How native speakers pronounce “useful”

you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept no one wants to die even people

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement 2005 · Stanford

So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school

Do schools kill creativity? — Ken Robinson · TED

where these things can be running autonomously, continuously in the background and doing useful work on our behalf. So what did we actually accomplish with this mission?

The Invisible Infrastructure in the Sky | Adam Bry | TED · TED

they’re intelligent, and they can run in the background, doing useful work for us constantly, 24/7. This is a future that we're incredibly excited to build at Skydio.

The Invisible Infrastructure in the Sky | Adam Bry | TED · TED

We also see them as toys and tools of entertainment. But there’s actually a very useful function for this technology: to go where people can’t,

The Invisible Infrastructure in the Sky | Adam Bry | TED · TED

to ride bicycles with their friends and to do errands so that they can feel useful. I'll give you one example.

How Screens Stole Childhood — and How to Get It Back | Jonathan Haidt | TED · TED

I built an entire way of moving through the world around staying alert, staying useful, staying on. I was reflexively disembodied,

How I Set Myself Free | Keke Palmer | TED · TED

into its algorithmic singularity. Making these simulations more detailed can make them more useful, but it does not make them any more real.

Why AI Isn’t Going to Become Conscious | Anil Seth | TED · TED

and you can make it as detailed as you want. This might make it more useful, but it's not going to make it any more conscious.

Why AI Isn’t Going to Become Conscious | Anil Seth | TED · TED

into something that is fun and useful and maybe a bit weird. You know, lobsters and headbands and beer businesses.

How I Created OpenClaw, the Breakthrough AI Agent | Peter Steinberger | TED · TED

Should I go to people and say, ’Alright, do you want me to be ... nice or honest and useful?'" No, do not do this.

The Problem With Being “Too Nice” at Work | Tessa West | TED · TED

So instead of asking people, "Should I be nice or honest and useful?" What I like to do is ask people,

The Problem With Being “Too Nice” at Work | Tessa West | TED · TED

or "I would change the font." These types of feedback are specific, and so they're useful, but they're not scary to deliver

The Problem With Being “Too Nice” at Work | Tessa West | TED · TED

An approval mindset isn't all bad. In fact, we've picked up some pretty useful skills in an approval mindset. In an approval mindset, we learn to set the bar high for what we want.

Want to Get Ahead at Work? Risk the Awkward Moments | Henna Pryor | TED · TED

It seems like he's connecting pretty well. Is that useful? Is that helpful? Susan Pinker: Some of the data are just emerging.

The secret to living longer may be your social life | Susan Pinker

But to understand AI, it's useful to place it in the historical context of biological intelligence.

Can AI Match the Human Brain? | Surya Ganguli | TED · TED

If that's all we did, it would take our kids 24,000 years to learn anything useful. But we do so much more than that.

Can AI Match the Human Brain? | Surya Ganguli | TED · TED

and the connectedness between them to predict which drugs might be useful in new ways, much faster than any team of humans ever could.

How Nearly Dying Helped Me Discover My Own Cure (and Many More) | David Fajgenbaum | TED · TED

to determine if it's real or not, it's useful to understand how generative AI works. Starting with billions of images with a descriptive caption like this,

How to Spot Fake AI Photos | Hany Farid | TED · TED

She sees another provocation, this time in the outline. In this case, she decides that while the provocation is useful, she does not need to address it.

How to Stop AI from Killing Your Critical Thinking | Advait Sarkar | TED · TED

I might never have to feel as terrible and lonely as I did then. And all this knowledge has been useful in some ways. I am more patient with love. I am more relaxed.

Falling in love is the easy part | Mandy Len Catron

but mainly excitement, actually, at how much more that would allow it to be useful to me. SA: One of our researchers tweeted, you know,

OpenAI’s Sam Altman Talks ChatGPT, AI Agents and Superintelligence — Live at TED2025

It's also true that in a way, you know, everything works from data. You need information to have any kind of useful knowledge. So the sharpest way I can put this is this.

Can Big Tech and Privacy Coexist? | Carole Cadwalladr and Chris Anderson | TED · TED

And to explain what I mean by that, I think it's useful to look at the story of how we conquered one of the most terrifying threats

Steven Johnson: How humanity doubled life expectancy in a century | TED · TED

the computers and robots powered by spatial intelligence will not only be useful tools but also trusted partners

With Spatial Intelligence, AI Will Understand the Real World | Fei-Fei Li | TED · TED

So not only was it incredible tool, it was also useful for some of the big questions itself. CA: Super interesting.

How AI Is Unlocking the Secrets of Nature and the Universe | Demis Hassabis | TED · TED

this is another extension of the work you've done, where now you're turning it to something incredibly useful for the world. What are all the letters on the left, and what’s on the right?

How AI Is Unlocking the Secrets of Nature and the Universe | Demis Hassabis | TED · TED

We're thinking, you know, would anyone really find that useful given that it does this and that? And we would want them to improve those things first,

How AI Is Unlocking the Secrets of Nature and the Universe | Demis Hassabis | TED · TED

But interestingly, it turned out that even with those flaws, many tens of millions of people still find them very useful. And so that was an interesting update on maybe the convergence of products

How AI Is Unlocking the Secrets of Nature and the Universe | Demis Hassabis | TED · TED

And it's actually unique to the type or subtype of cancer. But how are these molecular barcodes actually useful? So it turns out oncRNAs are not actually confined to cancer cells.

What If a Simple Blood Test Could Detect Cancer? | Hani Goodarzi | TED · TED

how can the same material both attract and repel? If I take a magnet, is it useful if I can get one of them to rotate the other, for example?

How to spark your curiosity, scientifically | Nadya Mason

So anger is a really useful emotion. However, we have to know how to regulate

Why Venting Doesn’t Help You Deal with Anger | Jennifer Parlamis | TED · TED

take. As I said, anger can be a useful emotion.

Why Venting Doesn’t Help You Deal with Anger | Jennifer Parlamis | TED · TED

in a place where there is no longer any such thing as a useful walk, is driving our weight up. And we finally have the studies,

Jeff Speck: The walkable city

it's said that 500 meters is the height of the clouds, so the ladder symbolized a useful dream of reaching for the stars and touching the clouds.

A Firework Ladder to the Sky — and the Magic of Explosive Art | Cai Guo-Qiang | TED · TED

And yet we trust it. And the same is true of so many other useful technologies in our lives. The idea of heart defibrillation has been around since 1899,

Why Does Uncertainty Bother Us So Much? | Adam Kucharski | TED · TED

With sufficient training, it can convert this view into useful actions. But fundamentally, it's not seeing what we're seeing.

Why Does Uncertainty Bother Us So Much? | Adam Kucharski | TED · TED

because it's fundamentally an easier problem than explaining. Like anesthesia, we can often make useful predictions about what something will do

Why Does Uncertainty Bother Us So Much? | Adam Kucharski | TED · TED

They can be fooled. They create useful thoughts rapidly, but they can see patterns that aren't there,

How to Make Big Decisions in Challenging Circumstances | Jonathan Reimer | TED · TED