TED 2025 PART 1: Fears and Dreams for a Better Future- Everything but AI
- Helene Cahen
- Apr 25
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 27
TED 2025 was a very intense session.
While we did not get a clear vision of what Humanity Reimagined (the conference theme) may become, we got glimpses of potential futures and a clear message that we are at a critical inflection point, and options are narrowing if we want to live in a world where humanity still matters.
In this first part, we will cover everything except AI, which we will cover in part II later this week.
Fear of Broligarcy
It started with the opening talk of the conference, where Carole Cadwallardr questioned whether democracy would survive in the US because of the power of what she called "Broligarcy" (which combines the power of the tech leaders and politicians), allowing this powerful group to getting more data to build robust AI (what Musk may be doing with DOGE) and were we are de-facto living in a world with increase surveillance (with Facebook acting as the former East Germany police, the Stasi) and a total information collapse creating a world where "politics is technology." She encourages individuals to resist and not "tick the box in advance."
Here is her talk, which has already reached over a million views.
The Hopes for a More Meaningful World
Many talks provided innovative ideas and showed some exceptional and hopeful outcomes.
Leonore Skenazy talk: she has been called America's worst mom because she recommends kids have more freedom to be outside and by themselves with the supervision of adults at all times. She suggested that kids are so much on their electronics because that is the only place they have "freedom" from their parents knowing everything about their life, but they would prefer to be free outside. She created the Childhood Grow experience in 10,000 schools where kids can stay after school without adult supervision and use it to learn how to behave and negotiate conflicts. She also encouraged states to pass a "reasonable childhood law" where it would be legal to let children do things independently and shared her success in passing this law in a few states already
Jennifer Wallace discussed the crisis of "mattering" and how people can feel depressed even when they do meaningful jobs (like firefighters) unless they can track their impact. She suggests that the issue of mattering will become critical with AI as people lose jobs that give them a purpose.
Wawira Njiru shared her excellent work providing 100 million school meals to African children, partnering with and supporting local farmers. Preventing hunger helps children learn and thrive, and her ability to scale up school lunches is fascinating.
Boyan Slat shared the recent success of the OceanCleanUp project. Its technology should be able to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (a zone covering 1.6 million square kilometers) within the next five years. In addition, using the same technologies on the key rivers in the world that are responsible for bringing plastic to the ocean will help prevent more plastic from entering the ocean.
Mark Miodownick shared the discovery of materials that can self-repair by embedding nanoparticles. Such a material could be used for concrete so that roads can self-repair once they crack.
Theresa Fyffe explained how ceramic cradles can make coral reef restoration faster, stronger, and cheaper by allowing them to be placed in micro-nurseries in local communities (rather than in the ocean) and cultivating heat-tolerant coral. If this coral is then placed in highly connected reefs, this can help coral recovery and buy time until we find a long-term solution.
Philippe Villeneuve described the fantastic work it took to rebuild Notre Dame in five years.
Jenny Du shared a new technology made by Apeel that coats fruits or vegetables with edible plant oils so they last longer. This addresses the issue of food waste (one-third of food is wasted or lost before being eaten).
Julienne Oyler shared how the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya (which hosts 400,000 refugees) has been transformed by allowing refugees to start businesses and providing access to electricity, internet, and micro-loans (with a 97% repayment rate). Empowering refugees will enable them to become self-sufficient and also lighten the impact on the government. She believes the model is replicable and will become critical in a world where 1 in 10 humans will be displaced in the next 25 years.
These talks left me hopeful that we have leaders focusing on doing their part to make changes at a scale that can support our changing world.
In Part II of our following newsletter, we will address the biggest disruption of all time and the consequences of the exponential growth of AI.
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