This TED Talk features robotics engineer Radika Nagpal, recorded live at TED 2017.

In my early days as a graduate student, I went on a snorkeling trip off the coast of the Bahamas.

I'd actually never swum in the ocean before, so it was a bit terrifying.

When I remember the most is that as I put my head in the water

and I was trying really hard to breathe through the snorkel,

this huge group of striped, yellow and blackfish came straight at me,

and I just froze.

And then, as if it had suddenly changed its mind,

came towards me and then swerved to the right

and went right around me.

It was absolutely mesmerizing.

Maybe many of you have had this experience.

Of course, there's the color and the beauty of it,

but there was also just the sheer oneness of it,

as if it wasn't hundreds of fish,

but a single entity with a single collective mind

that was making decisions.

When I look back, I think that experience

really ended up determining what I've worked on for most of my career.

I'm a computer scientist, and the field that I work in is artificial intelligence.

And a key theme in AI is being able to understand intelligence

by creating our own computational systems that display intelligence the way we see it in nature.

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