wire here with your daily dose of CNN 10 for March 5th, 2026.
While millions of Christians around the world are officially two weeks into their 40 days of Lent, the tradition where people give up some sort of comfort or luxury as a way to refocus on their faith, there's another religious tradition just kicking off.
In India, where large crowds took over the streets across the world's most populous nation on Wednesday to celebrate Holi, the festival of colors. Holi is celebrated at the onset of spring each year and it symbolizes renewal and fresh starts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This is one of those festivals where everyone is equal. No one is rich or poor. People belonging to every community or group come together.
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WIRE: Now, Holi isn't just about color. It has deep meaning. The festival is connected to a traditional Hindu story about good overcoming evil. The night before the color celebration, families light bonfires in a ritual known as Holika Dahan, symbolizing the victory of good over evil, forgiveness and reconnection.
The next day, people gather outside to toss colored powder called Gulal and spray colored water on each other. For students in India, it's one of the most exciting holidays of the year. No school, lots of laughs, and yes, a big Jackson Pollock painting-looking sort of celebration.
And Holi is not just celebrated in India. Indian communities in the U.S., the U.K., and other parts of Europe have celebrations planned for later this week.
We've been talking a lot about the economic fears many adults and soon-to-be graduates have about artificial intelligence taking jobs.
Here's something to think about. These companies, they better not take away too many human jobs or there won't be many people who can afford to pay for the products they are making. But fears that A.I. could soon replace many of the skills and industry needs that justify jobs and careers in many of our everyday lives still justifiably persist.
Well, a new tech startup called Mercor A.I. is hiring experts to train A.I. to be even better. But the company says they believe this will actually benefit human society. Our Hadas Gold takes us behind the scenes.
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HADAS GOLD, CNN AI CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Meet the people training A.I. to replace your doctor, lawyer, banker.
Brendan Foody is the 22-year-old co-founder and CEO of Mercor, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley valued at $10 billion.
They manage a network of some tens of thousands of professional experts who help train the major A.I. models to think, act, and talk like them.
(On camera): Most people I think believe that A.I. just learns off the internet and what's out there. Why do you need humans involved in the process?
BRENDAN FOODY, CEO, MERCOR: The largest driver of A.I. progress right now is how do we effectively identify model mistakes, measure those mistakes, and allow models to learn from them. And so the A.I. labs are hiring large armies of people to help create these datasets and teaching models how to learn from them.
GOLD (voice-over): The average expert is paid $95 an hour, although some specialized roles can earn up to $250 per hour. The most popular subject is software engineering, followed by finance, then medicine and law.
GOLD (on camera): Are these people not kind of training their future replacements?
FOODY: The way I think about it is that we're not going to run out of things to do. As a society we have so many problems that we need to solve. We need to cure cancer. We need to solve climate change. And making everyone 10 times more productive so that they're able to better work on those key problems is going to be a huge, huge benefit to how we make progress as a society.
GOLD (voice-over): Mercor experts present the A.I. they are training with a prompt, then grade the response using a rubric they've created in consultation with other experts in their field.
Dr. Alice Chiao is one of these experts. She used to teach at Stanford University's medical school. Now her student is an A.I. model.
(On camera): So tell me what it's like when you sit down in front of the computer. What are you doing?
DR. ALICE CHIAO, A.I. EXPERT: I am looking at the A.I. model that I'm working with, and I am posing real life questions or challenges that I have faced, or I have seen patients face. And I ask the model, provide me with the potential diagnoses, suggest several treatments, and list the evidence that you used to support these diagnoses.
GOLD: I've heard from doctors that sometimes medicine is a lot about a gut feeling. Can you train A.I. on that?
CHIAO: So, this is where it's really important to note that the A.I. is not a doctor. It's not a human being. It does not have the 20 years of clinical experience that I or another one of my colleagues might have. This is where you need to be really careful.
GOLD: Do you ever feel like you're training your replacement?
CHIAO: No, I do not. I don't want to see it as A.I. taking over our jobs. I want to see it as A.I. taking over the aspects of our jobs that prevent us from being good doctors, good healers, and good listeners.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: Pop quiz hot shot.
In which historical period was long-distance trade first established?
The Bronze Age, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Industrial Age?
If you said the Bronze Age, ding-ding, you are correct.
In Mesopotamia, people learned to mix copper and tin to create bronze, which made for stronger weapons. The need for different metals established trade networks that connected regions across Europe, Asia, and Africa.
This next story brings the Bronze Age right through airport security in Philadelphia. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers just released these photos to the public. They intercepted 36 short swords and 50 arrowheads last October, and they now know the weapons date back a minimum of 4,000 years to the Bronze Age.
The package arrived on a flight from the United Arab Emirates and was labeled as Metal Decoration Articles. The box was headed to Jacksonville, Florida. But when officers x-rayed the package, they spotted something a little more pointy.
And archaeologists later authenticated the artifacts as Bronze Age antiquities from what is now Iran. They date back to roughly 1,600 to 1,000 BCE and are thought to be from the Talish Mountains region near the southwestern Caspian Sea. Former FBI agent Robert Whitman suspects the weapons may have been purchased by a collector on the black market.
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ROBERT WHITMAN, FORMER FBI AGENT: The time period is very interesting to the collectors because it's the Bronze Age. So, we're talking minimally 4,000 years ago.
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WIRE: Investigators believe the artifacts may have been illicitly excavated from ancient burial sites where weapons and important belongings were often buried with the owners. Whitman estimates the collection could have sold for $15,000 to $25,000 on the black market. For now, the swords and arrowheads are being safeguarded by CBP, or Customs and Border Protection.
Investigators expect they'll eventually be returned to the Middle East, ensuring this piece of the past finds its way home.
Today's story getting a 10 out of 10. A group of high school basketballers who went from riding the bench to the championship charter bus, thanks to one secret weapon, a blue heart-shaped plastic bucket.
CNN Affiliate KCBS explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you know?
SANDRA DUCKERING, SIERRA VISTA HIGH SCHOOL HEAD COACH: All right, girls, phones in the bucket. Let's go. Phones in the bucket.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That separating teenage girls from their cell phones makes them better at basketball.
DUCKERING: It has made a world of a difference.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just ask varsity girls head coach Sandra Duckering here at Sierra Vista High School in Baldwin Park.
DUCKERING: The one thing I noticed was we were super disconnected.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her observation that maybe the Dons kept losing games because they were making TikToks, texting, and scrolling on social media instead of being present with each other and confiscating their phones before practices in games just unlocked their best season in the school's history.
DUCKERING: Once they got connected, we got flow. And it was like just amazing. The game changed. Their bond changed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They started winning games by landslides, leading to the school's first CIF Southern Division Championship win. And today, they're boarding a bus to Bakersfield to play the school's first ever state championship playoff game.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've been ranked lower, so we're kind of like the underdogs in this story.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The girls say the phone ban freed up their attention so they could focus on working together as a team.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Talking with each other as a team and just being with each other, I think that really got us close. And we've just been working hard.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And that hard work is paying off thanks to a little help from their secret weapon.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to be able to come home with another championship if we can. Like, I want to work hard. I know my teammates want to work hard.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: In honor of this Read Across America week, we are highlighting some of your favorite books and books you are reading right now. We want to spotlight Mrs. McCluskey's class at Gotha Middle School in Windermere, Florida. Thank you for reading with us.
Their class is diving into the book, "I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives." The true story follows an American student and one from Zimbabwe who become pen pals through a school assignment. Over the years, their letters grow into a powerful relationship that bridges continents, cultures, and different experiences.
It's a powerful reminder that sometimes a single letter and a little curiosity about someone else's journey can help open the door to a whole new world. Keep turning those pages. Keep those stories coming. Message us on our Instagram page @CNN10 or email us at CNN10@cnn.com.
All right, superstars, one more shout out before we go. And I hope this one sparks a little bit of a trend. Last month, Mr. Bealby got a shout out and he wanted to pay it forward asking for a shout out for his favorite paraprofessional in another state. Mr. Huffman at Benton High School in St. Joseph, Missouri, rise up and way to spread the love team.
Hope you have a wonderful day. It's almost Friday. I'm Coy Wire and we are CNN10.

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