People & Blogs
Beware the Power of Prediction | Carissa Véliz | TED
What do the story of Oedipus and your insurance premiums have in common? They are both driven by self-fulfilling prophecies. Philosopher and TED Fellow Carissa Véliz traces the hidden power of prediction, from Roman emperors who banned prophets to the AI algorithms quietly making decisions about your life right now. We tend to associate predictions…
People & Blogs
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What does a warming planet mean for the foods you love? Hosting a dinner party that features a menu of foods that could disappear within our lifetimes, culinary entrepreneur Sam Kass invites us to chew on the reality of climate change by exploring the things — like chocolate and coffee — it puts at risk.
People & Blogs
The Accidental Brilliance of Makeshift Signs | Kate Canales | TED
What happens when the design of everyday things misses the mark? People fill in the blanks. Designer Kate Canales has spent more than 20 years photographing the handmade, improvised signs that appear when the original falls short. From perplexing bathroom directions to our struggles with doors and point-of-sale machines, her photos capture something technology can’t…
People & Blogs
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“Every conversation has the potential to open up and reveal all the layers and layers within it, all those rooms within rooms,” says podcaster and musician Hrishikesh Hirway. In this profoundly moving talk, he offers a guide to deep conversations and explores what you learn when you stop to listen closely. Stay tuned to the…
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@MoynulIslam-w7b
April 24, 2026 at 11:02 am
I am watching from Bangladesh 🇧🇩
@rrussellG9a
April 24, 2026 at 11:04 am
Nice man, how’s internet connection in your country? Btw how much do u pay monthly?
@jf-jx4ym
April 24, 2026 at 11:06 am
Prediction (assumptions) made in position of power over another or with unlawful dishonest or unreasonable manner when conflicts of interest.. sentiment.. belief or possibility…or other benefit is present….is consequential and often a crime. This includes that which cannot be shown true.. like plausible deniability.
@XKLJz
April 24, 2026 at 11:07 am
Yes
@XKLJz
April 24, 2026 at 11:07 am
Ml
@welcome.421
April 24, 2026 at 11:08 am
TED | As an ambitious content creator, I appreciate the team’s dedication to supporting outstanding educational and cultural channels.
بصفتي صانع محتوى طموح، أقدر اهتمام فريق العمل بدعم القنوات التعليمية والثقافية المتميزة.❤
@sajibleadership
April 24, 2026 at 11:09 am
I am watching from Bangladesh
@vanshikathakur7760
April 24, 2026 at 11:11 am
🎉🎉 ऊं जय श्री बगुलामुखी परमेश्वररी नमो नमः।🎉🎉
@oitubeman1019
April 24, 2026 at 11:12 am
I predict with 100% percent certainty that Gojo Satoru will come back in Avatar: Seven Havens
@francesbernard2445
April 24, 2026 at 11:16 am
In the past born into royalty close to the throne from the time they were around age 8 were being treated like only pawns when being promised in marriage or when they are being pressured to ask for a hand in marriage far sooner than they want to follow through with that question. PErhaps that was because of more than one covert made predictions amongst parents of underage children back then. It is a mystery who all was successful in breaking that kind of means to put young people born into royalty sometimes into a kind of bondage which only on the surface looks like they have it made. How do two people rescue one another from death in a nation where the life of a man has a price during conscription into the military year after year no matter what is going on international in politics at the time. They cannot because that is too much for them to do on their own.
@gokiburijin8478
April 24, 2026 at 11:20 am
Asimov was ahead of the game
@Christine-e7b
April 24, 2026 at 11:37 am
So true !!! ❤❤❤❤
@PiotrKaszuba8403
April 24, 2026 at 11:38 am
Such a GOOD speach! A lot of things applying to real world and people. And very good delivery. Bravo!
@TomComputer
April 24, 2026 at 11:38 am
What a powerful and insightful talk! Great to hear someone raising the ethical questions about our tech and AI future.
We can do it well, we can ask questions of modern prophecies. Hopeful!!
@sechernbiw
April 24, 2026 at 12:29 pm
Don’t walk with a rhythm.
@smokeyJmirror
April 24, 2026 at 2:33 pm
Informative talk. I prefer to separate the two concepts. Prediction is an honest, sincere attempt to model future events. What Carissa Veliz is warning of deserves a different label. Manipulation, Grift, Rhetoric; I am open to any or others.
@EarthAngel0000
April 24, 2026 at 2:44 pm
“Uncertainty is good news. It means that the future is unwritten… that it is ours to write”
Absolutely love that.
@FlurpTV
April 24, 2026 at 3:02 pm
AI is getting more insecure for human development! Reason: ?
@milesbarn
April 24, 2026 at 4:45 pm
Animal Farm
@MOHAMEDTABCAMOHAMED
April 24, 2026 at 5:19 pm
Thanks Ted ❤❤❤
@happykillmore349
April 24, 2026 at 6:43 pm
“Boats aren’t planes”, and other dumb clickbait titles to downvote
@ahmed51988
April 24, 2026 at 11:22 pm
The talk lives up to the title and even uncovers how critical and crucial the recent development in predection’s place in society is.
@IAn0nI
April 24, 2026 at 6:44 pm
Great talk.
@Laylamarino445
April 24, 2026 at 6:56 pm
For a long time I thought confusion was just part of love. I thought the constant anxiety, the overthinking, the feeling of walking on eggshells was something I needed to fix within myself. When I read Hidden Scripts in Love by Lora Kivren, it was uncomfortable at first. Not because it attacked anyone, but because it described situations I had normalized. It gave structure to things I couldn’t explain before. After that, I started seeing my experiences differently. I became quieter, but stronger.
@niccolom
April 24, 2026 at 9:19 pm
The T in TED stands for technology.
Why would a technophobe be talking here against the future of technology?
Yes, we are lining the pockets of corporations by buying into new technologies, like cellphones.
But you talk like we got no benefits out of the deals.
Our lives got better because of new techs, not despite of them.
There’s no better time to be alive than tomorrow.
With that said, China is now a country without crime, and that’s definitely not what we want. We want personal freedom, and the price of personal freedom is crime.
@niccolom
April 24, 2026 at 9:19 pm
The T in TED stands for technology.
Why would a technophobe be talking here against the future of technology?
Yes, we are lining the pockets of corporations by buying into new technologies, like cellphones.
But you talk like we got no benefits out of the deals.
Our lives got better because of new techs, not despite of them.
There’s no better time to be alive than tomorrow.
With that said, China is now a country without crime, and that’s definitely not what we want. We want personal freedom, and the price of personal freedom is crime.
But one way or another, prediction is the difference between a successful and unsuccessful life.
The point is not to blindly take in other people’s predictions. The point is to predict the accuracy of other people’s predictions.
@Janam-j6c
April 25, 2026 at 3:45 pm
you are so right. I had to overcome this feeling like a criminal and all I wanted was freedom. 🙂
@niccolom
April 25, 2026 at 8:12 pm
@Janam-j6c Yes.
Freedom does not mean free from consequences.
Everybody has the freedom to do crime too, it’s just that they will have to face the legal consequences.
In China, you lose the freedom to do crime because of surveillance, but that comes at a cost of having to obey the government, and thus losing a lot of the normal freedom that we currently enjoy.
The reason being is that, crime is only one of many things that make a society inefficient — and costly. When the government removes crime by surveillance, they are not really stopping crime out of their good heart. It’d be about reducing expenses.
With that in mind, imagine when the government would determine where each person should live in order to reduce travel time to work, which would indirectly increase productivity and tax income.
Imagine when the government dictates how you go to work by mass transit to maximize the ROI of money invested in the transit system.
Imagine the government controls the prices of everything in order to plan the consumptions, such that the supply chains can be maximized and lower the costs and reduce spoilage.
These are all things that make the society more efficient. China does a planned economy, and reducing crime by surveillance is but one of the policies.
@Janam-j6c
April 26, 2026 at 7:13 am
@niccolomIt is complicated. Ethical and moral education. Teach values that matter. Doesnt mean we always have to be strict but simply respect each other and world around us. I would say. People are very egoistic and undisciplined, kids growing out quite unregulated. I wonder whats going on.
@ahmed51988
April 24, 2026 at 11:21 pm
Thank you a lot for this Talk. It resonates with me firstly because of how relevant and much needed it is for our current reality where AI and prediction markets are being presented as sources of truth, and secondly because I ve been lately interested in the question of understanding social phenomena through computational simulations. Your idea that it is harmful to reduce someone’s life into a prediction, for example of their social outcome, and how it can be a justification of their social fate, centers my focus on the ethical side of the issue.
@stereoroid
April 25, 2026 at 1:51 am
I’ve long had qualms about the rush to AI, but haven’t been able to articulate them as well as this. Astroturfing is an old word now, the act of pushing a prediction to make it self-fulfilling.
@abacus-2
April 25, 2026 at 6:31 am
I’m always surprised at how far reality can be from my predictions. So I just read American “prophets”, translations of their articles, and auto-translations (subtitles) of their speeches.
What soft, efficient, and beautiful lighting in such a large hall.
@fabiodeoliveiraribeiro1602
April 25, 2026 at 7:58 am
I’ve been a lawyer for 36 years, long enough to have learned that predictions in the legal field are terrible and funny illusions. Lawsuits that seemingly are won end up being lost, or won without any real economic result being realized. Lawsuits that appear lost or complex and drag on for decades sometimes become extremely lucrative. For a while, I had an office in a building with several other lawyers’ offices, some of whom I knew, others not. It wasn’t uncommon for potential clients to leave my neighbor’s office discouraged and knock on my door to talk to me. On two occasions, I took on cases he had refused and ultimately achieved success and substantial financial return. But I had to work for decades on complex lawsuits that required work, dedication, patience, and persistence. If I had believed my neighbor’s prediction of the outcome of the lawsuit, I wouldn’t have made a profit. He missed out on a lot of money because he inadequately predicted a result very different from what was actually possible. Carissa Veliz is right to warn about the dangers of prediction; in the human sphere, redoubling one’s efforts is always better than relying on the help of the goddess Fortuna.
@jeccbr4755
April 25, 2026 at 8:10 am
This reminded me of Sean Stephenson’s words: “Never believe a prediction that doesn’t empower you.”
Loved this talk. The point isn’t to fear AI but to use it responsibly, with ethics and privacy at the forefront. AI is already shaping warfare, which makes this one of the defining questions of our time. Technology should serve people and make the world better, not help a small group of oligarchs accumulate power and control over the rest of us.
@rw6836
April 25, 2026 at 9:22 am
I predict I’ll eat three square meals a day, for many years to come. Now feed me!
@AcselMitchell
April 25, 2026 at 10:11 am
applauses from Brazil
@AcselMitchell
April 25, 2026 at 10:12 am
gonna hit that theme again…
@Janam-j6c
April 25, 2026 at 3:35 pm
well done! puting this together in lovely talk. Pinpointed so many truths. Bravooo
@drumbum3.142
April 25, 2026 at 10:25 pm
I would maybe say instead Beware the (often times) fallacy and pit falls of assumptions.
@urbanstrencan
April 25, 2026 at 11:32 pm
Great talk, unpredictable future makes life interesting
@정우석-r7h
April 26, 2026 at 8:11 am
“Predictions gain power only when people start believing them to be true.”
I liked this sentence that she said.
The uncertainty that everything will change sometimes makes us feel depressed,
but it can also push us to work harder.
Once we accept that nothing is guaranteed,
we can strive to become who we truly want to be.
@Sathyanp88
April 26, 2026 at 2:14 pm
One of the best original TED talks in recent times.
@hossamahmed3851
April 26, 2026 at 2:27 pm
Great talk
@otbh5
April 27, 2026 at 2:26 am
Dear brother or sister, would like to present at Ted Talk, please advise, Thanks n best regards
@AndreiaDomingues1
April 27, 2026 at 12:47 pm
This talk is so much needed, so sobering and brave! 👏👏👏