Imagine a world where your car drives itself, your fridge does the grocery shopping, and robots work alongside you. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are turning that world into a near-future possibility. But what will that future really look like, and how will it change our lives? We spoke with three artificial intelligence expe...

Ed Glaeser is a economist at Harvard, and the author of Triumph of the City, and as his business casual look he wears a bow-tie with ice-cream cones. He is also one of the world's experts on the nature of cities, and he was invited to set the stage for the TED2012 wish. "At their heart," he says, "cities are the absence of physical spa...

On the morning after more than a billion viewers worldwide tuned into the Academy Awards and its glitzy salute to motion pictures, 44 TEDsters trekked up to one of the most enduring signs of moviedom for a tour of the fabled Hollywood sign and an update on the successful battle to preserve the scenic hills around it from development. The jour...

This week, during a computer security conference in Las Vegas, researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller demonstrated how easily they could hack into the systems of moving cars using just a laptop computer. Illustrating that modern devices are worryingly vulnerable to hacking, Valasek and Miller showed their ability to jerk seatbelts, turn wh...

Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch the talks, interviews and performances from the Countdown Global Launch at ted.com/countdown. Transforming big systems is a huge task. Energy, transportation, industry and infrastructure all pose their own challenges. And yet that transformation is alrea...

Abandoned school turned maker space. Theaster Gates turns Chicago’s abandoned buildings into thriving hubs for art and education. His next project? Turning an old elementary school into a maker space. Gates heads Place Lab, a think tank that fuses the brainpower of urban planners, architects, artists and other diverse professionals to create...

Today, Negroponte is back to open TED, to reflect on predictions he's made in the past and to spin some new ones for the future. His point is that when someone tells you that you are "dead wrong," that you just might be onto something. Negroponte takes us on a lightning-paced tour of his career, beginning in the 1960s when he worked on comp...

Transformation starts with the spark of something new. In a day of talks and performances about transformation, 16 speakers and performers explored exciting developments in science, technology and beyond -- from the chemistry of everyday life to innovations in food, "smart" clothing, enzyme research and much more. The event: TED@DuPont: T...

Stacey Abrams's 2018 campaign for governor of Georgia was watched across the world. The first black woman to be nominated by a major party for governor, she lost after a hard-fought race. Now she's the surprise speaker onstage at TEDWomen 2018, where, in an electrifying talk, she shares the lessons she learned from her campaign, advice on ho...

I’ll admit it: I’m one of those annoying people who meditates, who likes to talk to non-meditators about meditation, who gets cranky when I don’t meditate, and who likes to talk to non-meditators about how cranky I get when I don’t meditate. So the n:ow machine from DuPont beckoned to me like an oasis amid the busyness of TED2019, where i...

So much of our lives are gut reactions; they drive our newsfeeds, and they make our minds smaller. At TED2017, we decided to step back from the frenzy of the news media cycle to take an in-depth and nuanced look at three topics of particular interest -- the forward march of machine learning with Sebastian Thrun, the future of storytelling wi...

The phrase “truth or dare” is a false binary -- facing the truth often requires daring action, and vice versa. That’s why, at TED2015: Truth and Dare, the two go hand-in-hand. TED2015 happens March 16-20 in Vancouver and Whistler, and we dare to think this will be the most provocative, invigorating, mind-shifting TED yet. The 58 speakers on o...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Robyn Meredith is a correspondent for Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong and author of The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us. She's written about China for years, and she starts her talk with a lyrical image of the western dream of China's promise. "Ever since ...

Artist, activist and historian Bahia Shehab tells Alison Prato how she speaks out against social and political injustice in her adopted city of Cairo. Early one morning, hours before the sun was due to rise, Lebanese-Egyptian artist Bahia Shehab was alone on the streets of Cairo, spray-painting a stenciled message that spoke out against the s...

For week 4 of TED2020, leaders in international development, history, architecture and public policy explored how we might rebuild during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing protests against racial injustice in the United States. Below, a recap of their insights. Achim Steiner, head of the United National Development Programme Big id...

In the past week, vast protests sparked by a bus-fare increase have rocked Brazil, taking its leaders – and the world – by surprise. TED Fellow and conservation biologist Juliana M Ferreira offers an insider’s perspective on what led to this transformational moment. With all the eyes of the world on Brazil due to the upcoming World Cup ...

Picture this: Three kids are given a LEGO set with the pieces to build a fire department. All of them want to build as many new toys as possible. The first kid goes straight for the easy wins. He puts a tiny red hat on a tiny minifig: presto, a firefighter! In this way, he quickly makes several simple toys. The second kid goes by intuiti...

RejectTED Talks. Onion Talks. DED Talks. Here in the TED office, you often hear chuckles as someone watches one of the quickly growing crop of TED spoofs floating in the ether. And surprisingly, there are some pretty good lessons for speakers embedded in these spoofs. See what I mean below. The spoof: Stephen Colbert’s RejecTED Talks Cr...

It’s that simple. Making sure that girls around the world can go to school helps them and their families, of course, but also benefits the entire world. If I asked you to name one of the most effective ways to combat climate change, what would your answer be? Installing solar panels on rooftops? Building wind turbines? Driving electric cars? ...

Could US economic growth be over? That's the provocative question that economist Robert J. Gordon begins with. And it's a big question. He points to travel: In 1900 travel was via the open buggy, at 1% the speed of sound. Sixty years later we travelled at 80% of the speed of sound in a Boeing 707. And since then, at a consumer level, we haven'...

“I don't think protected bicycle ways are a cute architectural feature. They are a right, just as sidewalks are,” says Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, in today’s talk. “Protected bikeways also are a powerful symbol of democracy, because they show that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important to one in a $30,000...

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of fascinating TED-related news items. Here, some highlights. Jeff Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon (watch his TED Talk), made waves on Monday when it was announced that he will buy The Washington Post for $250 million. “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its ow...

Alex Steffen, author and futurist, speaking at TED University during TEDGlobal 2011, July 11, 2011. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED Csaba Manyai, host of TEDxDanubia: To kick off TED University, Csaba Manyai introduces us to the Urania Scientific Theatre, a Budapest society devoted to sharing ideas from science and knowledge … starting...

This session was all about cities. From speakers parsing the cycles of violence in them, to those thinking far outside the box on what they could look like, read up on these ideas for cities. Robert Muggah is troubled by our cities. Not urban success stories like Shanghai and Seoul, but those that he calls “fragile cities,” quickly urbani...

The illustrious questioner Charlie Rose and Google cofounder and CEO Larry Page take their seats on the TED stage for a Q&A during Session 6: Wired. They talk about Page's latest projects, Snowden's appearance and the underlying ethos that powers Page's work. Below is an edited version of their conversation. Charlie Rose: Where is Goo...

We live in an interconnected world where boundaries between physical and digital spaces are blurring. We can no longer think about innovation in isolation, but must consider how emerging technologies -- like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, the Internet of Things, 5G networks, robotics and the decentralized web -- will combine to ...

The speed of change is a constant in our lives. Sometimes it's worth slowing things down, to look at what might be changing without us even considering it. To celebrate the efforts of innovators, change-makers and dreamers who are reimagining the future, TED has partnered with BMW i. In a special session of talks hosted by TED design cura...

By Cynthia Betubiza, Ella Dawson and Kate Torgovnick May Session 1 of TEDYouth 2014 brought us to many worlds imagined. From a look at other planets that could be like Earth, to an introduction to a mysterious dinosaur bigger than T. rex, to a beet-tastic vision for the future of food, this morning's speakers brought wonder, passion and a...

What if one person could change the world? What if we could harness our collective talent, insight and wisdom? And what if, together, we could spark a movement with positive impact far into the future? For a third year, UPS has partnered with TED to bring experts in business, logistics, design and technology to the stage to share ideas fr...

Calling all self-proclaimed tech nerds! TED has long been known for demos that set everyone in the theatre a-buzz. Here's a look back at some memorable tech demos from TED and TEDGlobals past, to get you excited for those coming at TED2015. Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance On stage at: TED2014 Hugh Herr's ...