TED Talks Daily
Will AI make us the last generation to read and write? | Victor Riparbelli
01 Mar 2025
Technology is changing our world — and how we communicate — at an astonishing rate. So much so that entrepreneur Victor Riparbelli predicts that artificial intelligence will drive audio and video to replace text as our primary form of communication by the end of this decade. He imagines a world where anyone can create a Hollywood film, receive personalized education or communicate via hyper-realistic avatars — all in the time it takes to read a book.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
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. My fellow readers out there might find today's talk pretty provocative. Syntesia CEO Victor Ripperbelly gives a 2024 talk in which he describes a future of immersive and vibrant video and audio, but not with text or reading. What does that look and feel like?
He paints a picture.
Your grandchildren will be the last generation to read and write. I know that sounds strange, almost unthinkable. Text is everywhere around us. We use it hundreds of times every single day, and it's woven into the fabric of our daily lives. But today, I'm going to make the case that humanity's relentless pursuit of better ways to convey ideas and preserve knowledge doesn't end with text.
I think we're at the dawn of a new era of AI-enabled communication. And I think that future generations will slowly replace text with more intuitive forms of communication, like audio, video, and eventually immersive technologies. And one day, I think we'll look back at reading and writing as historical artifacts, like we do with papyrus scrolls or hieroglyphs or cave paintings.
Don't get me wrong, I love reading. This is not a personal vendetta against text. Some of my fondest memories is walking around my local library back in Copenhagen, picking out all kinds of books, mostly science fiction books, returning home to read them, so I could go back there again and pick out the next set of exciting books to read.
I love disappearing into these worlds that were different than the physical world around me. And that, of course, only was amplified when I discovered the Internet at around 10 years old, which opened up an entirely new world of ideas, of music and people. The Internet information was free, and I saw firsthand how technology didn't just change the distribution of content.
It changed the content in itself. The difference between a lively forum and a book is massive, right? A blog and a newspaper, and so on. In music, which is my big passion outside of work, I saw how software instruments and sampling and drum machines gave birth to entirely new genres that had never been possible before.
Not only that, but all the people around the world making new, exciting music could share it with the world without the middlemen of labels. The video games I played got connected to the Internet. You formed communities with people around the world that you didn't know. That's what my parents thought, at least. I started my first business when I was 13 years old in World of Warcraft.
We were 50 people slaying dragons together online. And I would later learn in life that it's actually not that different than running a startup. And those early years of my life sparked a lifelong interest in media and technology, how they change the way that we create, consume, play, and communicate.
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