Ray Kurzweil: The last 6 decades of AI — and what comes next
How will AI improve our lives in the years to come? From its inception six decades ago to its recent exponential growth, futurist Ray Kurzweil highlights AI's transformative impact on various fields and explains his prediction for the singularity: the point at which human intelligence merges with machine intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil: The accelerating power of technology
Ray Kurzweil: A university for the coming singularity
Ray Kurzweil: Get ready for hybrid thinking
Two hundred million years ago, our mammal ancestors developed a new brain feature: the neocortex. This stamp-sized piece of tissue (wrapped around a brain the size of a walnut) is the key to what humanity has become. Now, futurist Ray Kurzweil suggests, we should get ready for the next big leap in brain power, as we tap into the computing power ...
Peter Diamandis: Abundance is our future
Ron McCallum: How technology allowed me to read
Months after he was born, in 1948, Ron McCallum became blind. In this charming, moving talk, he shows how he reads -- and celebrates the progression of clever tools and adaptive computer technologies that make it possible. With their help, and the help of volunteers, he's become a lawyer, an academic, and, most of all, a voracious reader. Welcom...
Diane Benscoter: How cults rewire the brain
Oscar Schwartz: Can a computer write poetry?
If you read a poem and feel moved by it, but then find out it was actually written by a computer, would you feel differently about the experience? Would you think that the computer had expressed itself and been creative, or would you feel like you had fallen for a cheap trick? In this talk, writer Oscar Schwartz examines why we react so strongly...
Gaspard Koenig: Do we really own our bodies?
We tend to think of our corporeal selves as the one thing we hold complete dominion over. "My body belongs to me" has become a statement so banal that French ministers have the phrase tattooed on their arms. Philosopher Gaspard Koenig thinks we should stop taking ownership of our bodies for granted. In this funny, example-driven talk, Koenig del...
Bill Joy: What I'm worried about, what I'm excited about
Gregory Stock: To upgrade is human
Martine Rothblatt: My daughter, my wife, our robot, and the quest for immortality
The founder of Sirius XM satellite radio, Martine Rothblatt now heads up a drug company that makes life-saving medicines for rare diseases (including one drug that saved her own daughter's life). Meanwhile she is working to preserve the consciousness of the woman she loves in a digital file ... and a companion robot. In an onstage conversation w...
Nicholas Negroponte: A 30-year history of the future
MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte takes you on a journey through the last 30 years of tech. The consummate predictor highlights interfaces and innovations he foresaw in the 1970s and 1980s that were scoffed at then but are ubiquitous today. And he leaves you with one last (absurd? brilliant?) prediction for the coming 30 years.
Shane Legg and Chris Anderson: The transformative potential of AGI — and when it might arrive
As the cofounder of Google DeepMind, Shane Legg is driving one of the greatest transformations in history: the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). He envisions a system with human-like intelligence that would be exponentially smarter than today's AI, with limitless possibilities and applications. In conversation with head of TE...
Kevin Kelly: The next 5,000 days of the web
Stewart Brand + Mark Z. Jacobson: Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?