Are we born to be optimistic, rather than realistic? Tali Sharot shares new research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side -- and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial.

These talks reveal how our technology often reflects the unconscious biases and prejudices we hold.

MIT grad student Joy Buolamwini was working with facial analysis software when she noticed a problem: the software didn't detect her face -- because the people who coded the algorithm hadn't taught it to identify a broad range of skin tones and facial structures. Now she's on a mission to fight bias in machine learning, a phenomenon she calls th...

About this talk: Listening to both customers and colleagues to gather insights and information is a key ability that successful people possess. Tony Salvador shares some strategies for being a better listener : to lose preconceptions, to be vulnerable and open to new ideas, and to not be afraid to hear what we'd rather not hear.

Search engines have become our most trusted sources of information and arbiters of truth. But can we ever get an unbiased search result? Swedish author and journalist Andreas Ekström argues that such a thing is a philosophical impossibility. In this thoughtful talk, he calls on us to strengthen the bonds between technology and the humanities, an...

TED Fellow Walé Oyéjidé combats bias with creative storytelling.

Jessica Pryce creates strategies to reduce the impact of racial bias in child protective services.

We often think of bias and prejudice as rooted in ignorance. But as psychologist Paul Bloom seeks to show, prejudice is often natural, rational ... even moral. The key, says Bloom, is to understand how our own biases work -- so we can take control when they go wrong.

Where are all the women and girls in film? Social scientist Stacy Smith analyzes how the media underrepresents and portrays women -- and the potentially destructive effects those portrayals have on viewers. She shares hard data behind gender bias in Hollywood, where on-screen males outnumber females three to one (and behind-the-camera workers fa...

With warmth and wit, Halla Tómasdóttir shares how she overcame media bias, changed the tone of the political debate and surprised her entire nation when she ran for president of Iceland -- inspiring the next generation of leaders along the way. "What we see, we can be," she says. "It matters that women run."

Ever wondered, why did I just do that? These fascinating talks explain the hidden reasons why we do what we do.

Photographer Levon Biss was looking for a new, extraordinary subject when one afternoon he and his young son popped a ground beetle under a microscope and discovered the wondrous world of insects. Applying his knowledge of photography to subjects just five millimeters long, Biss created a process for shooting insects in unbelievable microscopic ...

In this eye-opening talk about the impact of race and neighborhood on foster-care decisions, social worker Jessica Pryce shares a promising solution to help child welfare agencies make bias-free assessments about when to remove children from their families. "Let's work together to build a system that wants to make families stronger instead of pu...

Insights and advice to escaping the echo chambers of social media, newsfeeds, and everyday conversation so that we may get a better, less rose-tinted grasp of the world and people around us.

Algorithms play a big part in our day-to-day lives. From search engines to architecture, explore how these formulas affect the way we view and interact with the world around us.

Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, bet his whole company on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in one another's homes. How did he overcome the stranger-danger bias? Through good design. Now, 123 million hosted nights (and counting) later, Gebbia sets out his dream for a culture of sharing in which design helps foster c...

Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both....

Data skeptic Cathy O’Neil uncovers the dark secrets of big data, showing how our "objective" algorithms could in fact reinforce human bias.

Why does race matter so profoundly for health? David R. Williams developed a scale to measure the impact of discrimination on well-being, going beyond traditional measures like income and education to reveal how factors like implicit bias, residential segregation and negative stereotypes create and sustain inequality. In this eye-opening talk, W...

Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell's work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence.

The 3 pounds of jelly in our skulls allow us to reflect on our own consciousness -- and to make counterintuitive, irrational decisions. These talks explore why.

Human behavior is a riddle. In these talks, speakers share psychological studies—from asking kids to wait to eat marshmallows to planting false memories through a single word—that offer possible solutions as well as surprising new twists.

Strengthen your skills with these informative talks on how to get the most out of your research.

With his "Microsculpture" series, Levon Biss photographs the incredible details of insects.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Neuroscientist Tali Sharot comes on stage to discuss the "optimism bias." It's a topic that she's been studying in her lab and she claims that 80% of us experience it. "It" being the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good things happening to us. As she puts it: "we're more optimistic than realistic, and...

Oncologist and writer Siddhartha Mukherjee suggests that what doctors fight against isn't so much disease -- it's their own biases. In the summer of 2003, I finished my three-year residency in internal medicine and began a fellowship in oncology. It was an exhilarating time. The Human Genome Project had laid the foundation for the new science o...

I just might have the best job in the world. As a particle physicist and professor at Yale, I am a happy cog on the wheel of humanity, trying to understand the universe. I collaborate with brilliant people, young and old, from all over the globe. But while I love my job, the truth is I am part of a system that is rigged. We have come a long w...

As Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, Neil Gershenfeld explores the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds.

About this event: We want to explore the bias of the education, religion, science, psychology, philosophy and sustaintability.

We each live in the shadow of a personal apocalypse: the knowledge that -- someday, somehow -- we will die. It's a terrifying thought, and so we look for a way out. In my talk from TEDxBratislava (and in my book Immortality), I walk through four stories that people have told throughout cultures and time, as a way to manage this very real fea...