TED 2013-2023 — “10 Years of Ideas Worth Spreading” or… “There are Weeks Where Decades Happen”
In April 2023, I returned to Vancouver to celebrate my 10th year attending the exceptional TED conference! TED 2023 was, as always, an invaluable source of energy, ideas and inspiration and I am grateful to have been on this ride for the last decade. Below are my annual highlights of the conference and a retrospective of the past 10 years, as seen through the lens of TED.
Enjoy!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- A Decade of TED
- What Happens at the TED Conference?
- What are Your Favorite TED Talks from the Past 10 Years?
- How Has TED Changed You?
- What are Your Biggest Lessons from TED?
- TED 2023 — The Highlights
- What are Your Favorite Talks from TED 2023?
- “Title Porn” — the Best Nametags at TED
- “Only at TED” Moments
- Until Next Year…
A DECADE OF TED
Ten in-person TED conferences across 3 West Coast locations where 1,206 TED talks were shown to 18,262 attendees from over 60 countries across 50 extraordinary days!
Beyond the numbers, TED tackled topics within and across the disciplines of science, art, medicine, philosophy, geopolitics, psychology, global development, design and much more.
But this is not a static picture…TED also holds up a mirror to our changing world as it becomes more specialized, more technical and, more polarized. The amazing team at TED has added significantly more tags/keywords to the online talks over the last 10 years, likely reflecting a fragmenting of topics the conference covers.
WHAT HAPPENS AT THE TED CONFERENCE?
Each year, 1,500+ engaged, curious and well-connected people gather on the shores of Vancouver Harbor in the shadow of the stunning snow-capped Pacific Range mountains to hear from hundreds of speakers, exchange ideas and seek to convert those ideas into impact.
The beautiful setting is a fitting match for the gorgeous theater and production quality of TED talks; painstakingly rehearsed oratory, giant high-def screens with retina-quality display resolution, perfectly-tuned acoustics and a tightly choreographed dance of images and film. It is impressively well-orchestrated, world-class elocution and audience engagement. TED understands how to use light, sound, staging and presentation to immerse its audience in talks so effectively you may forget you are learning about particle physics or laser oncology.
Emerging from the intense speaker sessions, TED attendees spill out of the theater into social breaks, interactive exhibits, gourmet food truck lunches and evening parties to debrief, debate and discuss the content and cross-pollinate with the speakers and 1,500 of their closest friends.
In these conversations, it’s not hard to feel like you are the least impressive person at TED. In a random conversation with 5 people, you might find yourself talking with: a board member of the largest university system in the world and cofounder of a precision medicine startup, an investor in SpaceX showing you today’s launch of Starship on their phone, a senior person at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in charge of The Giving Pledge, a social impact artist talking about dreaming and the Chief Learning Officer at the largest bank in the world.
The atmosphere at TED is West Coast relaxed and collegial, yet under the surface is an intense marketplace of ideas. Conversations contain very little small talk; they go deep and impactful quickly.
But these are not “networking” chats. At TED, passion and curiosity are the coin of the realm. No one asks, “What do you do for work?”, they ask “What is exciting you right now?”
From there, a chemical reaction starts where attendees and speakers start connecting dots across ideas and post-conference collaborations result in an array of new start-ups, not-for-profits, foundations, initiatives, books, podcasts, legislation and awareness campaigns.
More important is the “ripple effect”. Each year, from the TED stage, start-ups are founded/funded, ideas are patented, musical careers are launched, schools and hospitals are built, bills are introduced, laws are changed, charitable funds are raised, and kickstarter projects are kickstarted. Take a passionate and deeply well-informed advocate, combine with an urgent and important issue, stir in an ounce of brilliant oratory, add a pinch of global instant digital distribution and bake for 5 days with some of the most ambitious, committed and well-connected people on the planet and you get a change factory. At TED, “ideas worth spreading” don’t stay ideas for very long.
TED is also a place where dedicated, accomplished and rigorously studied people toiling in relative obscurity are given a voice on the TED stage and many experience the exhilaration of their ideas getting endorsed, funded, advertised, sponsored and catapulted into the global village. For the lucky ones chosen to stand on the red circle, a speaking gig at TED is winning the awareness lottery and it often literally changes their life.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE TED TALKS FROM THE LAST 10 YEARS…AND WHY?
The best TED talks are an 18-minute artful combination of: a) teaching by storytelling, b) deeply researched, c) make complex topics easy to understand, d) create an urgency of purpose and relevancy and e) include an emotional, personal connection or vulnerability.
It’s really hard to pick just 10, but each of these changed me in some way.
Why? A heart-wrenching and heroic talk from an American transplant in Israel who found his strength in forgiveness.
Why? A simply EXTRAORDINARY talk, a master class of combining science and empathy that is both technical and deeply personal. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house at the end of this one. Check out Hugh’s lab at MIT!
Why? A must-watch and exceptionally engaging tale of two men linked together in a life-or-death struggle following 9/11. A profound talk about humanity.
Why? Hilarious and poignant talk by the awesome Tim Urban on how to fall into, and escape, the delaying trap. After you watch it, do yourself a favor and read Tim’s fantastic blog (Wait But Why) and new book.
Why? An absolute tour-de-force talk by the head of the ACLU that masterfully links 15th century Italian Renaissance paintings with a how-to on good and bad government.
Why? This engaging and optimistic talk is designed to persuade us that our cognitive biases (availability heuristic) and the nature of news (“if it bleeds, it leads”) have tricked us into thinking that we are living in the most violent, least democratic, most unequal and darkest time in human history. In fact, the data shows the exact opposite.
Why? A must-watch talk that lit up entirely new parts of my brain! This exhilarating and high-energy talk goes far beyond architecture: it reveals new job opportunities, exemplifies how disconnected college curricula are from careers of the future and is yet another example of the power of multi-disciplinary collaboration. Check out Bjarke’s amazing portfolio.
Why? Adrian is determined to reinvent the deeply broken college system from the inside. Adrian bounds with passion when he talks about what is possible, informed by outcomes and data. Like all great pioneers, he is a true systems thinker and his vision is both grand and specific.
Why? Dan Harris (former anchor for ABC News who had an on-air panic attack) recounts his multi-year journey to enhance his relationships with everyone (including himself). He delves into the science of loving-kindness meditation, explaining how it can strengthen one’s resilience, silence the inner critic, and make an individual more agreeable to be around. As Dan says, “there’s a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together.”
Why? Sal Khan has helped to revolutionize K-12 education and he is now bringing his vision of “giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor” through Khanmigo.
HOW HAS TED CHANGED YOU?
Um, how much time do you have? :-)
TED has been life-changing for me. Why? It simply re-wired my brain in a way that has made be open to new experiences, new ways of thinking, new friends and new ways of contributing, professionally and personally.
Re-Wired Your Brain? How Does TED Do That?
Spending one week a year interacting with hundreds of passionate, engaged, deeply curious people who reflexively and obsessively turn ideas into action is intoxicating. TED is my annual “brain spa”, “courage bath”, “aspiration vaccine” and “nerd fantasy camp.” It contains almost zero direct connection to my day job, but for 5 glorious days I get to visit the future, put my work in a broader context and connect the dots across multiple disciplines of science, art, medicine, philosophy, geopolitics, global development, design and much more.
I go to TED to experience a community whose culture, beliefs and values are upside-down from the rest of my life. TED is like visiting another planet, galaxy or universe where the laws of science are different than Earth and the inhabitants are nearly unrecognizable.
At TED, passion trumps stability, courage wins over tribalism and conformity, persistence is valued over expediency, globalism beats provincialism, mild Asperger’s is better than extroverted and highly socialized, mistakes of commission beat mistakes of omission, fear of missing opportunities replaces fear of being wrong, embracing risk trounces managing risk. In short, the “bizarro world” version of my daily life. Imagine a week where you only hear “I am excited about…”, “I dream of…”, “I am creating…”, “I am discovering…” instead of: “I’m worried about…”, “I’m scared of…”, “The problem is…”. Refreshing!
At its heart, TED asks the question: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” Afraid of being wrong, afraid of being misunderstood, afraid of standing apart from the crowd, afraid of a lack of predictability in your life.
TED celebrates people who combine genius, courage and humility. This rare combination is fundamental to: a) the novel insight embedded in new solutions to vexing problems, b) the equanimity required to pursue your passion for years in the face of social/economic pressure to deviate to something more “marketable” and ultimately, and c) the active collaboration necessary to capitalize on the amazing progress that happens at the seams of expertise.
Nina Tandon is just such a “trifecta” person. A TED Fellow, biomedical tissue engineer and CEO of EpiBone (mission: transform skeletal repair), Nina has been working determinedly for 20 years on engineering bone and cartilage to “grow body parts that last as long as we do” engineered from stem cells. Nina came to TED 2023 to give us an update on her extraordinary work and remind us of the values and work required to change the world.
TEDsters also believe that education is not a product to be packaged and consumed by us, it is the result of our curiosity and connectedness to others. TED celebrates this inversion by putting people on stage who are wired for exploration and absorb knowledge as fuel for their journey, not as an end to itself.
What Have You Done Differently Because of TED?
In 2007, a TED talk by John Doerr changed my life (ok, my career). A venture capitalist crying on stage about global warming? Really? Maybe it was capitalist theatre but a bell was rung and a seed planted. A year later I found myself walking away from running a $500 million global business to join the solar industry. Ideas worth spreading, indeed!
Fast forward 5 years and I became a TED devotee, sharing links to talks with friends and most profoundly my wife and kids, who innocently asked “Dad, why don’t you go to the TED conference?” As usual my daughters were wise beyond their years and through a serendipitous friendship with a long-time attendee, I found myself applying for TED membership.
A special thank you to Tom Stat for launching my TED journey!
Since then, I discovered a new career when I saw the TEDx talk given by the CEO of a company who espoused values of “empathy, humanity, trust and love”. TED also made me open-minded to writing a book on “Reinventing College”, trekking across Patagonia, mentoring young people and, most recently, becoming a “Senior Advisor” to TED itself.
Thank You, TED!
WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST LESSONS FROM TED?
The 1,200 TED talks I watched over the last 10 years on topics spanning science, technology, religion, sociology, economics, philosophy, architecture, entertainment and so much more taught me FACTS & DATA.
On the one hand, I now know enough to be dangerous across a broad spectrum of subjects…
…But what I learned observing those 1,200 people is far more valuable…
I learned how extraordinary people use VALUES, THINKING & ACTION to translate data to wisdom.
For example…A fish paleobiologist taught me about determination and collaboration. An astronomer specializing in dark matter taught me about valuing struggle. An internet entrepreneur taught me how I think is more important than what I think.
Here are 10 Years of My TED Lessons in One Picture.
VALUES
- Passion and Curiosity are the Coin of the Realm.
Why? In a world where all the world’s information is in everyone’s pocket, mentors, coaching, access to networks and investment and philanthropic dollars flow disproportionately to those who: a) demonstrate sustained commitment in the face of daunting obstacles, b) time-arbitrage the contrarian view of currently out of favor subjects (less competition, access to cheaper resources) and c) exhibit resourcefulness, innovation and insatiable curiosity to identify unmet needs, holes in our knowledge and/or spur others to action. Counter-intuitive as it may be, this phenomena can occur independent of the subject you pursue.
Exhibit A for this value is Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Chanda studies the intersection of astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology in her search to uncover just how amazing the universe is. Chanda has spent two decades obsessing over dark matter and that boundless passion and curiosity has yielded amazing results! Chanda is the winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the science and technology category and the American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology. Chanda’s contagious energy for her field comes through in sentences such as: “I’m completely enamored with the idea of axion Bose-Einstein condensates!”
2. There are (at least) 3 Levels of Engaged.
Level 1: Willfully ignorant/apathetic/intellectually lazy (“I don’t know, don’t care or I am opinionated but not informed”)
Level 2: Sophisticated/knowledgeable/insightful — great at identifying problems and solutions but tend to abdicate action to others (“this is a huge issue, someone should do something about it!”)
Level 3: Passionate/courageous/determined/collaborative — takes the first step, no matter how small, to create change, pursue hard problems or invest their own time, ideas, reputation or money (“I can’t not work on this…I hope others will join me, but I am doing it either way!”)
An outstanding “Level 3” speaker at TED 2023 was Sheena Meade, CEO of the Clean Slate Initiative. Sheena had economic justice infused into her early in her life as the child of labor organizers, but then experienced the painful lack of career opportunities after an arrest due to a bounced check. She channeled her frustration into determination by deciding that she could help everyone get a chance at redemption. Under Sheena’s leadership, the Clean Slate Initiative has helped pass legislation that provided a path for 3 million people to receive full or partial record clearance. Sheena is boundless in her commitment to making change!
3. Don’t Ask: What Job/Career/Major Should I Pursue? Instead, Ask: What Problems Do I Want to Help Solve?
There are extraordinary new careers awaiting our kids and yet we as parents may subtly limit their options by thinking narrowly based on job titles previous generations chose instead of broadly.
Better to start with activities that excite you, outcomes that are important and where you can contribute: Do you want to help slow climate change, protect our cities from flooding and spread cheap and clean energy? Do you want to find new seeds that could feed all of Africa? Do you want to help prevent the next pandemic? Do you want to enable everyone to become an amateur athlete? Do you want to help build the first industries in space? Do you want to create personalized medicine? Do you want to end disability in our lifetime?
If so, find leaders and companies that are working on this and join them!
The late and extraordinary Amy Krouse Rosenthal summed it up best when she said, “Pay attention to what you pay attention to!”
4. We systematically overvalue constancy and we systematically undervalue (and underestimate) change, struggle and challenging life transitions.
The TED community is filled with people who run toward change, despite their success enabling them to build a life of comfort and routine. While many of us know the adages about learning the most when we are at our least comfortable, the “American Dream” pulls us like gravity toward the comfort of stability and predictable schedules: the K-12 school day, the college admissions process, the 30-year mortgage, the biological clock, the retirement age.
Proactively looking for ways to pursue difficult things we care about, even if it means short-term deep discomfort, can make us more resilient and better-prepared for life’s curveballs.
One of the other reasons we may steer away from struggle is that we underestimate how much we are constantly changing. Dubbed “The End of History Illusion”, it is the conceit we use to convince ourselves that while we have experienced significant growth and changes in our preferences so far, we are done growing and our values, beliefs and tastes are now frozen.
Watch Dan Gilbert’s delightful 5 minute talk on how to beat the illusion!
THINKING
5. There are (at least) 3 Kinds of Smart.
TED helped me unpack the word “smart” into component parts:
a) cognitive processing speed (are you 5 minutes ahead of or 5 minutes behind the conversation?)
b) work ethic (over-preparing for every demonstration of your intellect)
c) worldly (well-traveled and well-read).
6. Be a Systems Thinker
A week at TED reminds us to see problems as part of a larger system and that more magic happens at the intersection of disciplines than within them: a breakthrough technology that was only invented because its creator studied biochemistry, neuroscience and classical violin or new software that could enable direct democracy that is being developed by a physicist who runs a media arts lab and studies how teams, cities and nations learn. If “number of polymaths per square foot” were an attendance metric, TED would hold a world record!
Breakthrough results are also more likely to come from people who develop and constantly refine mental models on how the world works than those who took a single academic “vaccine” early in life and then memorized technique. Ultimately, this latticework of multiple models and a deep understanding of the psychology of human misjudgment (cognitive biases) are more valuable than simply knowing facts.
An outstanding “systems thinker” from the TED stage is Eleni Myrivili — the former deputy mayor and “Chief Heat Officer” of Athens, Greece. Eleni is looking to combat one of the most damaging aspects of climate change in a comprehensive way. She takes into account how humans adapt to heat and its impact on safety, agriculture, health, and children’s education. She doesn’t just highlight awareness and preparedness, she focuses on how we can redesign and reimagine cities beyond just more air conditioning, energy efficiency, and carbon emission reduction.
7. How You Think is More Important Than What You Think
In our highly (but not newly) polarized world, we focus on differences of opinion as separating us into warring factions, but it turns out that our more enduring trait is how we process new information and collaborate with others to seek the truth — or not…
As the amazing Tim Urban writes in his excellent new book, we have two brains within us, a primitive, or lizard brain and a higher mind/intentional mind.
When we use our higher mind to collaborate and debate with others, we learn in what Tim calls an “idea lab” — a place where the goal is find truth. When our primitive mind takes over, we bask in an “echo chamber”, a place where the goal is confirm our existing beliefs.
People in an idea lab don’t take arguments personally, because the core idea is that people and their ideas are separate things. People are meant to be respected, but ideas are meant to be batted around and picked apart. Idea labs can simultaneously respect a person AND disrespect their ideas.
People in an echo chamber, on the other hand, equate a person’s ideas with their identity. Disagreeing with someone in an echo chamber is seen as rudeness, making an argument about ideas indistinguishable from a fight.
Another form of “How You Think” comes in what Paul Saffo describes as “Strong Opinions, Weakly Held”.
“Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the ‘strong opinion’ part. Then –and this is the ‘weakly held’ part– prove yourself wrong. Engage in creative doubt. Look for information that doesn’t fit, or indicators that pointing in an entirely different direction. Eventually your intuition will kick in and a new hypothesis will emerge out of the rubble, ready to be ruthlessly torn apart once again. You will be surprised by how quickly the sequence of faulty forecasts will deliver you to a useful result.” — Paul Saffo
Paul Saffo’s Ideologue/Pragmatist is Tim Urban’s Zealot/Scientist, but it’s the same idea.
Or…as applied to investing…
“A politician who flip flops is viewed as bad and weak…If you talk to the world’s best hedge fund managers, they’re the exact opposite. They love changing their mind…And they are the most open minded people I know. And they love when you tell them that they’re wrong. They get all excited, and their eyes light up. And they’re like…Why do you think that? And they’re genuinely interested because if you’re right and they’re wrong, they will change their minds. And they’re hedge fund managers, so they’ll literally reverse the trade…They’re totally fine with that. And so what I carry away from that is it’s the weakly held part, which is convicted, convicted, convicted, new facts, change.” — Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and creator of the web browser
Dylan Marron (creator of Conversations With People Who Hate Me) showed us the power of talking with people who disagree with you, not talking at them.
ACTION
8. You are the Average of the 5 People You Hang Out With
At any moment, the people you associate with are imperceptibly making you better or worse (however you define that). Surround yourself with people you admire and you will move in that direction.
9. “Showing Your Work” Creates Opportunity
Our global digital networks are disrupting the traditional “signaling devices” of college diplomas, resumes and transcripts. The world is moving from trusting credentials and reasoning by analogy to being able to inspect the work product before you join as a new employee, new member, newly funded entrepreneur, etc.
This “show your work” economy (enabled by collaborative networked tools such as GitHub) is increasingly viewed as a real track record on conscientiousness (if you’ve done X for years, that counts) that could chip away at the lock higher education has on the “sheepskin” credential.
Related to “showing your work” is “defending your work”. Schools like Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Oxford have adopted variations of this approach which requires students to learn how to have their creations critiqued, sometimes brutally, either by their peers or a dedicated tutor. Learning how to withstand and defend those critiques as well as contribute feedback in a depersonalized dialectic exercise is an invaluable life skill that yields more confident students than a “memorize/test” feedback loop.
Dame Stephanie Shirley’s journey to success is a classic example of “showing your work”, or as Steve Martin reminds us, “be so good they can’t ignore you”.
10. We Learn By Doing, or…Start Hiking, the Feedback is Richer.
TED has taught me the power of “starting”. While there is value in planning, taking the first step, no matter how small, will allow you to learn from feedback in your environment, iterate through trial and error, attract fellow travelers and follow your instincts and curiosity to places you never knew existed.
The analogy that resonates most powerfully to me is “start hiking”. You can stand at the trailhead studying the map and debate which path will be more beautiful, or you can just pick one and head off. Around the first bend, you may find a typical forest or a stunning vista. You may strike up a conversation with another hiker who suggests a detour to a beautiful waterfall or you may discover an unexpected stretch of boulders that push your strength and endurance. By starting, you have created optionality!
Away from the mountain, this approach proves to be far more valuable than simply marinating on or even trying to validate an idea. It seems that one of the reasons is that “just doing it” is an incredibly powerful signaling device. Starting an organization, writing a book, recording a podcast all draw other people into your orbit in a way that simply asking “what do you think?” will never do. The very process of interviewing people, recruiting people, sustaining the effort over multiple episodes/chapters creates opportunity for collaboration and mutual help that are so much richer than passive scrolling or random networking.
It also accelerates your cycles of learning. Navigating though the “idea maze” turns out to be highly predictive of entrepreneurial success because it forces you to iterate, go down blind alleys, struggle your way out of them, strike a balance between optionality and conviction and ultimately reach a solution that survives repeated assaults on viability.
A poster child for learning by doing is Jennifer Doudna — the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner and founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute. Jennifer, profiled in Walter Isaacson’s best-selling book The Code Breaker, helped developed CRISPR-Cas9, the groundbreaking genome-engineering technology.
Jennifer, driven by insatiable curiosity about science, embarked on a multi-decade “idea maze” of her own. Initially attracted to how RNA can teach us about the origins of life, she followed her instincts and eventually figured out that RNA not only stores genetic information, but also catalyzes chemical reactions that help duplicate the information — a key attribute of life. Inspired by this discovery, Jennifer knew that to truly understand the biochemical activities of catalytic RNA molecules, she would need to visualize their structure. Achieving that breakthrough led her to want to understand how bacteria fight off viral infections, which sparked her to notice that bacteria have clustered repeated sequences in their DNA that are hard to explain.
This led her to collaborate with Emmanuelle Charpentier and they pooled their expertise — biochemistry, structural biology and microbiology — to determine how CRISPR provides bacteria with viral immunity. One day, they finally cracked the code of how CRISPR works in bacteria to fight off viruses and makes it work in a test tube so that it can cut a piece of DNA at a designated spot. Only after all this “hiking” did Jennifer Doudna realize:“This could be a tool to edit our genes!”
The post-script: Jennifer isn’t done!
She showed up at TED 2023 with a brand new science: Precision Microbiome Editing, where CRISPR can be used to target a particular gene or cell. As she excitedly told the TED audience, “This will allow us to discover links between dysfunctional microbiomes and disease or greenhouse gas emissions.”. Go Jennifer!
The moral of the story, as Walter Isaacson tells us, “there’s a great joy in figuring out how something works, especially when that something is ourselves.”
11. Grow By Discovery & Reflection (Discovery is Better Than Prediction)
Learning is “new facts”, but growth is “bigger frames”. To achieve this broader view, it helps to retain our capacity for wonder and astonishment. Leaving ourselves open to a sense of wonder is not easy; it often requires immersion in an uncomfortable situation, a community of engaged/switched-on people who have self-selected into something challenging and a “beginner’s mind”, but it can be truly rewarding.
Setting annual goals can be helpful, but it involves a high degree of prediction. For some, creating the discipline around your daily habits can compound their ability to discover opportunities by providing the energy and open-mindedness to recognize and pursue paths that will help them achieve those big annual objectives. As my friend and fellow TEDster Dev Patnaik says, “The future I discover is better than the future I predict.”
You are more likely to discover your future by being in a community of people who are pushing themselves and each other.
Often what bonds the group together is they were the ones who keep saying “yes” to a difficult challenge when others stay back or quit along the way. 30 years ago, I found such a group backpacking the Swiss Alps after graduating college. We recently reunited and learned that we’ve surrounded ourselves with people who “keep going” ever since!
Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius. More specifically, it is fertile scene involving a large group of people — creators, collectors, curators, thinkers, theorists, fashionistas and people who have a keen sense for what is new and hip — together they create an “ecology of talent”. Out of that ecology arises extraordinary work. Artists gather in clusters. Paris in the 1920s, New York in the early 60s, East London in the 90s, Berlin after that. Applied to technology, we have seen Silicon Valley, Austin and Miami emerge as forms of Scenius.
A Scenius requires the following conditions:
- Mutual appreciation. Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius as the best kind of peer pressure.
- Rapid exchange of tools and techniques. As something is invented, it is flaunted, then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.
- Success is contagious. When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
- Local tolerance for the new. The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. Renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.
Regardless of how you find and immerse yourself in that community of creators and discoverers, seek to contribute first, ask for help second. When you ask for help, ask for advice first, favors second.
As the great Amanda Palmer and Adam Grant remind us, there is a right and wrong way to ask for help.
TED 2023 — THE HIGHLIGHTS
The big themes across the 5 days of TED 2023 were:
- Will AI Save or Destroy Us?
- Mental Health is Foundational
- Brain Computer Interfaces Will Improve Equality & Test Our Privacy
Artificial Intelligence
TED dove head first into generative AI with a star-studded group of expert speakers addressing the technical, economic, societal, (geo)political, human identity, privacy, ethics and creativity debates.
At its core, the two ends of the spectrum are:
AI Will Save The World vs We Need to Shut it All Down
A more nuanced view was presented recently by the great Kevin Kelly…
…and there are significant social and economic hurdles that will slow AI’s impact.
Across two dizzying AI sessions, the TED audience saw mind-blowing demos, contrarian takes on how to instill large language models (LLMs) with norms and values (not just raw web data), reminders that large swaths of the world (such as Africa) are under-represented in LLMs because only a small portion of historical internet has been created by African users (due to the web’s more recent penetration on the continent), regulatory frameworks to ensure trustworthy, pro-democracy results, panicked (but reasoned) calls that super-intelligent AI systems will likely wipe out the human race, dire warnings about AI-driven warfare, and unshakably optimistic demonstrations of how AI will unleash an educational revolution, revolutionize art and human imagination.
TED speakers also stunned the audience with: machines that use neural networks to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits trained on images from the 17th to 19th centuries, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), which create volumetric 3D scenes based on 2D images, ControlNet, which lets users guide an AI image generation process and essentially re-skin reality, machine learning algorithms that transform large datasets into visualizations that tap into humanity’s collective memories — essentially preserving the disappearing parts of nature while also creating artificial realities.
It was this last topic that captivated my brain — what is “art” in an AI age? On the positive side, young creators no longer need to master expense tools and esoteric knowledge — the field is wide open and anyone can define these new genres. However, we will need to wrestle with the repercussions of a market flooded with people who can now make art within seconds, the potential need for new copyright rules, and the role of creative constraints when working with AI tools.
Safe to say, the TED audience left Vancouver equally exhilarated and panicked by the prospects of AI.
There are endless breathless prognostications of what the adoption curve of Generative AI will like: S-curves, hype cycles, etc.
No one knows, but to put AI in a broader framework, it is helpful to look backwards. A 1966 book — Men, Machines and Modern Times — helps us look at AI through the lens of what its author describes as a 3-stage process that all successful new technologies pass through as they are adopted:
Stage 1: Ignore. People dismiss the new technology as not mattering or they simply don’t pay attention to it.
Stage 2: Refute/Rational Counter-Argument. People generate a long list of concrete objections as to why the technology won’t work.
Stage 3: Name-calling. The technology has now been proven successful and people get mad because realize it’s important and not going away. Regulators pounce, those who achieved power in the old system are now threatened and the power dynamics begin to be re-ordered.
Or as Marc Andreessen states more eloquently in this 1 minute video…
This pattern has repeated itself since the 1800’s across battleships, automobiles, airplanes, telephones, TV, the PC, the Internet, Cloud, iPhone, social media, Uber, AirBnb, blockchain and now AI.
The difference with AI is that the exponential speed of improvement in the technology and rapid diffusion in society means that it is experiencing all 3 stages simultaneously!
Mental Health
TED helped navigate through both the need to de-stigmatize mental health issues and how the dizzying advance of technologies is impacting our psychological well-being.
Brain-Computer Interfaces
TED exposed us to the mind-bending advances in “Neurotech”. Popularized by Elon Musk’s Neuralink, the field is expanding rapidly and will soon be challenging us with privacy and ethical questions such as, “How much of our thoughts do we want to share with the world and what do we get in exchange?” This topic went far beyond wonky technology, the TED audience saw deeply emotional talks who found these tools essential in recovering from heartbreaking loss.
My Top 10 (ok, 16) Favorite Talks of TED 2023:
AI Talks
Greg Brockman — The Inside Story of ChatGPT’s Astonishing Potential. OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman gave the TED audience a look under the hood of GPT-4 — the company’s most advanced large language model — that stands behind ChatGPT. The fastest product to get adopted in history (1 million users in 5 days, 100 million users in 2 months) has had mind-blowing plug-ins added to it that do everything from a full e-commerce and social media cycle to fact-check its own work (with citations you can click on) and interpret a data-intensive spreadsheet even when given vague instructions. Greg also shared the power of rapid innovation that comes from diverse teams working with rich datasets (ChatGPT was trained on Amazon product reviews, predicting which character or word would come next), and early product releases that allow for millions of people to provide rich feedback.
Tom Graham — The Incredible Creativity of Deepfakes. Simultaneously incredible, funny and scary, Tom Graham’s demonstration of deepfake technology —an AI tool that enables transporting voice to face and then to voice again — asks the critical question: “Will we be able to trust our own eyes?”. Tom (the co-founder of Metaphysic) shared a startlingly realistic video of “Tom Cruise” outside the conference center and overlayed TED leader Chris Anderson’s face on Tom Graham’s head and then on a TED audience member. The talk reminded us of the promise (we will be able to interact with a younger version of a spouse or parent, reliving great memories decades later and allowing us to decouple human experience from when it happens) and the peril (we will need to own our own personal AI training data and pay attention to the new legal rights that will allow us to maintain control over our photorealistic AI avatars).
Sal Khan — How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education. As discussed above, Sal is a motivated learner’s best friend and he is harnessing the power of generative AI to create a personalized tutor for every student in the world.
Show Chou — Tik Tok’s CEO on its Future and Algorithms. This one could have easily gone in the next section on “Mental Health” given TikTok’s incredibly addictive power over our own self-confidence and self-awareness. In a companion talk to Jack Dorsey’s 2019 TED talk where Jack admitted how Twitter needed to change, Show Chou acknowledged the concerns citizens and regulators have both in the app’s impact on children and teens as well as the potential influence of the Communist Chinese party. He shared fascinating details of TikTok’s product design (content served not based on who you know, but based on what you like), its mission (inspire creativity and bring joy) its vision (windows to discover, canvas to create, bridges to connect), its ability to prove that Hollywood cannot predict what will entertain us (unlike Facebook and Twitter where you already had to be famous, TikTok is creating new celebrities) and attempts at safeguarding kids (videos produced by under 16 year olds can’t go viral and usage time limits depending on age).
Ian Bremmer — The Next Global Superpower Isn’t Who You Think. Geopolitics expert Ian Bremmer, who leads the Eurasia Group think tank, rocks our world with an unexpected answer to the question, “Who runs the world?”. Ian tells us that over the next 10 years, there will be 3 different world orders: 1) unipolar on military power (US), 2) bipolar on economic power (with US and China shifting back and forth) and 3) a digital order run by large technology companies. This puts us in the position of a “leaderless world”, but Ian believes that we are facing a choice between: a technology cold war, global business models or technology companies will simply become more important than countries. This shines a bright light on AI’s role in geopolitics.
Mental Health Talks
Andy Dunn — Lessons From Losing My Mind. An excellent talk on treating mental health conditions like any physical disease and separating those disorders from our identity. Andy, co-founder of Bonobos (and suburban Chicago native) shared his story of struggling with Bipolar Disorder Type 1 while achieving start-up success (Walmart acquired Bonobos in 2017 for $310 million) with emotional vulnerability, authenticity and context. He drew a compelling parallel between the symptoms of Bipolar disorder and the traits of the most successful entrepreneurs and shared a vision of mental healthcare accessibility and the kind of support needed to live with (rather than be a victim of) this condition. As Andy reminds us, “We don’t say someone “is cancer.” We say they have it. That’s a first step to helping our friends and our loved ones and our colleagues, not by conflating their illness or condition with their identity, but by acknowledging it as just a part of their life story and then helping them confront it.”
Gus Worland — Is Someone You Love Suffering in Silence? Here’s What to Do. The most touching yet infectious TED talk I have seen in years! Gus, an Australian TV and radio personality and host of Man Up, a show subtitled “One Bloke’s Mission to Save Aussie Men”. Gus is working tirelessly to prevent suicide — he founded Gotcha4Life, a not-for-profit foundation with a goal of zero suicides, by delivering mental fitness programs that engage, educate and empower local communities. In his talk, he reminded all of us about the power of reaching out and asks the TED audience to send a quick text to someone they are worried about right now.
Alua Arthur — Why Thinking About Death Helps You Live a Better Life. Death doula Alua Arthur (founder of Going With Grace) gave an emotionally mesmerizing talk centered around helping us grow our capacity for compassion and not censoring our discomfort. Alua, who was recently featured in the National Geographic television series Limitless, in which she helped actor Chris Hemsworth map out his own future death. Alua also shared a powerful message about gratitude and reminded many TEDsters of Steve Jobs’ famous commencement speech at Stanford.By encouraging people to view their present life from the vantage point of a graceful death, Arthur helps them retrofit their lives, seeing clearly who they want to be and what kind of legacy they want to leave behind. Humans are meaning-making machines, she says. Rather than waiting until our deathbeds to figure out our grand life purpose, why not make meaning and magic out of the daily mundane? “The greatest gift of mortality is the sheer wonder that we get to live at all,” she says.
Ben Zander — Positive Thinking vs Possibility. TED talk link coming soon. Legendary classical conductor Ben Zander and musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra lit up the TED stage with a hysterically funny, interactive and high energy talk using classical music as an “act of antigravity.” Ben wants us to understand that while positive thinking is a fraud, possibility is a language of creation and rigorous discipline. Jumping around the stage and into the audience, Ben even got TEDsters to sing in German to the words of “Ode to Joy.” Until TED posts his 2023 performance, watch Ben’s 2008 TED Talk.
Sixto Cancel — A Foster Care System Where Every Child Has a Loving Home. Sixto is the founder and CEO of Think of Us, a nonprofit working to transform the child welfare system in the US, was named to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list of social entrepreneurs and appointed as one of the White House’s Champions of Change. He gave a moving talk on the broken foster care system and encourages us to embrace a system of “kinship care” instead.
Emmanuel Acho — Why You Should Stop Setting Goals (Yes, Really). Emmanuel, a former NFL linebacker and host of Fox Sports and Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, shares a very personal lesson on the counterintuitive perils of goal-setting. Drawing on his experience with a severe injury that kept him off an NFL roster in 2012, Emmanuel seeks to persuade us that goals have a hidden cost — they may unintentionally stop you from pursuing all possibilities open to you. Because goals, by definition, have an end point, they limit us. Better to pursue growth which has no end.
Brain-Computer Interface & Medical Technology Talks
TED exposed us to the mind-bending advances in “Neurotech”. Popularized by Elon Musk’s Neuralink, the field is expanding rapidly and will soon be challenging us with privacy and ethical questions such as, “How much of our thoughts do we want to share with the world and what do we get in exchange?” This topic went far beyond wonky technology, the TED audience saw deeply emotional talks who found these tools essential in recovering from heartbreaking loss.
Conor Russomanno — A Powerful New Neurotech Tool For Augmenting Your Mind. In the most mind-blowing demo at TED 2023, Conor (founder and CEO of OpenBCI) showed us what “empathetic computing” looks like when he was joined on stage by Christian Bayerlein, a German web developer who is wheelchair-bound due to a motor disorder. The TED audience was in awe as Christian flew a drone around the TED theater using only his thoughts! More specifically, Christian used vestigial muscle control coupled with an optical headset equipped with neurosensors. OpenBCI’s award winning Galea headset, a hardware and software platform that merges next-generation biometrics with mixed reality is just the start of a technological revolution in neurotech.
Anna Greka — Rare Disease Detective. TED talk link coming soon. Harvard physician, cell biologist and “Cellular Dysfunction Researcher” Anna Greka is off the charts passionate about “molecular sleuthing” and gives a masterful talk making complex genetic science topics easy and fun to understand! Anna reminds us to “follow our curiosity” as she explains how her work has moved from petri dishes and microscopes displaying 5 images to AI robotic systems showing billions of cells using millions of images. This evolution has enabled Anna’s work which has led to groundbreaking new treatments for rare diseases. How does she do it? “Science is a team sport” she says, where the people in her lab can use their understanding of cargo receptors carrying broken mutant proteins and clearing mangled proteins to a cell’s “recycling facility”.
Amy Baxter — How to Hack Your Brain When You’re in Pain. Amy gives a funny and informative talk on how to think differently about pain. Amy is a “pain management pioneer”, pediatric emergency physician, and founder of Pain Care Labs, a company that has revolutionized how to prevent needle pain and reduced dependence on opioids with its Buzzy device. Amy educates us that pain is an alarm from our spine to your brain to ensure our survival. It sits at the intersection of physiology, fear and control. Amy and her team learned that pain can be managed through vibration and cold, that pain is personalized and depends on the purpose (a vaccine hurts more than a tattoo, even though both involve a needle) and that opioids don’t turn off pain, but rather they turn on a reward system.
Karen Bakker — Could an Orca Give a TED Talk? It’s a wonder that Karen had time to deliver a TED talk. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, leader of The Smart Earth Project, VP of Strategy at a “future of work” startup and author. Luckily for us, Karen shared her deep passion for how animals communicate and gave the TED audience a broader lesson about our own humanity. Karen, a conservation technology researcher, decodes hidden non-human communication and uses AI to translate animal sounds — the discipline of “bioacoustics” — to help ensure our world continues to have biodiversity. While on the surface, you might conclude that Karen’s thrilling discoveries that turtles aren’t voiceless, that coral has no central nervous system yet can “hear” and that we can encode bee signals into robots are trivial, her work is helping humanity understand that we are not necessarily the center of our planet. She hopes this will motivate us to take better care of our world.
A GEOPOLITICAL YET VERY HUMAN TALK
Nadya Tolokonnikova — Pussy Riot’s Powerful Message to Vladimir Putin. An inspiring and defiant talk by the founding member of Pussy Riot, a Russian feminist protest and performance art group. In addition to the extraordinary musical success, Nadya built an independent media outlet in Russia, was jailed for 2 years for protesting Vladimir Putin and was recently placed on Russia’s Most Wanted List. In her powerful talk, Nadya reminds us that “courage is contagious” and that “courage is not the lack of fear, but the ability to act even in the face of fear”.
TITLE PORN
Some of the most extraordinary and creative people in the world roamed the halls at TED 2023, many sporting titles to match their passion and hyper-specialization. Here are few of the best monikers on nametags at this year’s TED.
ONLY AT TED MOMENTS
Hiking through rainforests discussing education policy with a global philanthropy leader
Lunch chat with a biotech entrepreneur about mentoring college students
The CEO of TikTok making a TikTok on stage with the TED audience as background
Genre-bending musician Jacob Collier literally conducted the TED audience as background singers for a piece he composed real-time on stage!
Intense conversation in a 1960’s VM camper van with a recently retired career military service member on her “second chapter”
Discussion on neurotech ethics over dinner with a product innovation expert
Standing in line for food trucks with a Google leader discussing when is the right time to release AI chatbots
UNTIL NEXT YEAR…
