Here onstage at TED2018, futurist Ray Kurzweil has just formally announced a new way to query the text inside books using something called semantic search — which is a search on ideas and concepts, rather than specific words. Called TalkToBooks, the beta-stage product uses an experimental AI to query a database of 120,000 books in […]Read more
“It’s my belief that trust is the foundation for everything we do,” says Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei, “and that if we can learn to trust on another more, we can have unprecedented human progress.” What to do, then, when trust is broken? In companies, there are many reasons that a rupture can happen. […]
During the week of TED, it’s tempting to feel like a brain in a jar — to think on a highly abstracted, intellectual, hypertechnical level about every single human issue. But the speakers in this session remind us that we’re still just made of meat. And that our carbon-based life forms aren’t problems to be […]
Back in 2014, Will Marshall took the TED stage to introduce us to his company, Planet, and their proposed fleet of tiny satellites. The goal: to image the planet every day, showing us how Earth changes in near-real time. In 2018, that vision has come good: Every day, a fleet of about 200 small satellites […]
The seven speakers lived up to the two words in the title of the session. Their talks showcased both our collective insanity — the algorithmically-assembled extremes of the Internet — and our humanity — the values and desires that extremists astutely tap into — along with some speakers combining the two into a glorious salad. […]
Assembled by our tech curator Alex Moura, six exhibits around the theater explore the hands-on, playful and human side of tech. Every exhibit is in some way touchable, relatable — not a piece of shiny gear in a plexiglas box but instead something to step into and be part of and play with. Meet our […]
What do you imagine your phone doing for you in the future? Sure, you can take calls, send texts, use apps and surf the internet. But according to Samsung, the next corner for mobile engagement could turn your cell phone into a superhero (of sorts) in industries like public safety and healthcare. 5G technology will […]
In a corner of the Vancouver Convention Center — set against a beautiful backdrop of Vancouver Harbour and the mountains of the North Shore, and right between a comfy simulcast lounge and a pop-up coffee and espresso shop — it’s hard to miss an eye-catching vintage red car. It’s the anchor of Altair’s exhibit gallery, showing […]
“The ultimate sitting machine.” Please be kind — this is only my first attempt at a tagline for the BMW autonomous vehicle which I just went for a test drive, er, test ride in. Yes, I can proudly say that I’ve gone for a ride in the future — and it’s smooth enough to eat […]
TED2018 hit its stride on day 3, with talks from explorers of space and oceans, builders of cities and bridges, engineers of the future and many more. Here are some of the themes we heard echoing through the opening day, as well as some highlights from around the conference venue in Vancouver. Are we alone […]
What we need sometimes is a little awe, a little wonder. This session of TED Talks was designed to provoke an exquisite human emotion: the sense that the world is bigger and stranger than you’d known. Without further ado, wow. A blueprint for how humans and machines can coexist. American researchers are leading AI discoveries, […]
This beautiful blue marble, our shared earth: On a sunny morning in Vancouver, we pack into the darkened TED theater to learn more about its mysteries, its challenges, and how we might help it thrive. There’s no shiny “nature porn” here (well, maybe a little bit) but a clear-eyed look at what’s going right and […]
Linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker’s talk at the end of TED2018 Session 1 argued enthusiastically that humanity has, as a whole, made remarkable progress toward prosperity, peace and happiness — backing up his assertions with charts that showed an optimistic trajectory. But is that the whole story? A roundtable of TED Fellows — including scientists […]