Your Undivided Attention
Join us every other Thursday to understand how new technologies are shaping the way we live, work, and think.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by Senior Producer Julia Scott and Researcher/Producer is Joshua Lash. Sasha Fegan is our Executive Producer. We are a member of the TED Audio Collective.
- Update frequency
- every 12 days
- Average duration
- 43 minutes
- Episodes
- 143
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
When the "Person" Abusing Your Child is a Chatbot: The Tragic Story of Sewell Setzer
Content Warning: This episode contains references to suicide, self-harm, and sexual abuse.
Megan Garcia lost her son Sewell to suicide after he was abused and manipulated by AI chatbots for months. No…
Is It AI? One Tool to Tell What’s Real with Truemedia.org CEO Oren Etzioni
Social media disinformation did enormous damage to our shared idea of reality. Now, the rise of generative AI has unleashed a flood of high-quality synthetic media into the digital ecosystem. As a re…
'A Turning Point in History': Yuval Noah Harari on AI’s Cultural Takeover
Historian Yuval Noah Harari says that we are at a critical turning point. One in which AI’s ability to generate cultural artifacts threatens humanity’s role as the shapers of history. History will st…
‘We Have to Get It Right’: Gary Marcus On Untamed AI
It’s a confusing moment in AI. Depending on who you ask, we’re either on the fast track to AI that’s smarter than most humans, or the technology is about to hit a wall. Gary Marcus is in the latter c…
AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.
AI is moving fast. And as companies race to rollout newer, more capable models–with little regard for safety–the downstream risks of those models become harder and harder to counter. On this week’s e…
Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy (rerun)
[This episode originally aired on August 17, 2023] For all the talk about AI, we rarely hear about how it will change our relationships. As we swipe to find love and consult chatbot therapists, accla…
Tech's Big Money Campaign is Getting Pushback with Margaret O'Mara and Brody Mullins
Today, the tech industry is the second-biggest lobbying power in Washington, DC, but that wasn’t true as recently as ten years ago. How did we get to this moment? And where could we be going next? O…
This Moment in AI: How We Got Here and Where We’re Going
It’s been a year and half since Tristan and Aza laid out their vision and concerns for the future of artificial intelligence in The AI Dilemma. In this Spotlight episode, the guys discuss what’s happ…
Decoding Our DNA: How AI Supercharges Medical Breakthroughs and Biological Threats with Kevin Esvelt
AI has been a powerful accelerant for biological research, rapidly opening up new frontiers in medicine and public health. But that progress can also make it easier for bad actors to manufacture new …
How to Think About AI Consciousness With Anil Seth
Will AI ever start to think by itself? If it did, how would we know, and what would it mean?
In this episode, Dr. Anil Seth and Aza discuss the science, ethics, and incentives of artificial consciousn…
Why Are Migrants Becoming AI Test Subjects? With Petra Molnar
Climate change, political instability, hunger. These are just some of the forces behind an unprecedented refugee crisis that’s expected to include over a billion people by 2050. In response to this g…
Former OpenAI Engineer William Saunders on Silence, Safety, and the Right to Warn
This week, a group of current and former employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind penned an open letter accusing the industry’s leading companies of prioritizing profits over safety. This comes afte…
War is a Laboratory for AI with Paul Scharre
Right now, militaries around the globe are investing heavily in the use of AI weapons and drones. From Ukraine to Gaza, weapons systems with increasing levels of autonomy are being used to kill peop…
AI and Jobs: How to Make AI Work With Us, Not Against Us With Daron Acemoglu
Tech companies say that AI will lead to massive economic productivity gains. But as we know from the first digital revolution, that’s not what happened. Can we do better this time around?
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Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis
Suicides. Self harm. Depression and anxiety. The toll of a social media-addicted, phone-based childhood has never been more stark. It can be easy for teens, parents and schools to feel like they’re t…
Chips Are the Future of AI. They’re Also Incredibly Vulnerable. With Chris Miller
Beneath the race to train and release more powerful AI models lies another race: a race by companies and nation-states to secure the hardware to make sure they win AI supremacy.
Correction: The lates…
Future-proofing Democracy In the Age of AI with Audrey Tang
What does a functioning democracy look like in the age of artificial intelligence? Could AI even be used to help a democracy flourish? Just in time for election season, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital A…
U.S. Senators Grilled Social Media CEOs. Will Anything Change?
Was it political progress, or just political theater? The recent Senate hearing with social media CEOs led to astonishing moments — including Mark Zuckerberg’s public apology to families who lost chi…
Taylor Swift is Not Alone: The Deepfake Nightmare Sweeping the Internet
Over the past year, a tsunami of apps that digitally strip the clothes off real people has hit the market. Now anyone can create fake non-consensual sexual images in just a few clicks. With cases pro…
Can Myth Teach Us Anything About the Race to Build Artificial General Intelligence? With Josh Schrei
We usually talk about tech in terms of economics or policy, but the casual language tech leaders often use to describe AI — summoning an inanimate force with the powers of code — sounds more... magic…