You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

With all the profound technological shifts they're living through, what kind of world are our kids having to face?

Are they going to be okay?

Deep tech entrepreneur D. Scott Phoenix, who spent 15 years building

AI, believes the way to understand this moment isn't actually to look forward. It's to go back,

way back. Two billion years ago, life on earth was mostly single-celled until bacteria figured out a new trick, photosynthesis, which makes oxygen.

Now, at the time, oxygen was poison, but somewhere in that dying world, an extraordinary thing

happened. A larger cell swallowed a smaller one, and instead of digesting it, they merged. That one accident in a dying world is the reason everyone in this room is alive today.

In his talk, Scott makes the case that we're on the cusp of another merger that is just as profound, this time between humans and AI.

And guess what? He says the boundary is already dissolving in ways

most of us haven't noticed. But his deepest warning isn't about technology. It's about us.

For us to make it to a merger with AI, we have to stay merged with each other.

That's coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED Talk of the Day.

So if you're like me, you might be feeling at least a bit unmoored by how fast everything is changing.

AI, our society, the world order,

and that's just since this morning.

I have two young daughters,

and like a lot of us,

I've been trying to make sense of the future they're growing up into.

And what helped me make sense of it actually wasn't looking forward.

...