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A.I. can find meaningful patterns in otherwise unintelligible noise, so scientists are starting to wonder: Can A.I. help humans interpret animal sounds? Scientist Karen Bakker and machine-learning expert Aza Raskin talk to “Unexplainable” podcast host Noam Hassenfeld about remarkable scientific discoveries and possibilities for interspecies communication.
Intelligence is more than the gray matter sloshing around in your skull, and more than the nerves that make sense of your environment. Your mind utilizes extra-neural resources, including the perceptions and knowledge in the minds of others — so the more people you surround yourself with, the bigger your brain is. In this session, we’ll dive into the research that shows ho...
Culture is to a company as community is to a city: it's about values, innovation, serendipity, participation, upward mobility, and attraction of smart startups and the creative class. Tony Hsieh is applying his successful Zappos corporate culture model to help build the most community-focused large city in the world in the place you would least expect it: downtown Las Vega...
The award-winning economist Mariana Mazzucato has been called the “world’s scariest economist.” Why? She challenges us to reconsider capitalism as it exists today. Focusing on innovation-led, inclusive, and sustainable growth, Mazzucato examines the critical — and misunderstood — role that governments play in fostering innovation. Her latest book, The Value of Everything,...
In America today, your understanding of the truth rests upon who you are, where you live, and who gets your vote. It’s no surprise then that trust in the media, once a given, is equally fractured — presenting a danger not only to democracy but to the fabric of society itself. Through a perilous maze of political identities, how can the news deliver the facts and reunite us...
Technology is swiftly disrupting all the norms of health care delivery, and more radical change lies ahead. Unmanned aerial vehicles (better known as drones) are delivering supplies; health services are moving out of medical settings and into the community; telemedicine is bringing specialty care to remote areas; and “collective superintelligence” at the intersection of hu...
As the prospect of mass implementation of artificial intelligence begins to alter realistic expectations of its impacts (large and small, positive and negative), the consequences for the business community are only just beginning to be imagined. Unlike the internet, AI is not a new industry — yet its application will radically alter industry. Says one CEO, “Everything inv...
The spaces in which societies undertake to care for their citizens — ranging from health facilities and schools to prisons — have across time shaped fundamental architectural ideas. What do the spaces we build say about our priorities, including our commitment to equal access? What resources are needed to provide dignity and parity around key resources, including the most...
Work, play, privacy, communication, finance, war, and dating: algorithms and the machines that run them have upended them all. Will artificial intelligence become as ubiquitous as electricity? Is there any industry AI won't touch? Will AI tend to steal jobs and exacerbate income inequalities, or create new jobs and amplify human abilities at work -- or, both? How can the g...
Rural residents photograph ailing chickens to monitor the spread of Avian flu, mountaineer adventurers collect scat samples so microbes in isolated locations can be identified, and sailors take water samples that reveal the plastic afloat in the world’s oceans. These citizen scientists are ordinary people who collect data in the field that support researchers warning of di...
It’s easy, in the United States, to talk about China as a monolith. But the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. As in the West, Chinese society is divided by inequality, geography, gender, and generation — after all, China is home to more than one billion people. As we seek to understand China’s role in the 21st century, we do well to consider where change is comin...
As the nation’s top doctor, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy helps to advance the health and well-being of all Americans. He has described the growing youth mental health crisis in America as the “defining public health crisis of our time” and warned that social media carries a “profound risk of harm to the mental health of children and adolescents.” Murthy has also highlig...
Gun violence in the US is a public health epidemic. With partisan battles currently making state and federal legislative solutions elusive, private sector trendsetters are quietly exploring other avenues of opportunity. The Smart Tech Challenges Foundation funds research to advance biometric identification and other security technologies that allow only authorized users to...
Our coffee makers, phone chargers, washing machines — our lives — are powered by the humble flip of a switch or press of a button. And it’s easy to lose sight of where the energy that powers our everyday conveniences comes from. Fossil fuels, predominantly through transportation and electricity, account for roughly 74 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions. As the principa...
A large, unsettling question looming among Washington regulators, lawmakers, and now state Attorney’s General across the US is whether the time has come to break up the big five: Facebook, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Apple. Have these powerful tech companies, once the darlings of the start-up community not twenty years past, become so dominant that they are stifling competiti...
What is trust? “A firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.” (We googled it). How much, not to mention who, we should trust is more complex now, given the technological tools we have at our disposal and the crafty creatives who might push the world’s next great product, or the next fake story, or — far worse — the hackers who can...
What if technology could read and respond to emotions the way humans do? It turns out that it already can, and in this session you’ll see a mind-bending live demonstration of software that recognizes our feelings based on facial cues. We’ll also explore how everyday tech like text messaging can get in the way of important social connection, but also how applications like C...