Today at TED2016 in Vancouver, Peter Diamandis of the X Prize joined Dave Kenny of IBM Watson to announce a thrilling new prize in cognitive computing: The IBM Watson AI X Prize presented by TED, a $5 million competition to develop and demonstrate a powerful collaboration between human and artificial intelligence. The winner of this compe...

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...

We’ve been told that AI-driven cars would soon be all over our roads, but where are they? Writer Janelle Shane explains how our world with all its unpredictable challenges -- things like pedestrians, sinkholes and kangaroos -- are testing the capabilities of the most advanced artificial intelligence. Car manufacturers know: There’s a huge amoun...

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; they can, for instance, recogni...

Are machines going to save or destroy us? It's a question we've been grappling with since we first put 1s and 0s together to create computer code. And it feels like we're no closer to answering it; machines are growing smarter by the day, and while they're taking us to places we've never imagined, we seem to be losing turf as the supreme thinkin...

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, Chinese eng...

We usually think of AI as faster and better versions of human brains, but if we want technology to progress by leads and bounds, we must make AI that is like nothing else on Earth, says digital visionary Kevin Kelly. Because of a quirk in our evolutionary history, we are cruising as the only self-conscious species on our planet, leaving us with...

In his TED Talk, The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot, Daniel Suarez described the rise of drones, automated weapons and AI-powered intelligence-gathering tools. Here, he goes further, describing no less than a coming “automation revolution.” Drones are in the news these days. More than any other technology, they capture the zeitgeis...

In a fast-paced session of talks curated by TED arts and design curator Chee Pearlman and hosted with improv leader Anthony Veneziale, 12 members of the TED community shared ideas in a special format: each had to keep their talks under six minutes, with auto-advancing, timed slides. And yes, the mic does cut after six minutes! The talks i...

[via YouTube] The news that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been detained by authorities has prompted significant concern here at TED HQ. We had shown a film of him at last month's conference, an unexpected and courageous statement about his treatment by the government, social change, the power of the web, and his hope for the future of Chin...

Complex times require a bold embrace of diversity and difference -- and an ability to turn the unknown into an advantage. How can we tap into the unexpected? For a fifth year, BCG has partnered with TED to bring experts in education, diversity, AI, biology and more to the stage to share ideas from the forefront of innovation. At this year...

In a time that feels unsettled and uncertain, technology and those who create it will play a crucial role in what’s coming next. How do we define that future, as opposed to letting it define us? At a special TED Salon held as part of the Dell Technologies World conference and hosted by TED's Simone Ross, four speakers shared ideas for buildi...

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is bringing a tsunami of change that will dramatically affect how we interact with and adapt to technology. The ways we choose to ride this wave will determine the shape of our future. Will we use this as an opportunity to solve our most pressing issues, or allow it to become a calamity that divides us? At...

Over the past five days, the TED2017 conference has explored the theme “The Future You.” This has spanned an incredible number of ideas on a huge array of topics. Below, a tour through some of the key themes that emerged -- through the week and in the double-stuffed session of day 5. All eyes on AI. How will artificial intelligence reshap...

In this morning’s first session of short, sharp talks from the TED Fellows, an impressive lineup of world-changers share their ideas for seeing the world in new ways -- like an AI that might help us see cancer symptoms, or a fresh view on how refugees really live, or a long-term study that's detecting a social network for fish. The mornin...

Neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris describes a scenario that is both terrifying and likely to occur. It’s not, he says, a good combination. I'm going to describe how the gains we make in artificial intelligence could ultimately destroy us. And, in fact, I think it's very difficult to see how they won't destroy us or inspire us to destroy...

We know that our world -- our data, our lives, our countries -- are becoming more and more connected. But what should we do with that? In two sessions of TED@IBM, the answer shaped up to be: Dream as big as you can. Speakers took the stage to pitch their ideas for using connected data and new forms of machine intelligence to make material ch...

The more we look, the more our digital and analog worlds are blending. What is this future we are entering? In Session 9 of TED2019, we peer into the thrilling, sometimes frightening, often hilarious world of technology. The event: Talks and tech demos from TED2019, Session 9: Play, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson and poet Sarah Kay ...

Behold, your recap of TED-related news: The truth about couples. Ever wonder what goes on in couples therapy? You may want to tune in to Esther Perel’s new podcast “Where Should We Begin?” Each episode invites the reader to listen to a real session with a real couple working out real issues, from a Christian couple bored with their sex li...

Around the world, right now, several countries are developing autonomous weapons that use artificial intelligence to locate, track and destroy their targets. AI professor Toby Walsh explains why that’s a problem. Artificial intelligence is in the news a lot, and it’s safe to say that it’s not always benign. That’s why the United Nations is host...

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...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. A solo crossing of Antarctica. With chilling detail, Ben Saunders documents his journey across Antarctica as he attempts to complete the first successful solo, unsupported and unassisted crossing. The journey is a way of honoring his friend Henry Wors...

As usual, the TED community is making headlines. Below, some highlights. A close look at the beauty and pain of hospice care. End Game, a short documentary that follows the last few days of terminally ill patients, is up for an Oscar this weekend. The heart-rending film highlights the work of doctors and caregivers — including BJ Miller — ...

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. Let's dig i...

In an early morning session hosted by podcaster and TED2017 speaker Manoush Zomorodi, six speakers -- Lucy Cooke, Ayanna Howard, Nivruti Rai, Monique W. Morris, Karissa Sanbonmatsu and Amanda Williams -- brought us insights from the worlds of AI, robotics, epigenetics, education, and the wonderfully slow world of the sloth. Sustainability...

Here, your weekly recap of TED-related news: You see their work every time you start a TED Talk: the video firm Psyop created our water-drop titles (among lots of other work you’ll recognize). Now they’ve released their very first iOS and Android game -- a game for social good called “Nightmare: Malaria.” It comes from their nonprofit wing, E...

Collective wisdom might best be found when small groups of people are given a chance to discuss and deliberate, say social scientists Mariano Sigman, Joaquin Navajas, Gerry Garbulsky and Dan Ariely. Could this suggest a better way to vote? For many years, problems with democracy have been pushed under the carpet in the general belief that “demo...

Historian Yuval Noah Harari offers a bracing prediction: just as mass industrialization created the working class, the AI revolution will create a new unworking class. The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms tha...

Today's volatile world demands that we do things differently -- that we pay attention to things most people don’t see. At TEDSalon: Unconventional, presented by TED and the Brightline Initiative and hosted by TED's Cloe Shasha and Alex Moura, six leaders and visionaries shared novel ideas that are driving the world’s most impactful organizat...

How much technology can you live with? In a series of playful exhibits at TED2019 curated by TED's tech curator Alex Moura, you can explore how tech integrates with -- and perhaps improves -- your home. We start in a typical living room ... or is it: The Laughing Room: Welcome to a sitcom where you are the character! In this living room, ...