A CASE FOR OPTIMISM

Last month I had an opportunity to step outside of the pandemic-induced global cocoon and not only attend my first in-person event in nearly two years, but also my very first TED. The theme - “The Case For Optimism” could not have been more appropriate, but I mostly appreciated how Chris Anderson chose to define it:

“optimism isn’t just a feeling of hope, but a belief in the possibility that future can be good…as well as one’s (or collective) willingness to take steps towards that possibility”

Especially today, optimism is certainly an idea worth spreading and TED’s team did a great job at it in Monterey: from the voices and topics they chose to elevate (more on that below) to the carefully curated experience, sensitive to the new world we all live in, ensuring participants’ vaccination proofs and frequent onsite testing, integrating virtual participants and speakers constrained by travel requirements, ample outdoor space for sessions, meetings and interactions, as well as masks encouragement for the indoor spaces.

I generally have three main evaluation criteria that guide my participation in global events: 1) ability to meet interesting future collaborators for current or future projects, 2) learn new things – outside of my area of expertise, and 3) be inspired about possibilities ahead – to inform my work and take back to my teams and clients. TED Monterey exceeded my expectations on all fronts.

Some of the interesting new things I learned:

§ Platform cooperativism and new solutions for the gig/sharing economy workers: Trebor Scholz, Founding Director of the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy at the New School spoke about emerging new models in platform economy like Up & Go where platform workers are the owners of the business and can choose how much they get paid, decide what customers should be charged and determine what data is collected. With no obligation to fiduciary shareholders, the staff co-own the company and, in times of crisis, have proven to be a resilient source of income.

§ Thermal energy has the potential to transform the hydrocarbon industry to a pioneer of new climate solutions: Jamie C. Beard, technologist, climate activist and executive director of the Geothermal Entrepreneurship Organization demonstrated how accessing our planet’s natural heat can unlock the solutions to make alternative energy feasible. Oil & gas industry already has the technology, infrastructure and training to scale these solutions, with many new geo-thermal start-ups (like Sage Geosystems, who was also at TED), founded by reformed oil & gas professionals.

§ Neural Networks and the Promise of AI: Jeff Dean, the head of Google’s AI efforts spoke about three areas of development needed to realize the full potential of machine learning: developing multi-task AI systems, training AI across images, text, sound and video simultaneously — rather than just one-by-one, as current systems do, and “sparse models” (instead of current dense models, which activate a whole system for each task) that would only activate relevant parts for a given task, much like the human brain. Drawing on these ideas, Dean revealed publicly for the first time the next phase in Google’s AI plans: a new system called Pathways, which aims to generalize across millions of tasks and take a major step forward in how we build powerful, responsible artificial intelligence. Open AI’s Greg Brockman visualized it best with the near future prediction, where we would (hopefully) instead of asking it “what the weather is like today”, ask AI to find the cure for malaria.

§ Power of Design for the Underdog: Irma L. Olguin Jr., CEO and cofounder of Bitwise Industries spoke about new ways of investing and leveraging talent from underrepresented communities and cities. Her company is focused on removing obstacles like childcare needs, transportation, hunger and money – that often supersede computer literacy skills as impediments in getting jobs in the tech sector. She is also developing new apprenticeship models that result in improvements for the entire community.

§ I was blown away by Betül Kaçar’s talk and focus on ethical questions and dilemmas we ought to consider at an entirely new level – as human species. Kaçar and her NASA lab engineer ancient DNA and environments to understand the recipe of life and the link between living and nonliving materials. Inviting us to imagine cultivating life on other planets, she asks: What if instead of bringing Earth’s life to other parts of the universe, life could be created from the materials that already exist there? With her extraordinary propositions come extraordinary quandaries that dig deep into the purpose of life — and bring with them the ethical dilemmas of spreading life throughout the cosmos.

Beyond new business models, solutions and advancements, there were a number of simpler, but no less profound ideas that carry implications on how we build forward after COVID, solve for some of the more intractable challenges like climate, design more inclusive workplaces and communities and…interact with one another:

§ Authenticity, generosity and trusting your gut: Hrishikesh Hirway, a musician and podcast creator, gave a deeply authentic talk about connecting the world of songs and music with our interpersonal interactions, encouraging everyone to explore the hidden rooms of thought and experience the richness of another person’s ideas. His TED talk, coming out later this fall is an absolute must. Bozoma Saint John, Netflix’s chief marketing officer spoke about our overreliance on data – a “pill we take to calm the insecurity of something we already know” and importance to trust the power of our gut and intuition. Adam Grant led a small group of us in an exercise to unleash collective generosity – with many surprising realizations (it is hard for many of us, especially women, to articulate what exactly we need help with, but when we do, there are few limitations to what one’s extended network can accomplish – Givitas is a good case and point). There were a few conversations – on and off stage about imposter syndrome, anxiety and fear and the need to demystify and make these plagues less tabu. NFL’s Alex Smith spoke about fear and self-doubt that affected him throughout his highly accomplished sports career and Catherine Mohr shared a wise observation on how we often “discount our own skills and put other on pedestals for what we assume they know”.

§ The power of storytelling and finding creative tools to advance stories of real impact (perhaps because of my bias to the field) was particularly evident. From Climate Action Tracker to hold governments publicly accountable for their Paris Agreement commitments, to Ma Jun’s interactive public map that pushes for collective action on climate and digital carbon accounting in China (and beyond), to Liam Young’s imaginary Planet City that pushes us to consider how the world could look like to Amir Nizar Zuabi’s theatrical, cross continent journey to celebrate (and create more acceptance) for the refugee journey – all demonstrated how we can create new bridges and come together to imagine, coop and cooperate in building a better world.