A cat. A house. A plane. Most 3-year-old children can point at these and identify them by sight. Fei-Fei Li, the director of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab and Vision Lab, has spent the past 15 years teaching machines how to see. Our most advanced machines are like toddlers when it comes to sight, Li says; […]
In this session of TED2015, five speakers explored the bounds of perception — from how babies form expectations to how vision is hardly needed to see. Short recaps of these bold talks … The logic of the young mind. Scientists have to make generalizations on tiny amounts of data – and so do babies. Laura Schulz investigates […]
From small samples, says Laura Schulz, we make large conjectures about the world. “From a few bones, we infer the existence of dinosaurs; from spectral lines, the concept of planetary nebulae; from fruit flies, an understanding of genetics,” she says. She brings it back to her own work at MIT’s Early Childhood Cognition Lab: “From […]
This morning, Chris Anderson announced that Rony Abovitz of the start-up Magic Leap, who’d planned to join us here at TED2015, has cancelled his appearance for, as Chris says, “Reasons unknown.” Up to now, Magic Leap has become known for two things in the tech world: 1) generating hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and […]
To build a 20-story building out of cement and concrete, 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide gets released; to construct the same building from wood, 3,100 tons are saved, a difference of about 900 cars taken off the road in a year. Michael Green (TED Talk: Why we should build wooden skyscrapers) builds with wood because […]
The most important rule in our safety briefing on the “Bobsleigh Sport Experience”: Put your gloves on, hold on to the wire inside the sled walls, and DO NOT LET GO.
In Session 2 of the TED Fellows talks, we learn about the FBI’s use of informants in counterterrorism operations, how giant pouched rats are helping to save lives, laser-delivered HIV drugs, how Silicon Valley companies are working to protect our privacy — and that’s not to mention the piano solo, percussive dance and opera! Sri Lankan […]
TED Fellows and Senior Fellows have just opened TED2015 with a bang in the beautiful Kay Meek theatre in Vancouver. In the first session, discover: how bacteria can be programmed to detect and treat cancer, a yellow legal pad that smuggles transgressive data into the halls of power, what makes non-state armed groups tick, hyperactive supermassive black […]
“It takes courage to uncover the truth,” says Chris Anderson, opening the first session of TED2015, Opening Gambit. “The speakers this week — their courage and brilliance are going to rewire your brain. This dare thing is not just for them — it’s for all of us.” These six speakers set the tone for Truth & Dare: The […]
Chris Anderson introduces this talk by saying that we were about to see a technology that could be as game-changing as Jeff Han’s touchscreen demo in 2006, a year ahead of the iPhone.
For TED2015, we have returned to Vancouver — bringing thinkers, dreamers and mavericks together to talk about our world and what’s coming next. Our logo on the Vancouver Convention Centre echoes the enormous globe in the entrance. Photo: Bret Hartman/TED
What’s your second act, after you build a pop-up theater for 1,300 people out of 8,000 pieces of Douglas fir? In 2014, architect David Rockwell and his team created a custom theater to celebrate talk, designed to be assembled in just a few days inside a large empty ballroom at the Vancouver Convention Center. Post-show, […]
On Tuesday, March 17, you’re invited to watch a full, unedited session of TED2015 for free — and join the world to hear the TED Prize wish given live online. Follow this link at 5pm PST on Tuesday, March 17, to watch a 90-minute TED2015 session live. The Session 5 program is full of powerful personal […]
TED Talks are 18-minute talks shared with the world for free online. However, lots of these talks are given at TED Conferences, in sessions that span more than an hour, with an audience who has paid to be a part of the live experience. This leaves our video team with a balancing act: how do […]
With days to go until TED2015, our speakers are putting the final touches on their talks. But that’s hardly all they’ve been up to. Check out which speaker is investing $52 million in cutting-edge vaccine technology, which speaker will have a Ken Burns moment at the end of the month, and which speaker created a […]
As a venture capitalist, I have a ringside seat to innovation. It is an amazing job; every day I learn about some new technology that is compelling enough that an otherwise rational human being has set aside his or her life to pursue it. It is hard not to get excited about what the future […]