Your Undivided Attention

By Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, The Center for Humane Technology

Society & Culture Technology Tech News Philosophy

What's Your Undivided Attention about?

In our podcast, Your Undivided Attention, co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the unprecedented power of emerging technologies: how they fit into our lives, and how they fit into a humane future.

Join us every other Thursday as we confront challenges and explore solutions with a wide range of thought leaders and change-makers — like Audrey Tang on digital democracy, neurotechnology with Nita Farahany, getting beyond dystopia with Yuval Noah Harari, and Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy: the other AI.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by Executive Editor Sasha Fegan and Senior Producer Julia Scott. Our Associate Producers are Sara McCrea and Kirsten McMurray. We are a top tech podcast worldwide with more than 20 million downloads and a member of the TED Audio Collective.

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LAST EPISODE

2023 Ask Us Anything

11.30.2023

You asked, we answered. This has been a big year in the world of tech. There are still so many questions in our minds, and we know you have a lot of questions too. So we created this episode for ...

Your Undivided Attention episodes:

11.30.2023 2023 Ask Us Anything You asked, we answered. This has been a big year in the world of tech. There are still so many questions in our minds, and we know you have a lot of questions too. So we created this episode for ...
11.21.2023 The Promise and Peril of Open Source AI with Elizabeth Seger and Jeffrey Ladish As AI development races forward, a fierce debate has emerged over open source AI models. So what does it mean to open-source AI? Are we opening Pandora’s box of catastrophic risks? Or is open-sourcing AI the only way we can ...
11.02.2023 A First Step Toward AI Regulation with Tom Wheeler Tristan and Aza discuss President Biden’s executive order on AI with Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
10.26.2023 No One is Immune to AI Harms with Dr. Joy Buolamwini Dr. Joy Buolamwini, the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, argues that the most urgent risks from AI are algorithmic bias, discrimination, and the concentration of power in tech companies.
09.28.2023 Mustafa Suleyman Says We Need to Contain AI. How Do We Do It? To reap the benefits of AI, we’re going to need to get good at saying no certain forms of progress for the first time.s. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Inflection AI, calls for containment as we approach an historic technological threshold, ...
09.19.2023 Inside the First AI Insight Forum in Washington Tristan and Aza were invited to speak at Senator Chuck Schumer’s historic AI Insight Forum last week. What are their big takeaways, and what effect do they predict this closed-door meeting will have?
09.12.2023 Spotlight on AI: What Would It Take For This to Go Well? Where do the top Silicon Valley AI researchers really think AI is headed? Do they have a plan if things go wrong? In this episode, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin reflect on the last several months of highlighting AI risk, ...
08.31.2023 The AI ‘Race’: China vs. the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao It’s a common counterpoint: “But what about China? We can’t let China get ahead.” In this episode, experts Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao explain the realities of Chinese AI development and assess the stakes for the multi-national race.
08.17.2023 Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy AI is harming our relationships, warns acclaimed psychotherapist Esther Perel. What would it look like for technology to strengthen our social bonds, rather than depriving us of the nuance that allows us to connect?
08.03.2023 Protecting Our Freedom of Thought with Nita Farahany We’re on the cusp of an explosion of cheap, consumer-ready neurotechnology - and it’s all going to be supercharged by AI. Legal scholar Nita Farahany talks us through the current state of neurotech, and explains why we need a new ...
07.21.2023 Social Media Victims Lawyer Up with Laura Marquez-Garrett Social media was humanity’s ‘first contact’ moment with AI. If we’re going to create laws that are strong enough to prevent AI from destroying our societies, we could benefit from taking a look at the major lawsuits against social media ...
07.06.2023 Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss In the next two episodes of Your Undivided Attention, we take a close look at two respective industries: big food and social media, which represent dangerous “races to the bottom” and have big parallels with AI. Our first guest in ...
06.22.2023 What Can Technologists Learn from Sesame Street? With Dr. Rosemarie Truglio On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin speak with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, the Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content for the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street. What happens when app creators consider ...
06.08.2023 Spotlight: How Zombie Values Infect Society Zombies are the perfect metaphor to explain something Tristan and Aza have been thinking about lately that they call 'zombie values.' In this Spotlight episode, we talk through some examples of how zombie values limit our thinking around tech harms. ...
06.02.2023 Feed Drop: AI Doomsday with Kara Swisher Kara Swisher challenges Tristan Harris on the so-called ‘AI Doomsday’ in a wide-ranging discussion. If you enjoy their conversation and want to hear more of Kara’s interviews with folks like Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and others, you can find episodes ...
05.25.2023 The Tech We Need for 21st Century Democracy with Divya Siddarth Democracy in action has looked the same for generations. What would an upgrade look like - not just for democracy, but for all the different places that democratic decision-making happens? On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, we’re joined by ...
05.11.2023 Spotlight: AI Myths and Misconceptions A few episodes back, we presented Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin’s talk The AI Dilemma. The talk resonated - over 1.6 million people have viewed it on YouTube as of this episode’s release date. However, now that so many people ...
05.04.2023 Talking With Animals… Using AI Despite our serious concerns about the pace of deployment of artificial intelligence, there are use cases for the technology that can help us better understand ourselves and the world around us. Your Undivided Attention co-host Aza Raskin is also co-founder ...
04.21.2023 Can We Govern AI? When it comes to AI, what kind of regulations might we need to address this rapidly developing new class of technologies? What makes regulating AI and runaway tech in general different from regulating airplanes, pharmaceuticals, or food? Answers to these ...
04.06.2023 Spotlight: The Three Rules of Humane Tech In our previous episode, we shared a presentation Tristan and Aza recently delivered to a group of influential technologists about the race happening in AI. In that talk, they introduced the Three Rules of Humane Technology. In this Spotlight episode, ...
03.24.2023 The AI Dilemma At Center for Humane Technology, we want to close the gap between what the world hears publicly about AI from splashy CEO presentations and what the people who are closest to the risks and harms inside AI labs are telling ...
03.02.2023 TikTok’s Transparency Problem A few months ago on Your Undivided Attention, we released a Spotlight episode on TikTok's national security risks. Since then, we've learned more about the dangers of the China-owned company. More people in Western governments and media are saying that ...
02.16.2023 Synthetic Humanity: AI & What’s At Stake It may seem like the rise of artificial intelligence, and increasingly powerful large language models you may have heard of, is moving really fast… and it IS. But what’s coming next is when we enter synthetic relationships with AI that ...
02.02.2023 The Race to Cooperation It’s easy to tell ourselves we’re living in the world we want – one where Darwinian evolution drives competing technology platforms and capitalism pushes nations to maximize GDP regardless of externalities like carbon emissions. It can feel like evolution and ...
12.29.2022 Ask Us Anything: You Asked, We Answered Welcome to our first-ever Ask Us Anything episode. We thought it’d be fun at the end of the year to engage our community of listeners by answering your questions. When we created this podcast, the goal was to explore the ...
12.15.2022 Can Psychedelic Therapy Reset Our Social Media Brains? When you look at the world, it can feel like we're in a precarious moment in our ability to relate to one another and cooperate. That's why we’re talking to Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary ...
11.23.2022 Real Social Media Solutions, Now — with Frances Haugen When it comes to social media risk, there is reason to hope for consensus. Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris recently helped launch a new initiative called the Council for Responsible Social Media (CRSM) in Washington, D.C. During this ...
11.10.2022 Spotlight — Humane Technology on '60 Minutes' The weekly American news show '60 Minutes' invited Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris back recently to discuss political polarization and the anger and incivility that gets elevated on social media as a matter of corporate profit. We're releasing ...
10.27.2022 Spotlight — Elon, Twitter and the Gladiator Arena Since it’s looking more and more like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will probably soon have ownership of Twitter, we wanted to do a special episode about what this could mean for Twitter users and our global digital ...
10.20.2022 They Don’t Represent Us — with Larry Lessig This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're doing something special. As we near the election, and representation is on our minds, we're airing a talk by Harvard Law professor and Creative Commons co-founder Larry Lessig. In what ways does our ...
10.06.2022 Stepping Into the Metaverse — with Dr. Courtney Cogburn and Prof. Jeremy Bailenson The next frontier of the internet is: the metaverse. How might we learn from our experience with social media, in order to design a humane metaverse? This week on Your Undivided Attention, we talk with two pioneers who are thinking ...
09.22.2022 Fighting With Mirages of Each Other — with Adam Mastroianni We often think our ideological differences are far greater than they actually are. Which means: we’re getting mired in polarization based on warped visions of each other. This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with Adam Mastroianni, a postdoctoral ...
09.08.2022 Spotlight — Addressing the TikTok Threat TikTok is now the most popular app for teens in the United States, and is influenced by China — our main geopolitical rival. This week on Your Undivided Attention, we bring you a bonus episode about TikTok. Co-hosts Tristan Harris ...
08.25.2022 Spotlight — How might a long-term stock market transform tech? Social media companies are stuck in classic multipolar traps. They must compete for our attention, so that when TikTok introduces an even-more addictive feature, Facebook and Twitter have to mimic it in order to keep up, sending us all on ...
08.04.2022 The Invisible Cyber-War What happens when our most critical infrastructure can be deactivated and controlled simply through bugs in its software? Cyber-security expert Nicole Perlroth guides us in an exploration of the global cyber arms race.
06.30.2022 An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns What’s the alternative to the Silicon Valley unicorn? What might it look like to design an ownership and governance model that incentivizes humane technology? This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with Mara Zepeda and Kate “Sassy” Sassoon of ...
06.16.2022 Spotlight — Conversations With People Who Hate Me with Dylan Marron A few weeks ago, we aired an episode with Dylan Marron — creator and host of the podcast, Conversations With People Who Hate Me. This week on Your Undivided Attention, you’re getting a full episode of Conversations With People Who ...
06.02.2022 How Political Language Is Engineered — with Drew Westen and Frank Luntz Democracy depends on our ability to choose our political views. But when the language we use to talk about political issues is designed to influence our beliefs, are we choosing our views, or is our language choosing them for us? ...
05.19.2022 Transcending the Internet Hate Game — with Dylan Marron The social media game must be radically transformed. And, we can also decide to step out of the game, and do something different. Our guest on this week’s Your Undivided Attention is a master at doing just that. Dylan Marron ...
05.05.2022 How To Free Our Minds — with Cult Deprogramming Expert Dr. Steven Hassan In an era of likes, followers, and echo chambers, how can we become aware of undue influence and gain sovereignty over our minds? Our guest this week is Dr. Steven Hassan, an expert on undue influence, brainwashing, and unethical hypnosis.
04.26.2022 Spotlight — A Bigger Picture on Elon & Twitter If Elon Musk owns Twitter, what are the risks and what are the opportunities? In order for Twitter to support democracy — and Musk’s goal of becoming a multi-planetary civilization — we need a radical redesign that goes beyond free ...
04.21.2022 What Is Civil War in the Digital Age? — with Barbara F. Walter What are the generator functions for civil war in the digital age, and how do we prevent them? This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're joined by Barbara F. Walter — one of the world's leading experts on civil wars, ...
04.07.2022 Spotlight — What Is Humane Technology? How do we develop the wisdom we need to responsibly steward exponential technology? This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're introducing one way the Center for Humane Technology is attempting to close the wisdom gap — our new, free, online ...
03.24.2022 Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang (Rerun) [This episode originally aired on July 23rd, 2020.] Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Digital Minister, helps us imagine a world where every country has a digital minister and technologically-enabled legislative bodies. Votes are completely transparent and audio and video of all conversations ...
03.10.2022 The Dark Side Of Decentralization — with Audrey Kurth Cronin These days, there's enthusiastic talk about the possibilities of decentralized technologies, like cryptocurrencies and 3D printing. But decentralization is cast in a different light when we're talking about decentralized weaponry. This week on Your Undivided Attention, security expert Audrey Kurth ...
02.24.2022 The Invisible Influence of Language — with Lera Boroditsky One of the oldest psycho-technologies we have is language. How do the words we use influence the way we think? Further, how can we inoculate ourselves from their undue influence — and consciously design language that helps us meet our ...
02.10.2022 How Science Fiction Can Shape Our Reality — with Kim Stanley Robinson Science fiction can prepare us for the impending future, and empower us to shape it. Join us for a conversation with one of the greatest living science-fiction writers — Kim Stanley Robinson.
02.03.2022 Here’s Our Plan And We Don’t Know — with Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin and Stephanie Lepp How have we evolved our understanding of our social media predicament? How has that evolution inspired us to question the work we do at Center for Humane Technology?
01.13.2022 Is World War III Already Here? — with Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster The nature of warfare has changed so fundamentally, that we're currently in a war we don't even recognize. It's the war that Russia, China, and other hostile foreign actors are fighting against us — weaponizing social media to undermine our ...
12.10.2021 A Fresh Take on Tech in China — with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark Who do you think the Chinese government considers its biggest rival? The United States, right? Actually, the Chinese government considers its biggest rival to be its own technology companies. It's China's tech companies who threaten its capacity to build a ...

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