TEDxOtemachi 2023 gives people who care about sustainability and progress an opportunity to spark discussion on the future of humanity, and share those ideas with the global community.

The theme of this year is“Perseverance”. TEDxOtemachi 2023 features innovators from across disciplines who will speak to a variety of issues regarding our long-term future - the trajectories of not only organized human life but also other sentient beings on Earth. We will explore diverse ideas, such as exciting technological innovations, new ways of organizing human systems, strategies to hedge against existential risks, or how to extend consciousness and live a flourishing life in harmony with nature. Faced with unforeseeable changes that the future brings, opportunities and crisis alike, it’s high time we ask: “The future is vast. The future can be exciting. Future people matter. Is there anything we could do to – reliably and significantly - improve the long-term future?”

If remaining on Earth, humanity could continue for 600 to 800 million years, as long as the Earth is habitable. This means that there could be as many as 21 million future generations, and even more if we move our habitat to another planet, possibly controlling the energy of the entire galaxy in a few hundred million years. A future beyond our imagination awaits us.

Where are we heading?

As technology evolves, there are risks that threaten the existence of the entire human race, or permanently destroy humanity’s long-term potential (e.g. nuclear weapons, AI, pandemic, etc.) Sustainability is hardly possible without hedging these risks.

As the world changes and grows more complex, it’s important that we discover the means to three fundamental transformations: Secure Life, Expand Consciousness, and Elevate Well-being.

“The blush of health on a convalescent’s cheek. The twinkling of the eye in a moment of wit. The smile of a loving thought… Utopia is the hope that the scattered fragments of good that we come across from time to time in our lives can be put together, one day, to reveal the shape of a new kind of life. The kind of life that yours should have been.”

LIVE SPEAKERS

Yoshiki

Yamagata

Urban system designer
Professor of the Graduate School of System Design and Management,Keio University. Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1961,Yamagata graduated from the University of Tokyo (PhD in System Science). He was a chief researcher of Center for Global Environmental Research in National Institute for Environmental Studies before joining Keio. For the past 20 years,he was a representative of the International Office of the International Academic Program Future Earth (GCP), an affiliate member of the Science Council of Japan (Environment) and served as Lead authors for IPCC. He is afflicted as visiting scholars at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Vienna) and Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM, Tokyo) and University of Tokyo.

Katsunori

Miyahara

Philosopher
He is a special Appointed Professor at the Center for Human Knowledge, Brain, and AI Research and Education (CHAIN) at Hokkaido University since 2020. Studied at Harvard University (USA) and University of Wollongong (Australia). He specializes in philosophy (philosophy of cognitive science, phenomenology, and philosophy of AI). He researches the relationship between conscious experience/cognition, the body, and the environment. Graduated from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo in 2015.

Shinji

Fukuda

Biologist, Gut designer
Fukuda is the founder and the President CEO of Metabologenomics, Inc. since 2015. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in microbiology and biochemistry in Meiji University, Japan in 2006, he was assigned several research positions at Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in RIKEN. He was then appointed as Project Associate Professor at Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University in 2012, subsequently appointed as Project Professor in 2019. He has also started his role as Visiting Professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia - Malaysia Japan International Institute of Technology (UTM-MJIIT) in 2019. He has won many prestigious awards including the Nice-Step researcher by National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in 2015 and the first Bioscience Grand Prix in 2015 with the business plan "Creating stool-borne healthy society".

Blaine

Rogers

Computer scientist, AI Safety Researcher
Blaine is a computer scientist from England and the founder of https://aisafety.tokyo/. His research backgrounds are formal verification, bayesian statistics and computer vision. His profile picture was generated by an AI.

Crissman

Loomis

Mathematician, Health and Longevity Researcher
As a former AI programmer, Crissman has shifted his focus from improving machine learning to improving health and finding what actions in our daily life can lead to the greatest longevity. His analysis on http://unaging.com/ quantifies the impact on lifespan, from the years of life gained from daily walks, to how many minutes of life could be lost from eating a corndog at the fair.

Daisaku

Nogami

Astrophysicist

Associate Professor of the Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University. He was born in Fukuoka in 1970 and got the PhD degree at Kyoto University in 1999. After his PhD study, he has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Goettingen University,Germany and then as an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University. He has then been in his current position since 2014.

His research field is stellar astrophysics.He is interested in large-scale and diverse explosion phenomena in the universe and conducts research mainly from an observational point of view.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.