TED 2025: Humanity Reimagined or AI Apocalypse?

I watched the TED 2025: Humanity Reimagined livestream yesterday at the local TEDx Johannesburg event at Workshop17 Hyde Park. The theme—“What are humans for?”—set the tone for a day full of powerful ideas about how we might flourish in a future shaped by AI, biology, and creativity.

While much of the program leaned into possibility and imagination, Carol Cadwalladr’s talk offered a sobering counterbalance. Her message was clear: as we explore new technologies, we must also confront how they’re already reshaping power, privacy, and democracy.

Here’s a summary of Carol Cadwalladr’s powerful 2025 TED Talk:

Title: The Coup Has Already Happened: A Call to See, Name, and Resist

Carol Cadwalladr, known for exposing the Cambridge Analytica scandal, returns to TED six years after her original groundbreaking talk. This time, she delivers a stark, emotional, and urgent warning: we are already living through a slow-motion coup enabled by technology, surveillance, and complicity from global tech elites.

Key Themes and Messages:

1. Personal Fallout and Resilience:
   • Her first TED Talk led to a devastating three-year legal battle (SLAPP lawsuit) designed to silence her, involving her personal data and financial ruin.
   • Despite the trauma, 35,000 people supported her with over £1 million in donations, showing the power of collective resistance.
2. We're Already Living in the AI Apocalypse:
   • The “AI apocalypse” is not robots—it’s total information collapse.
   • Tech platforms are fueling misinformation, eroding truth, and weakening democratic institutions.
3. Naming the Threat – It’s a Coup:
   • The alignment between authoritarian regimes and Silicon Valley billionaires has created a new kind of power structure she calls a “brogarchy.”
   • Surveillance capitalism and data exploitation are enabling autocratic control at a global scale.
4. Data is the Battleground:
   • The business model of Big Tech is mass surveillance. Like the East German Stasi, these companies know everything about us—and more than we realize.
   • "We are already living inside the architecture of totalitarianism," she says.
5. Cultural Capture:
   • Politics is now technology.
   • Culture—what appears next on your phone—is being shaped by AI and algorithmic control.
6. We Are the Cavalry:
   • People must “digitally disobey” by resisting data harvesting and protecting their privacy (e.g., using Signal, avoiding cookies).
   • Cadwalladr urges individuals to act now and support those standing up to power.
7. No Consent to AI Exploitation:
   • She calls out OpenAI and others for using her work and personal data to train models without permission.
   • Describes the Guardian’s deal with OpenAI as a betrayal: “They married their rapist.”
8. A Message to Silicon Valley Elites:
   • “You are not gods. You are men. And you are careless.”
   • Warns tech leaders that aligning with autocrats will not protect them, and history shows how quickly power turns.
9. Final Rallying Cry:
   • “We are not powerless.” Cadwalladr reclaims her story and calls on the audience to choose courage, resistance, and solidarity in the face of rising authoritarian tech.

Main Quote:

“Politics is technology now. And that’s why you can’t look away.”