Can strawberries grown inside a building taste sweeter than those grown in a field? Farming entrepreneur Hiroki Koga explores how his team is combining solar-powered vertical farms with AI, robotics and indoor bee colonies to grow delicious strawberries year-round — and how this practice, if widely adopted, could deliver a harvest of benefits for the future of food. After the talk, Sherrell dives deeper into the impact of vertical farming. 

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 but conventional – and they’re solving problems that are thrillingly complex. Kathleen shares how her team employs nimble thinking to understand the state of AI across the globe. Then, she and Bilawal discuss the strategies needed to embrace the possibilities –and challenges– of AI now, and what we need to do to build a sustainable future.

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

Stars have cores hot and dense enough to force atomic nuclei together, forming larger, heavier nuclei in a process known as fusion. In this process, the mass of the end products is slightly less than the mass of the initial atoms. But that “lost” mass doesn’t disappear — it’s converted to energy ... a lot of energy. So, can we harness this energy to power the world? George Zaidan investigates. This TED-Ed lesson was directed by Igor Ćorić, Artrake Studio, narrated by George Zaidan and the music is by Cem Misirlioglu and Brooks Ball.

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 shifted the trajectory of AI, and how open source can challenge existing power structures in the AI world. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts  

“Memories are the architects of our identity,” says technologist Pau Aleikum Garcia, but they’re not permanent. Photos can be lost amid political unrest or natural disaster, while illnesses like Alzhemier’s can rob people of their past. He puts forward a novel solution — “synthetic memories,” or dreamlike visualizations of long-gone moments created through generative AI — and explores how it could reconnect families or even enhance cognitive abilities.

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 transparency, regulation, and oversight are essential if AI is going to actually benefit employees and employers. For transcripts for The TED AI Show, visit go.ted.com/TTAIS-transcripts  

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 memories alive.

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 Llama’s benefits and risks.

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

The basic infrastructure that controls plumbing, electricity and more is vital to your individual agency, says engineering professor Deb Chachra. She offers a crash course on how these systems connect to shape our lives — and suggests some key improvements for providing long-term, sustainable energy to everyone. After the talk, Sherrell reflects on how these solutions, if widely implemented, could transform lives across the world.

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.

“A new reality has emerged, one where ambitious Africans are writing their own stories as builders and as innovators,” says business storyteller Peace Itimi. Taking us inside Africa’s booming tech scene, she highlights the trailblazing entrepreneurs and startups reshaping Africa's economy through innovation and ambition.