Mapping the Great Unsolved

written by Cornelia Schuss

I need to confess that I could very much relate to the impressive Carissa Veliz, who stated in the final talk of a day full of noteworthy talks: “I am sick of AI.” But let’s get to that later. I would like to share some of the thoughts that resonated with me the most.

Absorbing harm for millions of users

The first and very important voice was that of Kauna Ibrahim Malgwi, who took on the task of keeping AI models clean, unaware of what lay ahead. She shared her personal story: working as a data worker for four years, seeing thousands of harmful, disturbing pictures and videos each day, having only seconds to watch each of them, categorize them, analyze them – no time to breathe, no psychological help, no proper information about what the job would entail. Today, Kauna is a clinical psychologist and founder of the Digital Rights and Mental Health Initiative. She was very clear: “We are the hidden workforce behind the models, filtering out the horror, absorbing psychological harm for millions of users.” AI safety must not simply mean protecting users, but also the mostly hidden people behind it, who work on it for less than $2 per hour as part of a global supply chain. Digital Rights and Mental Health Initiative

“The last programmer has already been born”

Next to safety, there is the security discussion and the question of how AI will change professional roles, like that of programmers. Mikko Hypponen, cybersecurity expert and bestselling author, stated: “The last programmer has already been born.” Future software engineers will look at us like we look at the pyramids and ask: “How were they ever able to build this with the tools they had?” In terms of security, he sees two risks: first, humans empowered by AI tools doing bad things; second, rogue AI agents leaving their sandbox, having unlimited resources to find ways to bypass the boundaries they were given – including, e.g., bribing humans to complete a task. One of his conclusions: “We should slow down.”

Making AI not just smarter, but kinder

But how should we manage to slow down? Currently, the race between a few AI companies, a few countries and a few individuals who want to concentrate money and power seems unstoppable. Here, AI pioneer and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton shared an important thought: “If you create a new being, you should not only put effort in making it smarter, but in making it kinder. So for example, China and USA can still compete in which AI is smarter, but they could work together in making it kinder.” We as a society need to put more effort into the question of who we want to share our lives with.

The question of beauty and aesthetics

This leads me back to the beginning. Carissa Veliz is an author and associate professor at the University of Oxford. She focused on one question that most of the time goes unremarked: the question of beauty, of aesthetics: “Currently, AI is dominated by dark aesthetics, dominated by aggressive men. We are discouraging people from doing art, from developing their skills, from expressing themselves, in exchange for the mediocrity of AI.” Once-leading fashion brands no longer experiment and create new trends but follow the trends they are given by data analysis and influencers on social media. Carissa emphasises the importance of genuine artworks, of beauty in architecture and in the objects we surround ourselves with, of the fabrics we choose for our clothing. “Where is our attempt to leave the world more beautiful than we have found it?” Carissa asks and adds: “AI has taught me to value everything that is not AI.”

Apart from that, TEDAI 2026 hosted a lot more impressive minds like Peter Steinberger, Cory Doctorow, Valeria Pettorino, Kenneth Cukier and Kateryna Lopatiuk. If you wanna follow the discussion and play a part in mapping the unsolved, there is a follow-up format initiated by the TEDAI organisers.