TED Tech

Quantum computers obtain superpowers by tapping into parallel universes, says Hartmut Neven, the founder and lead of Google Quantum AI. He explains how this emerging tech can far surpass traditional computers by relying on quantum physics rather than binary logic, and shares a roadmap to build the ultimate quantum computer. Learn how this fascinating and powerful tech can help humanity take on seemingly unsolvable problems in medicine, sustainable energy, AI, neuroscience and more.

Cutting-edge technology and vast amounts of data are revolutionizing climate modeling with unprecedented accuracy. So could AI be the crystal ball we need to predict —and even control— Earth's climate? Bilawal sits with Dion Harris, the head of data center product marketing at NVIDIA, and climate physicist Tapio Schneider to discuss how technology could reshape our approach to climate change and influence global decision-making. The three also dive into how AI could help us make hyper-local climate predictions -- and debate the ethical dilemmas of geoengineering. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

While language models may help generate new ideas, they cannot attack the hard part of science, which is simulating the necessary physics," says AI professor Anima Anandkumar. She explains how her team developed neural operators — AI trained on the finest details of the real world — to bridge this gap, sharing recent projects ranging from improved weather forecasting to cutting-edge medical device design that demonstrate the power of AI with universal physical understanding.

Cheating has never been easier with the rise of AI like ChatGPT. It's definitely something to worry about, but what do we know about the upsides of AI in education? Khan Academy founder Sal Khan says education won't destroy our kids' brains, but we have to integrate AI the right way. After launching a new chatbot, Khanmigo, Sal's found that AI opens up opportunities for students to learn in ways they couldn't before, leaving room for more creativity, deeper thinking, and gained perspective. Sam and Bilawal discuss why AI seeping into the classroom is inevitable, and how to use it to our advantage. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

Would you tango with a robot? Inviting us into the fascinating world of dancing machines, robot choreographer Catie Cuan highlights why teaching robots to move with grace, intention and emotion is essential to creating AI-powered machines we will want to welcome into our daily lives.

Would you swallow a micro-robot? In a gutsy demo, physician Vivek Kumbhari navigates Pillbot, a wireless, disposable robot swallowed onstage by engineer Alex Luebke, modeling how this technology can swiftly provide direct visualization of internal organs. Learn more about how micro-robots could move us past the age of invasive endoscopies and open up doors to more comfortable, affordable medical imaging. After the talk, Sherrell reflects on how these kinds of innovations could impact the future of diagnostics for everyone.

For AI to achieve its full potential, non-experts need to contribute to its development, says Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and cofounder of Humane Intelligence. She shares how the right-to-repair movement of consumer electronics provides a promising model for a path forward, with ways for everyone to report issues, patch updates or even retrain AI technologies.

Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, thinks artificial intelligence could spark the greatest positive transformation education has ever seen. This week we're revisiting a talk where he shares the opportunities he sees for students and educators to collaborate with AI tools — including the potential of a personal AI tutor for every student and an AI teaching assistant for every teacher — and demos some exciting new features for their educational chatbot, Khanmigo.

No one truly understands AI, not even experts, says Helen Toner, an AI policy researcher and former board member of OpenAI. But that doesn't mean we can't govern it. She shows how we can make smart policies to regulate this technology even as we struggle to predict where it's headed — and why the right actions, right now, can shape the future we want. After the talk, Sherrell expands on what’s needed to ensure that AI aligns with the best interests of humanity, without stifling innovation.

Techno-optimist Vinod Khosla believes in the world-changing power of "foolish ideas." He offers 12 bold predictions for the future of technology — from preventative medicine to car-free cities to planes that get us from New York to London in 90 minutes — and shows why a world of abundance awaits.

AI has the power to bring your favorite fictional characters to life, says technologist Kylan Gibbs. Introducing Caleb, an "AI agent" with personality and internal reasoning, he demonstrates how AI-powered characters can interact with people in novel ways, generate unique video game outcomes and augment our ability to tell stories, opening up new worlds of possibility.

Are we mistaking the remarkable skills of tools like ChatGPT with genuine intelligence? AI skeptic Gary Marcus pulls no punches when he warns that believing in the hype of generative AI models might be distracting us from building the type of AI future we actually want. Bilawal and Gary delve into the nuanced perspectives beyond the AI hype cycle, and try to find the common ground between healthy skepticism and techno-optimism. This is an episode of The TED AI Show with Bilawal Sidhu. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

What if you could code just by talking out loud? GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke shows how, thanks to AI, the barrier to entry to coding is rapidly disappearing — and creating software is becoming as simple (and joyful) as building LEGO. In a mind-blowing live demo, he introduces Copilot Workspace: an AI assistant that helps you create code when you speak to it, in any language.

AI is reshaping software development so much that someday soon, anyone will be able to build an app or a game. What does that mean for programming now? Bilawal and Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, explore the soaring possibilities and discuss the lingering concerns as “AI eats software.” Whether you are a coder or a tech enthusiast, think AI will supercharge programmers or fear it will render human coders obsolete, this episode will have your mind racing about the future of tech. Come back on Friday for a TED Tech episode to hear Thomas’s talk from TED2024. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

When it comes to artificial intelligence, what are we actually creating? Even those closest to its development are struggling to describe exactly where things are headed, says Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, one of the primary architects of the AI models many of us use today. He offers an honest and compelling new vision for the future of AI, proposing an unignorable metaphor — a new digital species — to focus attention on this extraordinary moment. (Followed by a Q&A with head of TED Chris Anderson)

We may think the complexities of the human mind can only be understood by other humans. Yet research on chatbots and psychology suggests non-human bots can actually help improve mental health. Bilawal talks with Dr. Alison Darcy, the founder of mental health app Woebot, and Brian Chandler, an app user, to learn what chatbots reveal about our inner lives and what they can (and can’t) do when it comes to emotional wellness. Check out the 99% Invisible episode we reference in the show here: For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

Buildings are bad news for the climate -- but they don't have to be. While our structures are currently responsible for a third of global energy consumption and emissions, a future where they create more energy than they consume is possible. This week we are revisiting a talk by energy policy analyst Ksenia Petrichenko who has a three-tiered strategy for thinking differently about buildings, transforming them from passive users to active players in the energy system and bringing us closer to our climate targets.

Non Player Characters --NPCs for short-- have always been a huge part of what makes video games engaging, from Cortana in Halo to Navi in The Legend of Zelda. But interactions with NPCs were always limited to a pre-written script. Until now. Purnendu Mukherjee is the CEO of Convai, a platform that enables developers to create NPCs with human-like conversational abilities. He joins Bilawal to chat about our evolving relationship with "AI characters” and what we gain and lose when our digital relationships are so life-like, it almost doesn’t matter who (or what) is on the other end. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

Can AI help us answer life's biggest questions? In this visionary conversation, Google DeepMind cofounder and CEO Demis Hassabis delves into the history and incredible capabilities of AI with head of TED Chris Anderson. Hassabis explains how AI models like AlphaFold — which accurately predicted the shapes of all 200 million proteins known to science in under a year — have already accelerated scientific discovery in ways that will benefit humanity. Next up? Hassabis says AI has the potential to unlock the greatest mysteries surrounding our minds, bodies and the universe.

Technology is supposed to make our lives better – but who gets to decide how that improvement unfolds, and what values it upholds? Tech ethicist Patrick Lin and Bilawal dig into the hidden -- and not so hidden -- biases in AI. From historically inaccurate images to life-and-death decisions in hospitals, human biases reveal how AI mirrors our own flaws…But can we fix bias? Lin argues that technology alone won't suffice...