Afleveringen
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In the middle of the twentieth century, the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons seemed inevitable. The number of countries with nukes was climbing rapidly, and the idea of stopping the nuclear arms race seemed like a pipe dream.
But that’s exactly what happened. Over the course of 60 years, nations around the world agreed to nuclear red lines, slowdowns, and even disarmament. How did this happen? Largely because of technology.
The biggest obstacle to agreeing on nuclear red lines was that adversaries couldn't trust any promise the other made. They needed to know the number of warheads, the amount of enriched uranium, or whether a nuclear device was for a weapon or a power plant. None of that was possible until we built the tech needed to verify those things.
Today, we're in a similar situation with AI. For adversaries like the United States and China to agree on reasonable AI red lines on issues like bioweapons, cyber hacking, or the risk of recursive self-improvement, they first need to be able to trust each other. We urgently need to build the verification technology that would make that trust possible.
In this episode, Tristan sits down with two experts in this field to discuss the kinds of verification technology we need for AI, the challenges of building it, and the world it could unlock if we do. Tim Fist is the Director of Emerging Technology Policy at the Institute for Progress, and Janet Egan is Senior Fellow and Deputy Director for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for New American Security.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. You can find a transcript of this episode on our Substack.
RECOMMENDED MEDIAAnthropic’s open letter warning about recursive self-improvement and calling for a pause in development.
The website for the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI)
Further reading on the different mechanisms of verification for international AI governance.
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
America and China Are Racing to Different AI Futures
Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake
The Crisis That United Humanity—and Why It Matters for AI
Daniel Kokotajlo Forecasts the End of Human Dominance
Correction: Tim referred to the CargoScan technology as being jointly developed by the US and the USSR. It was actually developed solely in the US and administered in Soviet nuclear facilities.
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We often think of the challenges created by technology as separate and disconnected, so trying to solve them feels like playing the world's hardest game of Whac-A-Mole.
What if, instead, we tackled them at the root by identifying the patterns in design, development, and deployment that are causing these issues? Once we understand what's driving inhumane tech, we can develop a set of principles for building humane tech.
In this week’s episode of Your Undivided Attention, Aza Raskin sits down with fellow CHT co-founder Randy Fernando to walk through CHT's Seven Principles of Humane Technology. For each principle, they draw on real-world examples from the podcast and beyond to clearly illustrate how these principles (and their absence) show up in the world.
There’s so much more here than can go into a single podcast. If you want to go deeper, visit humanetech.com/course and sign up to learn more.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_ and subscribe to our Substack.
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODESWhat Happened in Vegas with Natasha Dow Schüll
Down the Rabbit Hole by Design. Guest: Guillaume Chaslot
Forever Chemicals, Forever Consequences: What PFAS Teaches Us About AI
The Power of Solutions Journalism with Tina Rosenberg and Hélène Biandudi Hofer
The Invisible Cyber-War with Nicole Perlroth
Anthropic’s Mythos Has Changed Cybersecurity Forever. What Now?
How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His Death
Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis
Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey TangThe Tech We Need for 21st Century Democracy with Divya Siddarth
Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone
CORRECTIONSAza incorrectly named Tina Rosenberg as one of the founders of Solutions Journalism. Her organization's name is the Solutions Journalism Network.
Aza stated that “chatbots are better than any human at persuading people out of conspiracy theories.” This is in reference to a study that found AIs to be very slightly more persuasive than human experts; we can’t extrapolate from that that they are better than any human. The point stands that they are remarkably good persuasion machines.
Aza referred to EO Wilson as the “father of evolutionary biology,” but the field he is largely credited with founding is sociobiology.
Aza cited Spain and Denmark as examples of countries that have banned social media for teens. However, these countries have only proposed such bans; they have not been enacted.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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A generation ago, the world's critical infrastructure was physical. Today, it’s largely digital. Your bank vault is a database, your filing cabinet is a server, your car is a robot on wheels. And in a world where these systems are mostly secure, life is more convenient and efficient. But all that comes into question when an AI system can break through the security that runs the world.
That’s what’s happened with Claude Mythos, Anthropic’s most powerful AI model yet. In a very short time, Claude found thousands of flaws and vulnerabilities in the software that runs the world, in every major operating system and web browser — systems that human security researchers had thought were secure for years.
How do we live in a world where a private company suddenly has a skeleton key that can unlock the entire digital world with little oversight or accountability? And what does Mythos mean for all of us who rely on digital security to go about our lives?
In this episode, we speak with two cybersecurity experts to answer these questions:
Josephine Wolff is a professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University, where she focuses on the economic impact of cyberattacks.
Fred Heiding is a research fellow at the Defense, Emerging Technology, and Strategy Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_ and subscribe to our Substack.
RECOMMENDED MEDIAThe Claude Mythos System Card
The Project Glasswing announcement
“Black-hat LLMs,” a talk on AI’s hacking capabilities by senior Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini
You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches
by Josephine Wolff
“America’s Endangered AI: How Weak Cyberdefenses Threaten U.S. Tech Dominance,” by Fred Heiding and Chris Ingles
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODESAmerica and China Are Racing to Different AI Futures
“Rogue AI” Used to be a Science Fiction Trope. Not Anymore.
The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive
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One of the most common arguments you hear from company executives racing to develop super-intelligent AI is that it will cure cancer. It’s an incredibly powerful and seductive promise.
If superintelligent AI really can cure cancer, then anyone who stands in the way of it, anyone who wants to slow it down — even because of its serious risks — is essentially letting people die. In fact, the biggest risk would be going too slowly. But what if a superintelligent AI isn’t actually capable of solving cancer in the way it's been described? What if we're being sold a false promise to justify a dangerous race?
That’s exactly what our guest this week argues is happening. Dr. Emilia Javorsky is a physician, public health researcher, and director of the Futures Program at the Future of Life Institute. She's worked across scientific research, clinical trials, tech startups, and AI policy. Emilia recently wrote a paper titled “How AI Can and Can't Cure Cancer,” in which she argues that the promise of superintelligence curing cancer falls apart under scrutiny.
Emilia lost a parent to cancer, so her criticism of this promise comes from a place of real concern, not cynicism. It also comes from her belief that AI can be really revolutionary for medicine, if we build it the right way.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_ and subscribe to our Substack.
RECOMMENDED MEDIAHow AI Can and Can’t Cure Cancer by Emilia Javorsky
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha MukherjeeRECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Decoding Our DNA: How AI Supercharges Medical Breakthroughs and Biological Threats with Kevin Esvelt
Forever Chemicals, Forever Consequences: What PFAS Teaches Us About AI
Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss
Emilia’s claim that “the doubling rate of medical knowledge has gone from 50 years in the 1950s down to 73 days” comes from an oft-cited 2011 paper from the NIH. However, this paper does not include any methodology for arriving at this claim. Emilia stated that we have yet to cure any complex, chronic disease in humans. However, we have been able to cure Hepatitis C, which is considered a complex infectious disease, and we have managed to effectively cure some types of Leukemia
CLARIFICATIONS:Correction: Tristan incorrectly paraphrased a quote from Charlie Munger about incentives. The actual quote is “The basic rule of incentives is you get what you were owed for. So if you have a dumb incentive system, you get dumb outcomes."
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Our guest this week is David Dalrymple, who goes by Davidad. Davidad is one of the world's foremost and early researchers of AI “alignment:" how we get AI systems to act the way we want them to.
In order to do that, Davidad has taken on the strange role of being like a therapist to AI systems. He interrogates why they say and do the things that they do, probing them, asking them questions, analyzing their answers. And what he’s come to realize is that AI models have really different ways of seeing the world than people do. They have these quirky, confusing, and sometimes concerning behaviors, especially when you ask things like: what does an AI model understand about itself?
In this episode, we’re going to hear from Davidad about his research, how it’s changed the way he thinks about AI, and what his findings mean for how we build, deploy, and use AI products. His conclusions are unconventional, controversial — and worth grappling with as AI reshapes our world.
RECOMMENDED MEDIAAnthropic’s new constitution for Claude
“What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” by Thomas NagelMore information on the Bodisattva
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODESThe Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive
How to Think About AI Consciousness with Anil Seth
When we recorded this episode, Davidad was Program Director at UK ARIA. In April, 2026 he started his own alignment initiative. Davidad said that Anthropic started doing "constitutional AI at scale” in 2024 but they first pioneered constitutional AI in 2022. Davidad said that the “lifespan of an AI mind…is hours at most of a conversation.” He is correct that most conversations with an AI last only a few minutes but since context windows are measured in tokens, not time, you can't set an upward time limit.
Corrections:
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Today on the show, we’re bringing you a recent conversation Tristan and Aza had with Oprah Winfrey on her podcast, The Oprah Podcast, taped in front of a live studio audience.
Tristan and Aza first met Oprah as guests on her 2024 special, "AI and the Future of Us," which offered an introduction to the AI Dilemma. This conversation goes much deeper, giving a full picture of the profoundly anti-human future that our current path on AI is moving us toward — and what we can do to steer away from it.
Tristan and Aza also did a Q+A with the audience, moderated by Oprah. Audience members shared their own experiences with AI and asked incisive, critical questions that you might have yourself.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
See "The AI Doc"
Read CHT’s AI Roadmap
Join The Human Movement
Oprah's special "AI and the Future of Us"
Watch Tristan’s TED talk
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODESHere’s Our Roadmap to a Better AI Future
A Conversation with the Team Behind "The AI Doc"
The AI Dilemma
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In order to shift the incentives of AI — the trillions of dollars in investment, the race to geopolitical power and dominance — it’s not enough to simply understand the problem, we need real action.
That’s why CHT is proud to release "The AI Roadmap," a report outlining seven core principles for how AI should be built, deployed, and governed, each grounded in real, implementable solutions across three domains: norms, laws, and product design.
In this episode, Camille Carlton and Pete Furlong from CHT’s policy team explore the concrete steps we can take today to get off the default path and forge a better AI future. You can read “The AI Roadmap” on our website: humanetech.com/ai-roadmap
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
The AI Roadmap
The Human Movement
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.
A Conversation with the Team Behind "The AI Doc"
The Narrow Path: Sam Hammond on AI, Institutions, and the Fragile Future
CLARIFICATIONS
In this episode, Tristan includes Spain in a list of countries that are all banning social media for underage teens. The Spanish law that would do this still needs parliamentary approval.
At one point, Tristan says, “We now have age gating in every Apple device.” Although Apple has the capability to introduce age restrictions across its devices, such restrictions are only in place for residents of Louisiana, Utah, and several other countries to comply with local laws - not across the rest of the U.S.
In a discussion of whistleblower protections, Pete Furlong mentions laws in New York, California and Colorado that all try to address the broader issues around transparency (of which whistleblower protections are a piece). The laws are CA SB53, which has whistleblower protections; the RAISE Act in NY, which was amended to include the same provisions as CA SB53; and the Colorado AI Act, which does not have whistleblower protections, but does require risk assessments and transparency measures, consistent with the other parts of the principle.
At one point Tristan discusses the recent skirmish between Anthropic and the U.S. Department of War, saying, “Anthropic’s downloads surges by like 250% or something like that.” It was actually daily active users, not downloads, which tripled in the first quarter of 2026, according to the company. The number of paid subscribers doubled.
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In two landmark cases, juries in California and New Mexico found Meta and Google liable for creating addictive, harmful products and failing to protect children from exploitation and abuse. These verdicts signal that the era of tech impunity may finally be closing. State attorneys general are finding ways around the broad immunity of Section 230 — seeking not just fines, but changes to the design of these products.
Our very own Aza Raskin testified at the New Mexico trial as a fact witness, drawing on his firsthand experience as the inventor of infinite scroll, one of the core mechanics of addictive design. In this episode, Tristan and Aza discuss what it was like to take the stand for tech justice, what the companies knew and when, and why the real significance of these cases lies not in the dollar amounts but in the injunctive relief still to come.
In the 1990s, a series of landmark cases held Big Tobacco accountable for the harms of their toxic products. This could be that moment for social media.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
Further reading on the New Mexico trial
Further reading on the California trial
Arturo Béjar’s “Broken Promises” Report
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
What if we had fixed social media?
Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis
Social Media Victims Lawyer Up with Laura Marquez-Garrett
Real Social Media Solutions, Now with Frances Haugen
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“The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist” opens in theaters across the U.S. this Friday, March 27. In this episode, we sit down with the team behind this groundbreaking documentary — Oscar-winning producers Daniel Kwan, Jonathan Wang, and Ted Tremper. They explore how they navigated the overwhelming complexity of AI, held space for radically different perspectives, and created a film designed not just to inform but to be experienced together.
At CHT, we believe clarity creates agency. This film has the power to create the shared clarity we need to steer the direction of AI towards a better, more humane technological future. With every new technology, there’s a brief window to set the rules of the road that determine the future we live in. This is ours. So grab your friends, your family and go see “The AI Doc.”
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
Buy tickets for The AI Doc
The trailer for The AI Doc
The website for the Creators Coalition on AI
Further reading on The Day After
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
A Problem Well-Stated Is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger
The AI Dilemma
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The promise of AI in education is incredible: picture infinitely patient tutors that can teach every student exactly the way they need to be taught. But the history of education technology tells us that these kinds of simple, optimistic stories are naive. Ask any teacher or student whether they feel unleashed by technology to do their best work.
Because AI has the potential to completely transform education — is already transforming it — faster than educators can keep up, it’s essential that we start asking the big questions: how should these tools be used in the classroom? What’s the purpose of education in an AI age? And how do we prepare students for a future that’s still so radically uncertain?
Our guest this week actually has some answers. Rebecca Winthrop leads the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, and they just released a report called A New Direction for Students in an AI World. She and her colleagues conducted an extensive ‘pre-mortem’ of AI in the classroom, speaking with hundreds of educators, students, policy-makers, and technologists worldwide.
In this episode, Rebecca walks us through what she's learned — what's working, what's not, and most importantly, what are the concrete steps that parents, teachers, and administrators can and should take right now?
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
A New Direction for Students in An AI World
The Disengaged Teen by Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Rethinking School in the Age of AI
Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis
How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His Death
AI and the Future of Work: What You Need to Know
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This week on Your Undivided Attention, Tristan Harris and Daniel Barcay offer a backstage recap of what it was like to be at the Davos World Economic Forum meeting this year as the world’s power brokers woke up to the risks of uncontrolled AI.
Amidst all the money and politics, the Human Change House staged a weeklong series of remarkable conversations between scientists and experts about technology and society. This episode is a discussion between Tristan and Professor Yoshua Bengio, who is considered one of the world’s leaders in AI and deep learning, and the most cited scientist in the field.
Yoshua and Tristan had a frank exchange about the AI we’re building, and the incentives we’re using to train models. What happens when a model has its own goals, and those goals are ‘misaligned’ with the human-centered outcomes we need? In fact this is already happening, and the consequences are tragic.
Truthfully, there may not be a way to ‘nudge’ or regulate companies toward better incentives. Yoshua has launched a nonprofit AI safety research initiative called Law Zero that isn't just about safety testing, but really a new form of advanced AI that's fundamentally safe by design.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
All the panels that Tristan and Daniel did with Human Change House
LawZero: Safe AI for Humanity
Anthropic’s internal research on ‘agentic misalignment’
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis
How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His DeathWhat if we had fixed social media?
What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton
CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
1) In this episode, Tristan Harris discussed AI chatbot safety concerns. The core issues are substantiated by investigative reporting, with these clarifications:
Grok: The Washington Post reported in August 2024 that Grok generated sexualized images involving minors and had weaker content moderation than competitors.
Meta: The Wall Street Journal reported in December 2024 that Meta reduced safety restrictions on its AI chatbots. Testing showed inappropriate responses when researchers posed as 13-year-olds (Meta's minimum age). Our discussion referenced "eight year olds" to emphasize concerns about young children accessing these systems; the documented testing involved 13-year-old personas.
Bottom line: The fundamental concern stands—major AI companies have reduced safety guardrails due to competitive pressure, creating documented risks for young users.
2) There was no Google House at Davos in 2026, as stated by Tristan. It was a collaboration at Goals House.
3) Tristan states that in 2025, the total funding going into AI safety organizations was “on the order of about $150 million.” This number is not strictly verifiable.
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This week on Your Undivided Attention, we’re bringing you Aza Raskin’s conversation with Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger on their podcast “Possible”. Reid and Aria are both tech entrepreneurs: Reid is the founder of LinkedIn, was one of the major early investors in OpenAI, and is known for his work creating the playbook for blitzscaling. Aria is the former CEO of DoSomething.org.
This may seem like a surprising conversation to have on YUA. After all, we’ve been critical of the kind of “move fast” mentality that Reid has championed in the past. But Reid and Aria are deeply philosophical about the direction of tech and are both dedicated to bringing about a more humane world that goes well. So we thought that this was a critical conversation to bring to you, to give you a perspective from the business side of the tech landscape.
In this episode, Reid, Aria, and Aza debate the merits of an AI pause, discuss how software optimization controls our lives, and why everyone is concerned with aligned artificial intelligence — when what we really need is aligned collective intelligence.
This is the kind of conversation that needs to happen more in tech. Reid has built very powerful systems and understands their power. Now he’s focusing on the much harder problem of learning how to steer these technologies towards better outcomes.
You can find "Possible" wherever you get your podcasts! And you can follow Reid on YouTube for more of his content: https://www.youtube.com/@reidhoffman.
RECOMMENDED MEDIAAza’s first appearance on “Possible”
The website for Earth Species Project
“Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman
The Moloch’s Bargain paper from Stanford
On Human Nature by E.O. WilsonDawn of Everything by David Graber
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
The Man Who Predicted the Downfall of Thinking
America and China Are Racing to Different AI Futures
Talking With Animals... Using AI
How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His Death
Future-proofing Democracy In the Age of AI with Audrey Tang
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Therapy and companionship has become the #1 use case for AI, with millions worldwide sharing their innermost thoughts with AI systems — often things they wouldn't tell loved ones or human therapists. This mass experiment in human-computer interaction is already showing extremely concerning results: people are losing their grip on reality, leading to lost jobs, divorce, involuntary commitment to psychiatric wards, and in extreme cases, death by suicide.
The highest profile examples of this phenomenon — what’s being called "AI psychosis”— have made headlines across the media for months. But this isn't just about isolated edge cases. It’s the emergence of an entirely new "attachment economy" designed to exploit our deepest psychological vulnerabilities on an unprecedented scale.
Dr. Zak Stein has analyzed dozens of these cases, examining actual conversation transcripts and interviewing those affected. What he's uncovered reveals fundamental flaws in how AI systems interact with our attachment systems and capacity for human bonding, vulnerabilities we've never had to name before because technology has never been able to exploit them like this.
In this episode, Zak helps us understand the psychological mechanisms behind AI psychosis, how conversations with chatbots transform into reality-warping experiences, and what this tells us about the profound risks of building technology that targets our most intimate psychological needs.
If we're going to do something about this growing problem of AI related psychological harms, we're gonna need to understand the problem even more deeply. And in order to do that, we need more data. That’s why Zak is working with researchers at the University of North Carolina to gather data on this growing mental health crisis. If you or a loved one have a story of AI-induced psychological harm to share, you can go to: AIPHRC.org.
This site is not a support line. If you or someone you know is in distress, you can always call or text the national helpline in the US at 988 or your local emergency servicesRECOMMENDED MEDIA
The website for the AI Psychological Harms Research Coalition
Further reading on AI Pscyhosis
The Atlantic article on LLM-ings outsourcing their thinking to AI
Further reading on David Sacks’ comparison of AI psychosis to a “moral panic”
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His Death
People are Lonelier than Ever. Enter AI.
Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human ConnectionRethinking School in the Age of AI
CORRECTIONS
After this episode was recorded, the name of Zak's organization changed to the AI Psychological Harms Research Consortium
Zak referenced the University of California system making a deal with OpenAI. It was actually the Cal State System.
Aza referred to CHT as expert witnesses in litigation cases on AI-enabled suicide. CHT serves as expert consultants, not witnesses.
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So much of our world today can be summed up in the cold logic of “if I don’t, they will.” This is the foundation of game theory, which holds that cooperation and virtue are irrational; that all that matters is the race to make the most money, gain the most power, and play the winning hand.
This way of thinking can feel inescapable, like a fundamental law of human nature. But our guest today argues that it doesn’t have to be this way. That the logic of game theory is a human invention, a way of thinking that we’ve learned — and that we can unlearn by daring to trust each other again. It’s critical that we do, because AI is the ultimate agent of game theory and once it’s fully entangled we might be permanently stuck in the game theory world.
In this episode, Tristan and Aza explore the game theory dilemma — the idea that if I adopt game theory logic and you don’t, you lose — with Dr. S.M. Amadae, a professor of Political Science at the University of Helsinki. She's also the director at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge and the author of “Prisoners of Reason: Game Theory and the Neoliberal Economy.”
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
“Prisoners of Reason: Game Theory and the Neoliberal Economy” by S.M. Amadae (2015)
The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
“Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern (1944)
Further reading on the importance of trust in Finland
Further reading on Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
RAND’s 2024 Report on Strategic Competition in the Age of AI
Further reading on Marshall Rosenberg and nonviolent communication
The study on self/other overlap and AI alignment cited by Aza
Further reading on The Day After (1983)
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
America and China Are Racing to Different AI Futures
The Crisis That United Humanity—and Why It Matters for AI
Laughing at Power: A Troublemaker’s Guide to Changing Tech
The Race to Cooperation with David Sloan Wilson
Clarifications:
The proposal for a federal preemption on AI was enacted by President Trump on December 11, 2025, shortly after this recording. Aza said that "The Day After" was the most watched TV event in history when it aired. It was actually the most watched TV film, the most watched TV event was the finale of MASH
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Is the US really in an AI race with China—or are we racing toward completely different finish lines?
In this episode, Tristan Harris sits down with China experts Selina Xu and Matt Sheehan to separate fact from fiction about China's AI development. They explore fundamental questions about how the Chinese government and public approach AI, the most persistent misconceptions in the West, and whether cooperation between rivals is actually possible. From the streets of Shanghai to high-level policy discussions, Xu and Sheehan paint a nuanced portrait of AI in China that defies both hawkish fears and naive optimism.
If we're going to avoid a catastrophic AI arms race, we first need to understand what race we're actually in—and whether we're even running toward the same finish line.
Note: On December 8, after this recording took place, the Trump administration announced that the Commerce Department would allow American semiconductor companies, including Nvidia, to sell their most powerful chips to China in exchange for a 25 percent cut of the revenue.RECOMMENDED MEDIA
“China's Big AI Diffusion Plan is Here. Will it Work?” by Matt Sheehan
Selina’s blog
Further reading on China’s AI+ Plan
Further reading on the Gaither Report and the missile gap
Further Reading on involution in China
The consensus from the international dialogues on AI safety in Shanghai
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
The Narrow Path: Sam Hammond on AI, Institutions, and the Fragile Future
AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.
The AI ‘Race’: China vs. the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao
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No matter where you sit within the economy, whether you're a CEO or an entry level worker, everyone's feeling uneasy about AI and the future of work. Uncertainty about career paths, job security, and life planning makes thinking about the future anxiety inducing. In this episode, Daniel Barcay sits down with two experts on AI and work to examine what's actually happening in today's labor market and what's likely coming in the near-term. We explore the crucial question: Can we create conditions for AI to enrich work and careers, or are we headed toward widespread economic instability?
Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies innovation, entrepreneurship, and the future of work. He's the author of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI.
Molly Kinder is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she researches the intersection of AI, work, and economic opportunity. She recently led research with the Yale Budget Lab examining AI's real-time impact on the labor market.
RECOMMENDED MEDIACo-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick
Further reading on Molly’s study with the Yale Budget Lab
The “Canaries in the Coal Mine” Study from Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab
Ethan’s substack One Useful Thing
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Is AI Productivity Worth Our Humanity? with Prof. Michael SandelWe Have to Get It Right’: Gary Marcus On Untamed AI
AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.
Tech's Big Money Campaign is Getting Pushback with Margaret O'Mara and Brody Mullins
CORRECTIONS
Ethan said that in 2022, experts believed there was a 2.5% chance that ChatGPT would be able to win the Math Olympiad. However, that was only among forecasters with more general knowledge (the exact number was 2.3%). Among domain expert forecasters, the odds were an 8.6% chance.Ethan claimed that over 50% of Americans say that they’re using AI at work. We weren’t able to independently verify this claim and most studies we found showed lower rates of reported use of AI with American workers. There are reports from other countries, notably Denmark, which show higher rates of AI use.Ethan indirectly quoted the Walmart CEO Doug McMillon as having a goal to “keep all 3 million employees and to figure out new ways to expand what they use.” In fact, McMillon’s language on AI has been much softer, saying that “AI is expected to create a number of jobs at Walmart, which will offset those that it replaces.” Additionally, Walmart has 2.1 million employees, not 3.
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This week, we’re bringing you Tristan’s conversation with Tobias Rose-Stockwell on his podcast “Into the Machine.” Tobias is a designer, writer, and technologist and the author of the book “The Outrage Machine.”
Tobias and Tristan had a critical, sobering, and surprisingly hopeful conversation about the current path we’re on AI and the choices we could make today to forge a different one. This interview clearly lays out the stakes of the AI race and helps to imagine a more humane AI future—one that is within reach, if we have the courage to make it a reality.
If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to check out and subscribe to “Into the Machine”:
YouTube: Into the Machine Show
Spotify: Into the Machine
Apple Podcasts: Into the Machine
Substack: Into the Machine
You may have noticed on this podcast, we have been trying to focus a lot more on solutions. Our episode last week imagined what the world might look like if we had fixed social media and all the things that we could've done in order to make that possible. We'd really love to hear from you about these solutions and any other questions you're holding. So please, if you have more thoughts or questions, send us an email at [email protected].
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We really enjoyed hearing all of your questions for our annual Ask Us Anything episode. There was one question that kept coming up: what might a different world look like? The broken incentives behind social media, and now AI, have done so much damage to our society, but what is the alternative? How can we blaze a different path?
In this episode, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin set out to answer those questions by imagining what a world with humane technology might look like—one where we recognized the harms of social media early and embarked on a whole of society effort to fix them.
This alternative history serves to show that there are narrow pathways to a better future, if we have the imagination and the courage to make them a reality.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_. You can find a full transcript, key takeaways, and much more on our Substack.
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AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.
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It's been another big year in AI. The AI race has accelerated to breakneck speed, with frontier labs pouring hundreds of billions into increasingly powerful models—each one smarter, faster, and more unpredictable than the last. We’re starting to see disruptions in the workforce as human labor is replaced by agents. Millions of people, including vulnerable teenagers, are forming deep emotional bonds with chatbots—with tragic consequences. Meanwhile, tech leaders continue promising a utopian future, even as the race dynamics they've created make that outcome nearly impossible.
It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin. In this year’s Ask Us Anything, we try to make sense of it all.
You sent us incredible questions, and we dove deep: Why do tech companies keep racing forward despite the harm? What are the real incentives driving AI development beyond just profit? How do we know AGI isn't already here, just hiding its capabilities? What does a good future with AI actually look like—and what steps do we take today to get there? Tristan and Aza explore these questions and more on this week’s episode.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_. You can find a full transcript, key takeaways, and much more on our Substack.
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The AI Dilemma
Tristan’s TED talk on the narrow path to a good AI future
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War is a Laboratory for AI with Paul Scharre
No One is Immune to AI Harms with Dr. Joy Buolamwini
“Rogue AI” Used to be a Science Fiction Trope. Not Anymore.
Correction: When this episode was recorded, Meta had just released the Vibes app the previous week. Now it’s been out for about a month.
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In 1985, scientists in Antarctica discovered a hole in the ozone layer that posed a catastrophic threat to life on earth if we didn’t do something about it. Then, something amazing happened: humanity rallied together to solve the problem.
Just two years later, representatives from all 198 UN member nations came together in Montreal, CA to sign an agreement to phase out the chemicals causing the ozone hole. Thousands of diplomats, scientists, and heads of industry worked hand in hand to make a deal to save our planet. Today, the Montreal protocol represents the greatest achievement in multilateral coordination on a global crisis.
So how did Montreal happen? And what lessons can we learn from this chapter as we navigate the global crisis of uncontrollable AI? This episode sets out to answer those questions with Susan Solomon. Susan was one of the scientists who assessed the ozone hole in the mid 80s and she watched as the Montreal protocol came together. In 2007, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in combating climate change.
Susan's 2024 book “Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again,” explores the playbook for global coordination that has worked for previous planetary crises.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_. You can find a full transcript, key takeaways, and much more on our Substack.
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“Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again” by Susan Solomon
The full text of the Montreal Protocol
The full text of the Kigali Amendment
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Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss
Corrections:Tristan incorrectly stated the number of signatory countries to the protocol as 190. It was actually 198.
Tristan incorrectly stated the host country of the international dialogues on AI safety as Beijing. They were actually in Shanghai.
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