Nick Bostrom: How civilization could destroy itself -- and 4 ways we could prevent it
Humanity is on its way to creating a "black ball": a technological breakthrough that could destroy us all, says philosopher Nick Bostrom. In this incisive, surprisingly light-hearted conversation with Head of TED Chris Anderson, Bostrom outlines the vulnerabilities we could face if (or when) our inventions spiral beyond our control -- and explor...
Nick Bostrom: A philosophical quest for our biggest problems
Nick Bostrom: What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?
Artificial intelligence is getting smarter by leaps and bounds -- within this century, research suggests, a computer AI could be as "smart" as a human being. And then, says Nick Bostrom, it will overtake us: "Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make." A philosopher and technologist, Bostrom asks us to think...
Zohreh Davoudi: Are we living in a simulation?
All life on Earth— living and inanimate, microscopic and cosmic— is governed by mathematical laws with apparently arbitrary constants. And this opens up a question: If the universe is completely governed by these laws, couldn't a powerful enough computer simulate it exactly? Could our reality actually be a detailed simulation set in place by a m...
Grady Booch: Don't fear superintelligent AI
New tech spawns new anxieties, says scientist and philosopher Grady Booch, but we don't need to be afraid an all-powerful, unfeeling AI. Booch allays our worst (sci-fi induced) fears about superintelligent computers by explaining how we'll teach, not program, them to share our human values. Rather than worry about an unlikely existential threat,...
Yejin Choi: Why AI is incredibly smart and shockingly stupid
Computer scientist Yejin Choi is here to demystify the current state of massive artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT, highlighting three key problems with cutting-edge large language models (including some funny instances of them failing at basic commonsense reasoning.) She welcomes us into a new era in which AI is becoming almost like a...
The TED Interview: Roger McNamee takes on big tech
The TED Interview: The race to build AI that benefits humanity with Sam Altman (from April 2021)
In this season of The TED Interview, conversations with people who make a case for ... optimism. Not some blind, hopeful feeling, but the conviction that somewhere out there are solutions that, given the right attention and resources, can guide us out of the dark place we're in. For the first episode: artificial intelligence. Will innovation in ...