TED Talks Daily - Magic and wonder in the age of AI | David Kwong

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

With AI everywhere you look, you may think you've seen it all. Magician David Kwong suggests otherwise, proposing advancements in technology actually increase opportunities for wonder. In an entertaining performance, he invites an audience member on stage to exhibit the mind-reading magic of ChatGPT — and explores how tech elevates our capacity for awe.

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. So usually if the talk is from a magician, we really insist that you see it and you should absolutely watch

Magician David Kwong's talk on TED.com. But since we are a podcast, we found a way to share Kwong's ideas about magic, about capturing wonder, and how to find the fun in our latest technologies, all in a coherent audio format for you after the break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs,

I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. AI keeping you up at night? Wondering what it means for your business? Don't miss the latest season of Disruptors,

the podcast that takes a closer look at the innovations reshaping our economy. Join RBC's John Stackhouse and Sonia Sinek from Creative Destruction Lab as they ask bold questions like why is Canada lagging in AI adoption and how to catch up? Don't get left behind. Listen to Disruptors, the innovation era,

and stay ahead of the game in this fast-changing world. Follow Disruptors on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. I want to tell you about a podcast I love called Search Engine, hosted by PJ Vogt. Each week, he and his team answer these perfect questions, the kind of questions that, when you ask them at a dinner party, completely derail conversation. Questions about business, tech, and society, like, is everyone pretending to understand inflation? Why don't we have flying cars yet?

And what does it feel like to believe in God? If you find this world bewildering, but also sometimes enjoy being bewildered by it, check out Search Engine with PJ Vogt, available now wherever you get your podcasts. And now our TED Talk of the day. I am both a magician and a New York Times crossword puzzle constructor. And I think that all magic tricks are puzzles, puzzles designed to fool your brain. I'm also a self-described word nerd, and I was thinking the other day about the word wonder and the meaning of the word wonder. What is wonder? Well, I'm not going to bore you with etymology for two reasons. Number one, because being bored by etymology is impossible because etymology is

amazing. And number two, I looked it up and according to the online etymological dictionary, the word wonder is ultimately of unknown origin, which is pretty perfect, right? It's just one more thing for us to wonder about. Now, this brings me to an interesting point. Today, when we use wonder as a verb, it can be pretty humdrum, like, I wonder what she had for lunch. Or as an adjective, same thing. Mmm, this cake is wonderful. That's just like pretty good cake. It's only when we use wonder as a noun that we get a sense of its true meaning. The Great Pyramid of Giza, the last remaining of the seven ancient wonders of the world. A wonder is an experience or an object that defies explanation, that blows our mind, that stirs within us that deep and undeniable sense of wonder.

A wonder, therefore, is something that when we see it, it makes us question what is possible. We see something that is impossible, and there it is right in front of us. It's that disconnect, that yawning gap between shouldn't be and is that inspires wonder. And of course, when we think of wonder and wondrous times, it often helps to cast our minds back to an earlier age when we assume man's capacity for wonder was greater. I mentioned the Great Pyramid of Giza before, and there was a time when, for an ancient traveler winding their way up the Nile and first catching sight of a perfectly symmetrical artificial mountain rising hundreds of feet above the desert floor, that it would have been simply unimaginable.

It shouldn't be, but it is. And now, you know, we have the Burj Khalifa. It's way bigger. And though most of us who aren't architects and engineers wouldn't say we know exactly how they built the Burj, we're pretty confident that somebody does with architecty engineering stuff. It's possible. So that leads me to today's question. Has too much technology robbed us of wonder? Have we traded in magic and mystery for cold, hard logic and logistics? Can we today, with our scientific sophistication, ever recapture our ancestors' capacity for wonder? And I'm glad you asked rhetorically, because I would answer with a resounding yes. I would say that not only can we experience wonder despite our modern marvels and technological advances, but that we can experience more wonder because of them. We live in a world more wondrous

than our ancestors ever could have imagined. And technology isn't the barrier to unlocking wonder. It is the key. Rainbows, we all love rainbows. How do those pretty colors get up in the sky? Now, the pillars of creation. The pillars of creation are 7,000 light years from Earth and five light years tall.

Five light years tall. Take that, rainbows. And no Hubble telescope and no pillars of creation. I mean, they'd still be there, of course, but we would never be able to see them. Advancements in technology increase our opportunities for wonder. As a magician, I have the coolest job in the world. I get to stand in a long line of men and women, of priests and shamans, of wizard and witches who stand on the precipice of technological advancement

and look out from the cutting edge of mankind's achievement into the eternal expanse of the unknown, and say, I can totally use this to screw with people's minds. Which brings us to AI. I've been experimenting with ChatGPT, and I've discovered that there's a fun little party trick that it can do if you give it enough information. It can make certain deductions. And I want to show

you what I'm talking about. I have ChatGBT right here. And let's warm it up with, how about this? Please write a haiku about a TED Talk in Paris. Here we go. Paris TED Talk airs. Ideas dance with Eiffel's grace. Wisdom blooms like spring. That's nice. And now back to the episode. I want to try something with someone from the audience. Do I have a volunteer who might want to? It's going to be painless, I promise. Is anyone willing to? Are you willing to join me? What is your name? Francois. That's a unique name here in Paris. Please join me. Let's give Francois. Thank you. Hello, hello. Francois, I'm going to put some information about you into chat GPT, if that's okay. All right, let's have some fun with it. So, I am here with

Francois. Where are you from originally? Right here, from Paris. What is your favorite food? Confit, yes. C-O-N-F-I-T. Yes, I do know that. It's very fancy. Do you have any pets? No. Did you grow up with any pets? Yes. What was your pet? A cat. A cat named?

Pistache. You're going to have to spell that. A cat named? Pistachio. Pistachio. Pistache. Pistache with an E? P-I-S-T-A-C-H-E?

Yes. Pistache. And are you right-handed or left-handed yes pistache and are you uh right-handed or left-handed right he is right-handed okay so we have some information watch this please write a c shanty about francois verse one now gather around me hardies bold i'll tell a tale so grand and old of Francois from Paris town whose adventures will astound. That's great. What else? Oh, Francois, a man so fine with a cat named Pistache, were they intertwined. He sailed the seas with the spirit high, a true sailor reaching for the sky. That's very good. All right. I would like to play a little game with you. All right.

Thank you so much for volunteering. This is my prediction envelope. We'll come back to this in just a little bit. I'm going to put this right here. Okay. Francois, we're going to play a game of which hand. I have a coin here. Okay. In a moment, you're going to put it behind your back and you're going to put it in one of your two fists, okay? But let me add another layer here. Can you please think of your favorite color? Tell me, please. Sorry? Blue. And then think of another color. Anything, really. Anything. Go ahead, tell me. Okay, blue and red. That's perfect. Great. Can you please come forward with your two hands, put the coin in one of them? If the coin is in your left hand, I want you to think of blue. And if it's in your right hand, I want you to think of red. And let that color just rise up throughout you and project

it into the room. As I type in a chat GPT, Francois has hidden a coin in one of two hands. I've assigned the left hand the color blue and the right hand the color red. Which hand has the coin? Let's see what ChatGPT says. As an AI language model, I can't exactly determine what happens in the physical world, but based on the information provided, Francois would likely hide the coin in the blue hand.

Are you thinking of blue? Yes, indeed, show everybody the blue hand has the coin. the blue hand. Are you thinking of blue? Yes, indeed. Show everybody the blue hand has the coin. Very nice. Okay. Yeah. Now, of course, that could just be 50-50, right? So let's try it again. Would you put it behind your back again? And could you please name for me any animal you like, any animal? A cat. Good. And then maybe something completely different, like from the zoo or a lion. Wonderful. Would you please come out with your two fists again? Oh yeah, go ahead, mix it up, make it difficult. Don't put it in your back pocket. Okay, yes, okay, okay, okay. So just like before, I want you to think, all right? If the coin is in your right hand, I want you to think of cat. If it's in your left hand, I want you to think of cat. If it's in your left

hand, I want you to think of lion. All right? I want the spirit of this animal to take over. Now, don't jump up and down, okay? But let the spirit project that animal into the room. And here we is hiding a coin in one of his two hands. I've assigned the right hand, the cat, and the left hand, the lion. Which hand has the coin? And ChatGPT says, based on the information provided, Francois would hide the coin in the lion hand.

Are you thinking of lion? Would you show everybody the lion hand? Look at that. Two for two. That's good. That's good. Let's try one more time. How about fruit and vegetables? Go ahead and name two. Two things. Anything you like. What was the first one? Apple and strawberry. Yeah. My French is not very good. Okay. Apple and strawberry. Wonderful.

Okay. All right. So if the coin is in your right hand, I want you to think of apple. If it's in your left hand, I want you to think of strawberry. And I want you to think about what that fruit tastes like. All right? And really project that feeling into the room as I type here, Francois has a coin in one of his hands.

I've assigned apple to the right hand and strawberry to the left. Which hand has the coin? And ChatGPT says, based on the previous information, Francois would likely hide the coin in the apple hand. Were you thinking of apple? You don't look very happy about this, but show everybody that you were thinking of apple and it's in the apple hand.

It is indeed right there. Very nice. Good, good, good. I'll take it now. Okay. Now, ChatGPT just had all the fun. So now it's my turn to try to have a little deduction here, okay? So I would like you, please, to, in a moment, think of a country.

Don't say it out loud. There are nearly 200 countries in the world. You're going to think of a country. You got one? Okay. I have an idea. Yes or no, is it Cuba? No, it's not, but that's okay.

Good. All right. Interesting. I did not get the country initially, but I am going to ask ChatGPT a few more questions to see if it can make some deductions here about what you're thinking. All right.

So let's do this. Name a musician born in 1899. How about this? A world leader born in AD, I'm gonna go way back, AD 37. An athlete from 1942 and a writer, let's do a British writer from 1865. Here we are. Certainly, here are the individuals. Musician born in 1899, Duke Ellington, very good. A Roman emperor born in AD 37, Nero. An athlete born in 1942, Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay. And for the British writer, good, born in 1865, Rudyard Kipling.

Do these people from history mean anything to you? No, but that's okay. That's okay. They will in just a minute because I had a prediction before in this envelope. And I'm going to show you now what it says. It says, I will not get the country initially. Thank you very much. No, this initially is a double entendre.

How's my French? Entendre. Terrible, right? Entendre. Okay, it means two things. Initially, let's go back to ChatGPT. Please list the initials of the people I just asked about. Are you ready? What was the country you were thinking of before? Denmark. Watch this. ChatGPT says Duke Ellington, D-E, Nero, N, Muhammad Ali,

M-A, and Rudyard Kifling, R-K. That's D-E-N-M-A-R-K. That's Denmark. Let's give Francois a big round of applause. Thank you so much. Merci beaucoup. Thank you. That was fun and magical. Thank you so much. And that leads us back to wonder. We said at the beginning that wonder was questioning what is possible. And here's the thing. It's the questioning that's important. The pillars of creation, those unthinkably vast clouds of stardust, they existed long before us and they'll exist long after. And they are beautiful because we are lucky enough to be able to gaze upon them.

Their beauty is in our seeing. When we approach the world with wonder, it's not the answers that we find that ultimately give our lives meaning. It is the questions. The meaning is in our asking. Because any technology, no matter how exciting or novel or sophisticated, is meaningless without the human beings at the center. We and we alone have the unique privilege to look with fresh eyes, to ask the bigger question. So look, ask, do not let go to waste the gift that we alone possess, our capacity for wonder. Thank you. Support for this show comes from Airbnb.

If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. That was David Kwong at TED at BCG Paris in 2023.

If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Fazey-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessey. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? Today, TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit TED.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED Games.