The kind of AI we actually need | Van Jones

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We have a dangerous math problem on our hands. AI is developing exponentially, but humanity's ability to adapt is on a linear path. The question then becomes, are we wise enough for the world we're building?

0:25Van Jones: Will it be a world of human flourishing where all these technologies are helping people do great things? Or we'll be a world where robots with no hearts dominate human beings with no agencies. That's Van Jones, TV host, author, and serial social entrepreneur, who has a track record of building productive coalitions among people who disagree. In his talk, he zeroes in on what he calls the adaptation gap, the dangerous distance between how fast technology is moving and how fast the rest of us can keep up. He warns that the gap will give rise to mass social unrest as AI continues to disrupt the economy and put people out of work.

1:04But closing that gap isn't just a tech problem or a policy problem. It's a wisdom problem. Wisdom that's already out there in places many of us have forgotten to look.

1:14Van Jones: I think the better move is to accelerate humanity. And there's a way to do that, but it requires both sides of the tech divide to come back to ancient intelligence, ancestral intelligence. Van gives examples of projects that are pairing AI insiders with people on the ground closest to the problems because the next trillion-dollar solution is probably hiding somewhere that power has long overlooked. That's coming up right after a short break.

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3:59And now, our TED Talk of the day.

4:02Van Jones: Everywhere we go now, we hear people talking about artificial intelligence. And it's unbelievable. It's powerful. and it's also a little scary to me. I worry about what we're doing. I worry about where we're going. I worry that we're in danger of building this brave new world with all this data and no wisdom. All this data but no wisdom. Is there room for wisdom? Where is the wisdom going to come from in this brave new world? And so I want to talk about a different kind of AI. I want to talk about the AI that's absolutely necessary for us to give our children the future they deserve. I want to talk about ancient intelligence AI.

5:00Van Jones: I want to talk about ancestral intelligence AI. Do our ancestors have anything to teach us about entering new eras and creating new worlds? Or should we just push all the old folks to one side? I'm a ninth-generation American, but I'm the first one in my family that was born with all my rights recognized by this government. Why? Why? Because my mother and my father did everything they could to make sure that I grew up in a better world. And I want to do that for my children, but I'm afraid. I don't know how to do that. I'm worried. Because a new human civilization is being born. And my children are going to grow up in it.

5:51Van Jones: And it is very different than the one I was born into. I have four children. Two of them are still sleeping in diapers. Here's reality for them. Just as a parent. their first crushes probably not going to be a rock star or an athlete their first crushes may well be an AI may well be an AI that's a different human civilization than the one I grew up in as they get older when they decide to start families they might open up a laptop or a holographic interface and use biotech tools to design my grandchildren That's a different human civilization. With longevity tech and all these health breakthroughs, they might be running marathons at the age of 90 or 120.

6:45Van Jones: Heaven forbid, it's time for them to be buried. My children, who I'm looking at right now, might be buried on the moon or on Mars, because within 100 years, we're going to be a fully space-faring civilization. That's a different human civilization. But I have a question about it. Will it be human and will it be civilized? Will the world that we are building, will it be human and will it be civilized? Will it be a world of human flourishing where all these technologies are helping people do great things? Or will it be a world where robots with no hearts dominate human beings with no agencies? That's my question.

7:31Van Jones: Humanity now has a math problem that we're going to have to come together to solve. That's what I would call the adaptation gap. Technology is now proceeding on an exponential curve. Robotics, biotech, AI, quantum computing, space exploration. These technologies are now growing their capability on an exponential curve. Some of the breakthroughs that would have been the breakthrough of a decade just a few years ago are not even the breakthrough of the day today. You can't even win a Twitter cycle because by noon something else has come out. But humans don't develop that quickly. Humans evolve on more of a linear slope.

8:18Van Jones: Humans are not that much smarter or that much faster than we were 5 ,000 years ago, let alone five weeks ago. And this gap is a gap that terrifies me. This is the gap that, if we don't handle it properly, can lead to social unrest, where people don't have what they need, and they're left behind, and they feel that the future doesn't need them at all. Now, what I see a lot of people trying to do is to figure out some way to decelerate technology, to use legislation and laws to decelerate the technology so we don't get left behind. But I have bad news for you. I spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C.

9:10Van Jones: If you think that Congress can catch a train moving that fast and do something about it, you have never met a U.S. senator. Okay? They're not exactly lickety-split type people. So I think the better move is to accelerate humanity. I think the better move is to accelerate humanity. And there's a way to do that, but it requires both sides of the tech divide to come back to ancient intelligence, ancestral intelligence. On the tech side, let me talk to my sisters and brothers in technology community and offer a prayer and an invitation, we're going to have to have a new deal between big tech and humanity.

10:02Van Jones: The original new deal was between government and the people. That's where the power was. The power was in government. The future used to be written in laws in Washington, D.C. Now the future is written in code in Silicon Valley. And so there has to be a new deal, a new agreement, a new social contract between big tech and human beings. But right now, we're not on path to doing that. Number one, our tech companies keep telling us things that we just don't believe. They keep saying, well, all this abundance, these robots are going to work overtime, everything's going to be fine. It's going to be so much abundance.

10:42Van Jones: Everything's going to be fine. Nobody believes you. literally nobody believes you you can just stop saying that abundance by itself doesn't solve any problems by the way the opposite just wheeling out a wheelbarrow into this room called AI full of diamonds and gold technically makes the room richer but if I dump it out on this side of the room only you're not richer you're miserable Abundance without participation, abundance without inclusion, feels like scarcity. It feels like scarcity. You think you're scaling abundance, but we experience it as you scaling scarcity. If you dump out all the good on one side of the room, the people on the other side of the room, they're not just miserable.

11:43Van Jones: At some point, their baby asks them a question. Mommy, Daddy, how come we don't have what they have? And now you're not just unhappy, you're ashamed. You're humiliated. I work in some of the toughest prisons in this world. The one thing you don't want to do is take somebody who already has nothing and then humiliate them. They become the most dangerous person in that prison, even if they only weigh 100 pounds. We're not just risking mass unemployment. We're risking mass humiliation. And that has to be avoided. There's another reason that coming back to the people who embody ancestral intelligence at the grassroots level will be helpful.

12:28It's because it'll be helpful for you.

12:31Van Jones: You are in a very difficult situation if you're in the tech world. You have tremendous power. You have tremendous responsibilities. You're not just co-founding companies and co-founding firms. You're co-founding a new human civilization. And there's a lot of temptation. Money, fame, power, sex. These things can ruin a person. These things can ruin a nation. and it's the old ways, ancient intelligence. Don't underestimate those mosques and temples and synagogues and churches and Native American ceremonies and prayer circles for you to come home and get your head on straight because you being in a greed and speed trap where you feel the only values that matter or greed and speed is not good for you.

13:36Van Jones: It's not good for your decision-making. It's not good for your heart. Don't underestimate these little black churches that had nothing but praying hands and marching feet and changed a whole nation. Don't underestimate your grandma. Don't underestimate ancestral wisdom. We need you to come back, and you need us too. You need us too. There is a way forward together. And now on the other side, I do want to say something to my friends on the grassroots side. Yes, we want our tech folks to come back to ancestral intelligence, ancient intelligence, grassroots intelligence, but we've gotten a little bit away from that stuff too.

14:26Van Jones: Those of us who work at the grassroots, whose hearts are with people who don't have very much, whose hearts are with people who have to choose between fewer pills or fewer meals this week. That's where our hearts are. Our hearts are with people whose main enemy isn't another rival tech firm. It's the check engine light. The check engine light. When that light comes on and you don't have enough money to go and get your car looked at. That's the enemy of the people that we care about. I get it. I get it. But I want to say something to my grassroots sisters and brothers. We've been a bit much.

15:13Van Jones: We've been a bit much this last 10 years. We've been kind of hard to be around. Been a bit loose with the name calling. everybody's a racist and a sexist and a homophobe and a transphobe everybody's some kind of phobe to the point that now people are phobic about us and don't want to be around us because we're calling people out and forget sometimes to call them in and to call them up we forget on the grassroots side we you know we say we're holding people accountable But are we holding people? Are we holding people? I think we replaced I Have a Dream with I have a complaint.

16:09Van Jones: That wasn't a speech. That wasn't a speech. We forget that Dr. King was a futurist. He wasn't talking about history. Dr. King was trying to make tomorrow better. Don't get temporal dissociation. Dr. King was a futurist trying to make tomorrow better. That's why we love him. And he said he has a dream. A dream is about tomorrow. And the thing about it, ancestral intelligence, the thing about it is when you have a dream and you're trying to make something very hard happen, you don't want to multiply enemies. You don't want to cancel anybody. You don't want to call anybody out when you have a dream for your children and a dream for all children and a dream for the children of all species.

17:00Van Jones: You want to multiply friends. You want to multiply friends. And so any politics that has us calling people out and multiplying enemies is not consistent with ancestral intelligence. And so both sides have to come back to the table and create a new world, a new human civilization that is human and is civilized. What would it look like? It would look like more incubators and accelerators and venture studios and funds directed to pairing up grassroots folks and engineers, people with knowledge of technology, but also a knowledge of what's happening at the grassroots level. It would look like Andre Part, who was formerly incarcerated, paired up with engineers, built something called Untappd Solutions.

17:55Van Jones: They built a LinkedIn for formerly incarcerated people, getting people off the street and employed. Now they're deploying AI agents to help social workers. Noel Sudbury, the lawyer, teamed up with engineers, using AI to expunge people's prison records. It would look like Phaedra Ellis Lampkins and Diana Fapiric Promise. They have built a billion-dollar company to help government not be more lethal, but more frugal and more helpful. It would look like Tadjo Smith, my buddy at Rapport, a company backed by Reid Hoffman that I'm supporting that's using AI to increase EQ and not just IQ inside of firms.

18:40Van Jones: It would look like John Hope Bryant, who just launched Hope AI, to get thousands of grassroots people AI literate. He's going to get a billion people literate in AI in the next 10 years so we can create even more companies. It would look like hope. It would look like hope. And so what I want to say to you in closing is this. on the tech side a little less greed and speed a little bit more sharing and caring on the grassroots side a little bit less shame and blame a little bit more space and grace if we put those two things together what we'll have is a movement that has so much magic and so much genius and so much hope and so much love and so much power that what we create out of that will, believe it or not, someday be the ancestral intelligence for our children.

19:52Van Jones: Thank you very much. Thank you.

20:00And you are listening to Van Jones at TED 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sunglarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet.

20:42Thanks for listening.

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