The TED AI Show – Details, episodes & analysis

Imagine a world where your thoughts are no longer private – where employers, friends, and even companies can see, hack, or exploit your thinking. According to ethicist Nita Farahany, that reality is closer than you think. Nita and Bilawal discuss the rapidly advancing field of neurotechnology and its potential to completely transform our everyday lives, from tools that could help you deeply understand your health to tech that could manipulate your dreams. Nita also shares why we need to protect our "cognitive liberty" and how to exercise our rights to think freely in an age of mind-reading technology.

For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts   

Cutting-edge technology and vast amounts of data are revolutionizing climate modeling with unprecedented accuracy. So could AI be the crystal ball we need to predict — and even control — Earth's climate? Bilawal sits with Dion Harris, the head of data center product marketing at NVIDIA, and climate physicist Tapio Schneider to discuss how technology could reshape our approach to climate change and influence global decision-making. The three also dive into how AI could help us make hyper-local climate predictions — and debate the ethical dilemmas of geoengineering.

For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

AI is reshaping software development so much that someday soon, anyone will be able to build an app or a game. What does that mean for programming now? Bilawal and Thomas Dohmke,  CEO of GitHub, explore the soaring possibilities and discuss the lingering concerns as “AI eats software.” Whether you are a coder or a tech enthusiast, think AI will supercharge programmers or fear it will render human coders obsolete, this episode will have your mind racing about the future of tech.

For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts  

We may think the complexities of the human mind can only be understood by other humans. Yet research on chatbots and psychology suggests non-human bots can actually help improve mental health. Bilawal talks with Dr. Alison Darcy, the founder of mental health app Woebot, and Brian Chandler, an app user, to learn what chatbots reveal about our inner lives and what they can (and can’t) do when it comes to emotional wellness.

Check out the 99% Invisible episode we reference in the show here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-eliza-effect/

For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts 

Non Player Characters --NPCs for short-- have always been a huge part of what makes video games engaging, from Cortana in Halo to Navi in The Legend of Zelda. But interactions with NPCs were always limited to a pre-written script. Until now. Purnendu Mukherjee is the CEO of Convai, a platform that enables developers to create NPCs with human-like conversational abilities. He joins Bilawal to chat about our evolving relationship with "AI characters” and what we gain and lose when our digital relationships are so life-like, it almost doesn’t matter who (or what) is on the other end.

For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts  

Technology is supposed to make our lives better – but who gets to decide how that improvement unfolds, and what values it upholds? Tech ethicist Patrick Lin and Bilawal dig into the hidden -- and not so hidden -- biases in AI. From historically inaccurate images to life-and-death decisions in hospitals, human biases reveal how AI mirrors our own flaws…But can we fix bias? Lin argues that technology alone won't suffice...

Like many new, exciting artistic technologies before it, the development of AI is begging us to ask: what counts as art? In a provocative conversation, Claire Silver, an anonymous AI collaborative artist, sits down with Bilawal to talk about how AI has revolutionized her own mixed media practice, and why she thinks that AI may be an inextricable part of human creativity in the near future.

For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts 

If there’s one AI company that’s made a splash in mainstream vernacular, it’s OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Former board member and AI policy expert Helen Toner joins Bilawal to discuss the existing knowledge gaps and conflicting interests between those who are in charge of making the latest technology – and those who create our policies at the government level.

For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts

Could you spot a deepfake? We’re entering a new world where generative AI is challenging our sense of what’s real and what’s fiction. In our first episode, Bilawal and Sam Gregory, a human rights activist and technologist, discuss how to protect our sense of reality.

AI is changing every aspect of life – work, relationships, culture, art. But how will we navigate this new world? Host Bilawal Sidhu chats with the world’s leading experts, artists, journalists, and beyond, to guide you through the promises and perils of this powerful ever-evolving technology.