Notes From TED … A Recap Of Last Week’s Conference In Vancouver

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Notes From TED … A Recap Of Last Week’s Conference In Vancouver

By Dev Patnaik | Forbes Magazine | April 28, 2024

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The architect Richard Saul Wurman started TED in 1984 as a way to bring together a few hundred technology and entertainment executives in California through design. Over the next forty years, the conference evolved into the media powerhouse it is today. Along the way, the topics covered expanded to be about everything from AI to universal basic income to climate change. TED’s slogan summed up this expanded domain; no longer just about technology, entertainment and design, TED became about “Ideas worth spreading.” On any given day, an average of 1.5 million people watch a TED Talk online.

For its fortieth anniversary, the team at TED decided to changed its slogan. The new tagline is “Ideas change everything.” It demonstrates their commitment to celebrating the impact that all ideas can have. 

Every TED Talk is individually fascinating. However, the real value comes from the overall patterns and shifts that are noticeable when you connect each talk and compare them from previous years.  Ideas do change everything. But shifting conditions also change how we think about ideas. Here are a few trends the author noticed this year…

1. Artificial Intelligence has gone mainstream.  Last year’s TED conference happened just months after OpenAI released Chat GPT. We all knew the world would never be the same. Would it create a new paradise on Earth? Or would we be enslaved to our robot overlords? Surprisingly, this year’s TED lacked both the wonder and terror of last year. So maybe we’ve all agreed that it’s going to be just fine? I’m not so sure…
2. Different horses for different courses.  This year’s conference provided a tour of not only a variety of AI applications, but also a variety of AIs. From liquid neural networks to agentic AI, TED was abuzz with types of AI that are quite different from Large Language Models. It turns out that the kind of AI that picks a restaurant for you likely won’t be the kind of AI that drives you there.
3. The pendulum on progress is swinging.  Wokeism may have reached its logical conclusion. Just as we’ve learned to question the promise of technology, we’ve become more skeptical about progressive causes. Again and again, there are mentions of progressive instincts moving into totalitarianism. Yes, many of us like social progress. But we’re not ready to throw out science, free speech and other gifts of the Enlightenment.
4. A hunger for wisdom.  TED continues to be an impressive display of human intellect. And a surprising vacuum for human wisdom. The more we see about what humanity can do, the more we should question what humanity should do. In particular, there was one idea that didn’t get its invitation to the conference: compassion. Not caring. Not kindness. Not empathy. But a true and clear understanding of our common humanity, one that transcends intellect, identity or condition. Next year’s TED conference is entitled “Humanity Reimagined.”   According to the author he can only hope that compassion makes the agenda.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. The architect Richard Saul Wurman started TED in 1984 as a way to bring together a few hundred technology and entertainment executives in California through design. Over the next forty years, the conference evolved into the media powerhouse it is today.
2. For its fortieth anniversary, the team at TED decided to changed its slogan. From “Ideas worth spreading to the new tagline is “Ideas change everything.”
3. Every TED Talk is individually fascinating. However, the real value comes from the overall patterns and shifts that are noticeable when you connect each talk and compare them from previous years.  Ideas do change everything. But shifting conditions also change how we think about ideas. A few noticeable trends for this year are: artificial Intelligence has gone mainstream, different horses (AI apps) for different courses (purposes),  the pendulum on progress is swinging, and a hunger for wisdom.

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Topics:  Ideas, Creativity, TED, Trends, Patterns