Whether you’re trying to find your way around a new city or just looking for a place to eat, it’s become second nature to many people to turn to Google Maps to get us from point A to point B. On the last episode of this season of The TED AI Show, we’re chatting with Keyhole (now known as Google Earth) founder and current Niantic SVP of Engineering Brian McClendon. Brian and Bilawal discuss how even the most detailed digital maps have blind spots, how Pokemon Go could be an unlikely partner to fi...
Jan 21, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast As AI technology advances, it’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish between work done by humans and work done by computers. But is AI becoming more human, or are we becoming more digital? Synthesia is a video platform that uses AI to generate lifelike video avatars, further blurring the lines between humans and their digitized lookalikes. In this episode, Bilawal sits down with Synthesia’s CEO, Victor Riparbelli, to discuss the benefits of having your own AI avatar, how companies are using...
Dec 17, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Human brains are often described as computers — machines that are “wired” to make decisions and respond to external stimuli in a way that’s not so different from the artificial intelligence that we increasingly use each day. But the difference between our brains and the computers that drive AI is consciousness – our inner world, defined by experience and awareness. Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He studies human consciousness and...
Dec 10, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Computers have been outperforming humans for years on tasks like solving complex equations or analyzing data, but when it comes to the physical world, robots struggle to keep up. It can take years to train robots to function in the messy chaos of the “real world” — but thanks to some unlikely help from the film and video gaming industry, robots today are using AI to fast-track their learning and master new skills using simulated environments. Rev Lebaredian is the vice president of Omniverse and...
Dec 03, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s impossible to separate the way people engage with AI with the way they engage with the internet as a whole. This is an episode of ReThinking, another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, featuring a compelling discussion of why the internet can feel so unfriendly–and where we can go from there. You’ll hear from Jay Van Bavel, an award-winning professor of psychology and neural science at NYU, on the science of virality, why bad news commands our attention, and how we can find common groun...
Nov 26, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ever since generative AI tools like Midjourney became available to the public in 2022, curious users and AI fanatics alike have been experimenting with the technology. But for tech aficionados and AI enthusiasts like Justin Maier and Maxfield Hulker, Midjourney’s closed-source model wasn’t enough — they wanted to go deeper. That’s why Justin and Max created Citivai, an open-source generative AI tool and social platform where users can create, share, and experiment with new image generation model...
Nov 19, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast When it comes to preparing for an interview or making an important life decision, more and more people are turning to AI for advice. ChatGPT’s new voice interface, Advanced Voice Mode, allows users to speak out loud and converse with a chatbot as they would with another human — but is it really as seamless as a chat with a friend? Bilawal runs a series of experiments with Advanced Voice Mode to test the limits of this new technology and its potential uses, from weighing the pros and cons of a cr...
Nov 12, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’ve had conversations about AI’s online influence on politics, from deepfakes to misinformation. But AI can also have profound effects on hardware – especially when it comes to national security and military capabilities like weapons and stealth technologies. Kathleen Fisher is an office director at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency tasked with the research and development of emerging technologies for use by the U.S. military. Despite its bureaucratic name, DARPA is anything...
Nov 05, 2024•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Many people associate innovation with secrecy—privately toiling away on a project until you're ready to share it with the world. While that may work for some, there's a benefit to putting all your cards on the table. Bilawal sits down for a conversation with Thomas Wolf, whose company Hugging Face pivoted from privately building an AI chatbot to sharing all of its knowledge with a growing online community. Thomas discusses the history of Hugging Face, why embracing open source development has sh...
Oct 29, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast From vetting resumes to screening candidates, many employers are using AI tools to identify top talent. But what happens when companies start relying on AI to help them decide who to hire or promote…and who to fire? Bilawal speaks with journalist Hilke Schellmann, whose research on the rapidly growing use of AI in the workplace highlights where algorithms are helping – and hurting – business. Hilke shares the surprising (and not surprising) ways AI works in the hiring process, and argues that tr...
Oct 22, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Llama is Meta’s Large Language Model trained on over 15 trillion tokens of publicly available information. It’s available to anyone – from people making custom fan-made entertainment on a smartphone… to, potentially, complex projects that may not have the public’s well-being in mind. So if Llama is such a widely available and powerful product, why is Meta releasing it – for free? Bilawal chats with Meta’s own Vice President of Product, Ragavan Srinivasan, to discuss the pressing questions around...
Oct 15, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Whether finding a restaurant or fact-checking a new claim, search engines are one of the main avenues we use to navigate the world. So why are modern engines so clunky and frustrating – and how is AI already changing the infrastructure we use to access information on the internet? Bilawal sits down with CEO of Perplexity AI Aravind Srinivas to discuss how we got to a world with too many links, and what the future may hold for your experience on the web. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...
Oct 08, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you've ever cringed at a poorly-dubbed film, you are not alone. That's why Scott Mann founded Flawless, a company that’s transforming the world of dubbing using AI. He talks with Bilawal about why good dubbing is essential for movie making and shares the mind-blowing technology that not only lets Robert DeNiro speak perfect Spanish, but radically changes how films might get made. The two also discuss what to keep in mind as creativity, industry, and AI technology continue to intertwine — and ...
Oct 01, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is from another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, TED Talks Daily. If you missed our newest episode, you can listen to it HERE . The TED AI Show will be back with new episodes soon! You've heard Nita Farahany on this show before (and if you haven't, check the episode out HERE ). Nita's the neurotech and AI ethicist who is calling for the legal recognition of our "cognitive liberty." In her TED Talk, Nita shares examples of how neurotechnology can let you track your own brain...
Sep 24, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast AI is shaping every aspect of our lives — but only a handful of tech giants are having a say in what this technology can do. So what’s going on with world governments? Bilawal sits down with geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer to unpack the UN’s just-released plan for “Governing AI for Humanity,” a report that focuses on the urgent need to guide AI towards helping everyone – rather than the powerful few – thrive. Together, they explore the complexities of AI’s rapid growth on a worldwide scale and t...
Sep 19, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 2024 is the biggest election year in modern history, with over 50 countries going out to the polls across the globe. And artificial intelligence has fully seeped into global politics – from deepfakes to AI bots that can ingest thousands and thousands of documents to make policy decisions. Bilawal talks with journalist Vittoria Elliot, who’s been leading on WIRED’s AI Elections Projects, to discuss how AI is reshaping the political landscape in surprising ways. The two explore the good, the bad, ...
Sep 17, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Sep 10, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 cl...
Sep 03, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Cheating has never been easier with the rise of AI like ChatGPT. It's definitely something to worry about, but what do we know about the upsides of AI in education? Khan Academy founder Sal Khan says education won't destroy our kids' brains, but we have to integrate AI the right way. After launching a new chatbot, Khanmigo, Sal has found that AI opens up opportunities for students to learn in ways they couldn't before, leaving room for more creativity, deeper thinking and gained perspective. Sam...
Aug 27, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is Google's dominance in search engines at risk with the rise of generative AI models? In this episode from The Next Wave, a podcast we think you'll like, hosts Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lands dive in to the conversation with Bilawal. They explore the potential challenges facing Google's search engine supremacy due to advancements in generative AI models and discusses the implications for the future of search engines and advertising. Bilawal discusses the impact of AI-generated content on search res...
Aug 20, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Roose is a tech journalist who writes about the intersection of tech, business, and culture. In today’s episode from How to Be a Better Human, another podcast in the TED Audio Collective, he talks about the shift of technology’s role in our lives and how we can set up boundaries with our devices to regain our autonomy. He also shares why he’s optimistic about the future, and his view on how futureproofing your job in an automated world has less to do with sharpening up our coding skills an...
Aug 13, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast What do sandwiches have to do with AI? Data reformist Kasia Chmielinski helps us think about artificial intelligence with a useful food metaphor — and breaks down why AI systems should have "nutrition labels" to ensure the development of fairer, more transparent algorithms. This is an episode of TED Talks Daily. Every weekday, TED Talks Daily brings you the latest talks in audio. Join host and journalist Elise Hu for thought-provoking ideas on every subject imaginable — from Artificial Intellige...
Aug 06, 2024•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast You may know will.i.am as the 7-time Grammy-award winning singer, songwriter, producer, and frontman of The Black Eyed Peas. But his interests beyond music have also taken him down a surprising and creative path – from serving as the director of creative innovation at Intel, to becoming the first artist to stream a song from the surface of Mars, to hosting the first radio show with an AI co-host. In this episode of ReThinking with Adam Grant, organizational psychologist Adam Grant asks about wil...
Jul 30, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast How will AI change the way you work? A.J. Jacobs is a journalist and author who has written books like "The Year of Living Biblically", "The Puzzler", and "Thanks a Thousand." And although he's built a career off of his creative ideas, the rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI has made him concerned there will still be a place for his work as technology gets more advanced. In this episode from Fixable, another podcast from TED, leadership experts Anne Morriss and Frances Frei chat with AJ abou...
Jul 23, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast The TED AI Show is going on a short summer break! In the meantime, we're sharing a special episode of TED Tech, another podcast from the TED Audio Collective that we think you'll love. Listen every Friday as TED speakers explore the way tech shapes how we think about society, science, design, business, and more. How is AI changing the nature of human imagination and creativity? Bilawal shares how anyone can use AI-powered tools — like 3D scans that let you redesign the physical world in real tim...
Jul 16, 2024•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Are we mistaking the remarkable skills of tools like ChatGPT with genuine intelligence? AI skeptic Gary Marcus pulls no punches when he warns that believing in the hype of generative AI models might be distracting us from building the type of AI future we actually want. Bilawal and Gary delve into the nuanced perspectives beyond the AI hype cycle, and try to find the common ground between healthy skepticism and techno-optimism. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcri...
Jul 09, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 fo...
Jul 02, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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:/...
Jun 25, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 rela...
Jun 18, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jun 11, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
