Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness.

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's latest graphs show that technology's breakneck advances will only accelerate -- recession or not. He unveils his new project, Singularity University, to study oncoming tech and guide it to benefit humanity.

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 ...

Join head of TED Chris Anderson for a very special conversation with legendary inventor and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil, recorded live onstage at TED2018. Listen in to hear what the man who makes a living from predicting the future arc of technology thinks is coming our way next -- including a specific prediction of when he thinks technology...

What if AI could bring the past to life? Cartoonist Amy Kurzweil shares how she helped train an AI chatbot on her late grandfather’s archives, allowing her to connect with a family member she never met — and discover family history she never knew. Backed by her own original drawings, she reveals the profound impact art and AI can have in keeping...

Onstage at TED2012, Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism -- that we'll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. "I’m not saying we don’t have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down.”

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 spent five years as a "Moonie." She shares an insider's perspective on the mind of a cult member, and proposes a new way to think about today's most troubling conflicts and extremist movements.

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...

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...

Technologist and futurist Bill Joy talks about several big worries for humanity -- and several big hopes in the fields of health, education and future tech.

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...

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...

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.

In this prophetic 2003 talk -- just days before Dolly the sheep was stuffed -- biotech ethicist Gregory Stock looked forward to new, more meaningful (and controversial) technologies, like customizable babies, whose adoption might drive human evolution.

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?

Nuclear power: the energy crisis has even die-hard environmentalists reconsidering it. In this first-ever TED debate, Stewart Brand and Mark Z. Jacobson square off over the pros and cons. A discussion that'll make you think -- and might even change your mind.

Talking about race can be difficult. But Mellody Hobson argues that we need to do it anyway -- boldly and often. Mellody is the president of Ariel Investments, a firm that manages more than 13 billion dollars. And throughout her career and in her personal life, she's experienced just how corrosive it can be when people choose to be "color blind....