What role will AI play in family life? | Kelly Corrigan’s TED Talks Daily takeover
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Today, we're kicking off something we've never really done before, a TED Talks Daily takeover. Kelly Corrigan is a writer, podcaster, and TED speaker, and she was a guest curator for the big TED 2025 conference this year, working directly with speakers to help them develop their TED Talks. Now, Kelly's going to take over my job for the next week, sharing the talks she curated and reflecting on her experiences in bringing them to life. There's a lot of special surprises in store for you, including some rarely seen behind the scenes peeks at how TED Talks come to life. And Kelly guides us through it with her expertise and personal experience.
This week is going to be all about parenting and technology, asking the fundamental question, what is a parent for? Especially today in a world of artificial intelligence. Ever since giving her own TED Talk, Kelly's been fascinated with this topic of the messiness and beauty of human love and connection. So Kelly's going to share her own story and her own TED Talk from 2024 before taking the reins for the rest of the week. I'm so excited and I'll be listening alongside you.
Hi, I'm Kelly Corrigan, and last year I gave a talk about the occasional need for extraordinary bravery in family life. I had my mom in mind as I wrote it, she being the person who absorbed my most shocking news and most painful episodes over the course of my life. The talk went well, and a few months after I gave it, Chris Anderson and Helen Walters asked me if I would guest curate a session at TED 2025, the theme of which was humanity reimagined, the underlying question of which was, in a modern world, what's a human for? How did you land on this theme, Chris, for the whole conference? Why does this feel the most urgent topic?
It sprung from the question prompted by what's happening in AI, which is what are humans for?
That's Chris Anderson, head of TED, in a conversation we had earlier this year.
I genuinely think this is becoming an existential question for all of us. AI is getting more and more powerful, more and more alarming. And I think it's the whole assumptions about how life works, I think, are being turned upside down. And so it's very important for humans to... to huddle together and imagine what their collective future is and how to redefine purpose, how to redefine what a successful life looks like and so forth.
Now, I am a person who always wanted to be a mom. That was the number one thing that I wanted. And It's the only thing I really, really care about and think is really important. I think all the rest is something else, but it's not essential the way that this work feels to me, thus my TED talk. And so I said to Chris and Helen, if their question is in a modern world, what's a human for? My question is in a modern world, what's a parent for? And they were all over it. It was like big thumbs up right from the get-go. And then I was off to the races. But before I tell you more about all of the questions and ideas you're going to hear this week, I want to share my TED Talk with you so you can get a better sense of where I was coming from when I started.
As you listen to this talk, you'll see that I hold real live people parents in the highest regard. But I'm also grown up enough to know that not every parent is doing such a great job. And in those cases, I do wonder, how could AI participate in these brave moments that make family life click?
This is for my mom, even though when I called her to say, hey, have you heard of TED, T-E-D, she said, oh my God, Kelly, it's not another virus, is it?
LAUGHTER
As a 21-year-old, I was drawn to the word brave. I had a soft spot for ripping yarns and the people who could tell them. So, odyssey on the brain, I went out adventure collecting. Without knowing how to spell starboard or which side it referred to, I got on a 46-foot boat, and I sailed from Malta to Tunisia to Sicily.
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