Computers are being taught to learn, reason and recognize emotions. In these talks, look for insights -- as well as warnings.

Plants behave in some oddly intelligent ways: fighting predators, maximizing food opportunities ... But can we think of them as actually having a form of intelligence of their own? Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso presents intriguing evidence.

In 2013 Edward Snowden leaked thousands of classified American National Security Agency documents, sparking a global conversation about citizens' rights to privacy on the Internet.

Is there an equation for intelligence? Yes. It's F = T ∇ Sτ. In a fascinating and informative talk, physicist and computer scientist Alex Wissner-Gross explains what in the world that means.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee has two powerful stories to tell -- of her own life's transformation, and of the untapped potential of girls around the world. Can we transform the world by unlocking the greatness of girls?

Ken Jennings holds the record for most consecutive wins on the classic American trivia game show, Jeopardy.

Machine intelligence is here, and we're already using it to make subjective decisions. But the complex way AI grows and improves makes it hard to understand and even harder to control. In this cautionary talk, techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains how intelligent machines can fail in ways that don't fit human error patterns -- and in ways w...

In this Princeton University graduation address, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos makes the case that our character is reflected not in the gifts we're endowed with at birth, but by the choices we make over the course of a lifetime.

All over the world, there's growing consensus that our education systems are broken. These educators share big ideas on how we might re-imagine school.

James Flynn challenges our fundamental assumptions about intelligence.

Diana Reiss studies animal cognition, and has found that bottlenose dolphins (and Asian elephants) can recognize themselves in the mirror.

Tour the deep dark world of the East German state security agency known as Stasi. Uniquely powerful at spying on its citizens, until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the Stasi masterminded a system of surveillance and psychological pressure that kept the country under control for decades. Hubertus Knabe studies the Stasi — and was spied on by...

Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant thought experiment: a machine that could form a new bond between animal and human.

A prolific short story writer and blogger since age seven, Adora Svitak (now 12) speaks around the United States to adults and children as an advocate for literacy.

An advocate of human-computer symbiosis, Shyam Sankar looks for clues in big and disparate data sets.

Jeremy Howard imagines how advanced machine learning can improve our lives.

Quirky, fascinating talks about the design of practical things we all need, whether we know it or not.

"Do you know what I mean?" Legendary poet, lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar asks why we seem to be losing our power to use words -- and inspires us to better understand and communicate with one another using this near-magical tool that carries our culture across generations. (In Hindi with English subtitles)

Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see -- and write about -- the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States' extensive surveillance of private citizens. In this searing talk, Greenwald makes the case for why you need to care about privacy, even if you're "not doing anything you need to hide."

Many artificial intelligence researchers expect AI to outsmart humans at all tasks and jobs within decades, enabling a future where we're restricted only by the laws of physics, not the limits of our intelligence. MIT physicist and AI researcher Max Tegmark separates the real opportunities and threats from the myths, describing the concrete step...

Alan Smith uses interactive graphics and statistics to breathe new life into how data is presented.

Science fiction visions of the future show us AI built to replicate our way of thinking -- but what if we modeled it instead on the other kinds of intelligence found in nature? Robotics engineer Radhika Nagpal studies the collective intelligence displayed by insects and fish schools, seeking to understand their rules of engagement. In a visionar...

Onstage at TED2014, Google CEO Larry Page talks about his far-off vision for the company. It includes aerial bikeways and internet balloons ... and then it gets even more interesting, as Page talks through the company's recent acquisition of Deep Mind, an AI that is learning some surprising things.

Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

Margaret Mitchell is a senior research scientist in Google's Research & Machine Intelligence group, working on artificial intelligence.

NASA engineer Bobak Ferdowsi helped the Curiosity rover land on Mars -- and he's curated these talks that deepen our understanding of the world around us.

About this video: Artificial Intelligence is a next step in the evolution of our species – because we have potentially come to the limits of our own intelligence. However intelligence is only part of the story – it’s what we do with that intelligence that matters. That is something that can’t be designed. Guruduth Banavar, Chief Science Officer ...

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

After making a splash in the field of bioinformatics, Sebastian Wernicke moved on to the corporate sphere, where he motivates and manages multidimensional projects.

In far too many countries around the world, an education is not a given for girls. These moving talks are from those facing great risk to change that.