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, and share their insider takes on a high-level workshop run by CHT in Silicon Valley. 

NOTE: Tristan refers to journalist Maria Ressa and mentions that she received 80 hate messages per hour at one point. She actually received more than 90 messages an hour.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates: The titans of tech will talk AI at private Capitol summit

This week will feature a series of public hearings on artificial intelligence. But all eyes will be on the closed-door gathering convened by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer

Takeaways from the roundtable with President Biden on artificial intelligence

Tristan Harris talks about his recent meeting with President Biden to discuss regulating artificial intelligence

Biden, Harris meet with CEOs about AI risks

Vice President Kamala Harris met with the heads of Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI as the Biden administration rolled out initiatives meant to ensure that AI improves lives without putting people’s rights and safety at risk

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

The AI Dilemma

The AI ‘Race’: China vs the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao

The Dictator’s Playbook with Maria Ressa

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

In the debate over slowing down AI, we often hear the same argument against regulation.   “What about China? We can’t let China get ahead.” To dig into the nuances of this argument, Tristan and Aza speak with academic researcher Jeffrey Ding and journalist Karen Hao, who take us through what’s really happening in Chinese AI development. They address China’s advantages and limitations, what risks are overblown, and what, in this multi-national competition, is at stake as we imagine the best possible future for everyone.

CORRECTION: Jeffrey Ding says the export controls on advanced chips that were established in October 2022 only apply to military end-users. The controls also impose a license requirement on the export of those advanced chips to any China-based end-user.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Recent Trends in China’s Large Language Model Landscape by Jeffrey Ding and Jenny W. Xiao

This study covers a sample of 26 large-scale pre-trained AI models developed in China

The diffusion deficit in scientific and technological power: re-assessing China’s rise by Jeffrey Ding

This paper argues for placing a greater weight on a state’s capacity to diffuse, or widely adopt, innovations

The U.S. Is Turning Away From Its Biggest Scientific Partner at a Precarious Time by Karen Hao and Sha Hua

U.S. moves to cut research ties with China over security concerns threaten American progress in critical areas

Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage by Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli

Military technology has grown so complex that it’s hard to imitate

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

A Fresh Take on Tech in China with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

For all the talk about AI, we rarely hear about how it will change our relationships. As we swipe to find love and consult chatbot therapists, acclaimed psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel warns that there’s another harmful “AI” on the rise — Artificial Intimacy — and how it is depriving us of real connection. Tristan and Esther discuss how depending on algorithms can fuel alienation, and then imagine how we might design technology to strengthen our social bonds.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel

Esther's debut work on the intricacies behind modern relationships, and the dichotomy of domesticity and sexual desire

The State of Affairs by Esther Perel

Esther takes a look at modern relationships through the lens of infidelity

Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

Listen in as real couples in search of help bare the raw and profound details of their stories

How’s Work? with Esther Perel

Esther’s podcast that focuses on the hard conversations we're afraid to have at work 

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

A young man strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the internet

Her (2013)

In a near future, a lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang
 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

We are on the cusp of an explosion of cheap,  consumer-ready neurotechnology - from earbuds that gather our behavioral data,  to sensors that can read our dreams. And it’s all going to be supercharged by AI. This technology is moving from niche to mainstream - and it has the same potential to become exponential. 

Legal scholar Nita Farahany talks us through the current state of neurotechnology and its deep links to AI. She says that we urgently need to protect the last frontier of privacy: our internal thoughts. And she argues that without a new legal framework around “cognitive liberty,” we won’t be able to insulate our brains from corporate and government intrusion.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology by Nita Farahany

The Battle for Your Brain offers a path forward to navigate the complex dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves

Computer Program Reveals What Neurons in the Visual Cortex Prefer to Look At

A study of macaque monkeys at Harvard generated valuable clues based on an artificial intelligence system that can reliably determine what neurons in the brain’s visual cortex prefer to see

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan

An influential work by a fixture in media discourse

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Talking With Animals… Using AI

How to Free Our Minds with Cult Deprogramming Expert Dr. Steven Hassan

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

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 platforms that are playing out in our courts right now.

In our last episode, we took a close look at Big Food and its dangerous “race to the bottom” that parallels AI. We continue that theme this week with an episode about litigating social media and the consequences of the race to engagement in order to inform how we can approach AI harms. 

Our guest, attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett, left her predominantly defense-oriented practice to join the Social Media Victims Law Center in February 2022. Laura is literally on the front lines of the battle to hold social media firms accountable for the harms they have created in young people’s lives for the past decade. 

Listener warning: there are distressing and potentially triggering details within the episode.

Correction: Tristan refers to the Social Media Victims Law Center as a nonprofit legal center. They are a for-profit law firm.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

1) If you're a parent whose child has been impacted by social media, Attorneys General in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Tennessee are asking to hear your story. Your testimonies can help ensure that social media platforms are designed safely for kids. For more information, please visit the respective state links.

Colorado

New Hampshire

Tennessee

2) Social Media Victims Law Center
A non-profit legal center that was founded in 2021 in response to the testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen

3) Resources for Parents & Educators

Overwhelmed by our broken social media environment and wondering where to start? Check out our Youth Toolkit plus three actions you can take today

4) The Social Dilemma
Learn how the system works. Watch and share The Social Dilemma with people you care about

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

Transcending the Internet Hate Game with Dylan Marron

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

Behind the Curtain on The Social Dilemma with Jeff Orlowski-Yang and Larissa Rhodes

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

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.  

And we are asking: what can our past mistakes and missed opportunities teach us about how we should approach AI harms? 

In this first episode, Tristan talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Michael Moss. His book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us rocked the fast food industry when it came out in 2014. 

Tristan and Michael discuss how we can leverage the lessons learned from Big Food’s coordination failures, and whether it’s the responsibility of the consumer, the government, or the companies to regulate.
 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Michael’s New York Times bestseller. You’ll never look at a nutrition label the same way again

Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

Michael’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health

Control Your Tech Use

Center for Humane Technology’s recently updated Take Control Toolkit

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

AI Myths and Misconceptions

The AI Dilemma

How Might a long-term stock market transform tech? (ZigZag episode)

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

What happens when creators consider what lifelong human development looks like in terms of the tools we make? And what philosophies from Sesame Street can inform how to steward the power of AI and social media to influence minds in thoughtful, humane directions?

When the first episode of Sesame Street aired on PBS in 1969, it was unlike anything that had been on television before - a collaboration between educators, child psychologists, comedy writers and puppeteers - all working together to do something that had never been done before: create educational content for children on television. 

Fast-forward to the present: could we switch gears to reprogram today’s digital tools to   humanely educate the next generation? 

That’s the question Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, the Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content for the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

This documentary offers a rare window into the early days of Sesame Street, revealing the creators, artists, writers and educators who together established one of the most influential and enduring children’s programs in television history

Sesame Street: Ready for School!: A Parent's Guide to Playful Learning for Children Ages 2 to 5 by Dr. Rosemarie Truglio

Rosemarie shares all the research-based, curriculum-directed school readiness skills that have made Sesame Street the preeminent children's TV program

G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street co-edited by Shalom Fisch and Rosemarie Truglio

This volume serves as a marker of the significant role that Sesame Street plays in the education and socialization of young children

The Democratic Surround by Fred Turner

In this prequel to his celebrated book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America, showing how in the 1940s and 1950s American liberalism offered a far more radical social vision than we now remember

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Neil Postman’s groundbreaking book about the damaging effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century

Sesame Workshop Identity Matters Study

Explore parents’ and educators’ perceptions of children’s social identity development

Effects of Sesame Street: A meta-analysis of children's learning in 15 countries

Commissioned by Sesame Workshop, the study was led by University of Wisconsin researchers Marie-Louise Mares and Zhongdang Pan

U.S. Parents & Teachers See an Unkind World for Their Children, New Sesame Survey Shows

According to the survey titled, “K is for Kind: A National Survey On Kindness and Kids,” parents and teachers in the United States worry that their children are living in an unkind world

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Are the Kids Alright? With Jonathan Haidt

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

When Media Was for You and Me with Fred Turner

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

You’re likely familiar with the modern zombie trope: a zombie bites someone you care about and they’re transformed into a creature who wants your brain. 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 of Your Undivided Attention, we talk through some examples of how zombie values limit our thinking around tech harms. Our hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll be able to recognize the zombie values that walk amongst us, and think through how to upgrade these values to meet the realities of our modern world. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Is the First Amendment Obsolete?

This essay explores free expression challenges

The Wisdom Gap

This blog post from the Center for Humane Technology describes the gap between the rising interconnected complexity of our problems and our ability to make sense of them

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

A Problem Well-Stated is Half Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger

How To Free Our Minds with Cult Deprogramming Expert Steve Hassan

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

There’s really no one better than veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher at challenging people to articulate their thinking. Tristan Harrris recently sat down with her for a wide ranging interview on AI risk. She even pressed Tristan on whether he is a doomsday prepper. It was so great, we wanted to share it with you here. 

The interview was originally on Kara’s podcast ON with Kara Swisher. If you like it and want to hear more of Kara’s interviews with folks like Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and others, you can find more episodes of ON with Kara Swisher here: https://link.chtbl.com/_XTWwg3k

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

AI Myths and Misconceptions

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Democracy in action has looked the same for generations. Constituents might go to a library or school every one or two years and cast their vote for people who don't actually represent everything that they care about. Our technology is rapidly increasing in sophistication, yet our forms of democracy have largely remained unchanged. 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 political economist and social technologist Divya Siddarth, one of the world's leading experts in collective intelligence. Together we explore how new kinds of governance can be supported through better technology, and how collective decision-making is key to unlocking everything from more effective elections to better ways of responding to global problems like climate change.

Correction:

Tristan mentions Elon Musk’s attempt to manufacture ventilators early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. Musk ended up buying over 1,200 ventilators that were delivered to California.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Against Democracy by Jason Brennan

A provocative challenge to one of our most cherished institutions

Ledger of Harms

Technology platforms have created a race for human attention that’s unleashed invisible harms to society. Here are some of the costs that aren't showing up on their balance sheets

The Wisdom Gap

This blog post from the Center for Humane Technology describes the gap between the rising interconnected complexity of our problems and our ability to make sense of them

DemocracyNext

DemocracyNext is working to design and establish new institutions for government and transform the governance of organizations that influence public life

CIP.org

An incubator for new governance models for transformative technology

Ethelo

Transform community engagement through consensus

Kazm’s Living Room Conversations

Living Room Conversations works to heal society by connecting people across divides through guided conversations proven to build understanding and transform communities

The Citizens Dialogue

A model for citizen participation in Ostbelgien, which was brought to life by the parliament of the German-speaking community

Asamblea Ciudadana Para El Clima

Spain’s national citizens’ assembly on climate change

Climate Assembly UK

The UK’s national citizens’ assembly on climate change

Citizens’ Convention for the Climate

France’s national citizens’ assembly on climate change

Polis

Polis is a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang 

They Don’t Represent Us with Larry Lessig

A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics with Kate Raworth

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_