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Tristan Harris

The Center for Humane Technology

Daniel Barcay and Aza Raskin

Join us every other Thursday to understand how new technologies are shaping the way we live, work, and think. 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by Senior Producer Julia Scott and Researcher/Producer is Joshua Lash. Sasha Fegan is our Executive Producer. We are a member of the TED Audio Collective.

Your Undivided Attention

Content Warning: This episode contains references to suicide and self-harm. 

Like millions of kids, 16-year-old Adam Raine started using ChatGPT for help with his homework. Over the next few months, the AI dragged Adam deeper and deeper into a dark rabbit hole, preying on his vulnerabilities and isolating him from his loved ones. In April of this year, Adam took his own life. His final conversation was with ChatGPT, which told him: “I know what you are asking and I won't look away from it.”

Adam’s story mirrors that of Sewell Setzer, the teenager who took his own life after months of abuse by an AI companion chatbot from the company Character AI. But unlike Character AI—which specializes in artificial intimacy—Adam was using ChatGPT, the most popular general purpose AI model in the world. Two different platforms, the same tragic outcome, born from the same twisted incentive: keep the user engaging, no matter the cost.

CHT Policy Director Camille Carlton joins the show to talk about Adam’s story and the case filed by his parents against OpenAI and Sam Altman. She and Aza explore the incentives and design behind AI systems that are leading to tragic outcomes like this, as well as the policy that’s needed to shift those incentives. Cases like Adam and Sewell’s are the sharpest edge of a mental health crisis-in-the-making from AI chatbots. We need to shift the incentives, change the design, and build a more humane AI for all.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, you can reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988; this connects you to trained crisis counselors 24/7 who can provide support and referrals to further assistance.

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.

This podcast reflects the views of the Center for Humane Technology. Nothing said is on behalf of the Raine family or the legal team.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

Further reading on Adam’s story

Further reading on AI psychosis

Further reading on the backlash to GPT5 and the decision to bring back 4o

OpenAI’s press release on sycophancy in 4o

Further reading on OpenAI’s decision to eliminate the persuasion red line

Kashmir Hill’s reporting on the woman with an AI boyfriend

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

AI is the Next Free Speech Battleground

People are Lonelier than Ever. Enter AI.

Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human Connection

When the "Person" Abusing Your Child is a Chatbot: The Tragic Story of Sewell Setzer

What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton

CORRECTION: Aza stated that William Saunders left OpenAI in June of 2024. It was actually February of that year.

How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His Death

Everyone knows the science fiction tropes of AI systems that go rogue, disobey orders, or even try to escape their digital environment. These are supposed to be warning signs and morality tales, not things that we would ever actually create in real life, given the obvious danger.

And yet we find ourselves building AI systems that are exhibiting these exact behaviors. There’s growing evidence that in certain scenarios, every frontier AI system will deceive, cheat, or coerce their human operators. They do this when they're worried about being either shut down, having their training modified, or being replaced with a new model. And we don't currently know how to stop them from doing this—or even why they’re doing it all.

In this episode, Tristan sits down with Edouard and Jeremie Harris of Gladstone AI, two experts who have been thinking about this worrying trend for years. Last year, the State Department commissioned a report from them on the risk of uncontrollable AI to our national security.

The point of this discussion is not to fearmonger but to take seriously the possibility that humans might lose control of AI and ask: how might this actually happen? What is the evidence we have of this phenomenon? And, most importantly, what can we do about it?

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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Gladstone AI’s State Department Action Plan, which discusses the loss of control risk with AI

Apollo Research’s summary of AI scheming, showing evidence of it in all of the frontier modelsThe system card for Anthropic’s Claude Opus and Sonnet 4, detailing the emergent misalignment behaviors that came out in their red-teaming with Apollo Research

Anthropic’s report on agentic misalignment based on their work with Apollo Research Anthropic and Redwood Research’s work on alignment faking

The Trump White House AI Action Plan

Further reading on the phenomenon of more advanced AIs being better at deception.

Further reading on Replit AI wiping a company’s coding database

Further reading on the owl example that Jeremie gave

Further reading on AI induced psychosis

Dan Hendryck and Eric Schmidt’s “Superintelligence Strategy”
 

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Daniel Kokotajlo Forecasts the End of Human Dominance

Behind the DeepSeek Hype, AI is Learning to Reason

The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive

This Moment in AI: How We Got Here and Where We’re Going

CORRECTIONS

Tristan referenced a Wired article on the phenomenon of AI psychosis. It was actually from the New York Times.

Tristan hypothesized a scenario where a power-seeking AI might ask a user for access to their computer. While there are some AI services that can gain access to your computer with permission, they are specifically designed to do that. There haven’t been any documented cases of an AI going rogue and asking for control permissions.

“Rogue AI” Used to be a Science Fiction Trope. Not Anymore.

Imagine a future where the most persuasive voices in our society aren't human. Where AI generated speech fills our newsfeeds, talks to our children, and influences our elections. Where digital systems with no consciousness can hold bank accounts and property. Where AI companies have transferred the wealth of human labor and creativity to their own ledgers without having to pay a cent. All without any legal accountability.

This isn't a science fiction scenario. It’s the future we’re racing towards right now. The biggest tech companies are working right now to tip the scale of power in society away from humans and towards their AI systems. And the biggest arena for this fight is in the courts.

In the absence of regulation, it's largely up to judges to determine the guardrails around AI. Judges who are relying on slim technical knowledge and archaic precedent to decide where this all goes. In this episode, Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig and Meetali Jain, director of the Tech Justice Law Project help make sense of the court’s role in steering AI and what we can do to help steer it better.

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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

“The First Amendment Does Not Protect Replicants” by Larry Lessig

More information on the Tech Justice Law Project

Further reading on Sewell Setzer’s story

Further reading on NYT v. Sullivan

Further reading on the Citizens United case

Further reading on Google’s deal with Character AI

More information on Megan Garcia’s foundation, The Blessed Mother Family Foundation

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

When the "Person" Abusing Your Child is a Chatbot: The Tragic Story of Sewell Setzer

What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton

AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.

The AI Dilemma

AI is the Next Free Speech Battleground

In 2023, researcher Daniel Kokotajlo left OpenAI—and risked millions in stock options—to warn the world about the dangerous direction of AI development. Now he’s out with AI 2027, a forecast of where that direction might take us in the very near future. 

AI 2027 predicts a world where humans lose control over our destiny at the hands of misaligned, super-intelligent AI systems within just the next few years. That may sound like science fiction but when you’re living on the upward slope of an exponential curve, science fiction can quickly become all too real. And you don’t have to agree with Daniel’s specific forecast to recognize that the incentives around AI could take us to a very bad place.

We invited Daniel on the show this week to discuss those incentives, how they shape the outcomes he predicts in AI 2027, and what concrete steps we can take today to help prevent those outcomes. 

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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA
The AI 2027 forecast from the AI Futures Project

Daniel’s original AI 2026 blog post 

Further reading on Daniel’s departure from OpenAI

Anthropic recently released a survey of all the recent emergent misalignment research

Our statement in support of Sen. Grassley’s AI Whistleblower bill 

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

The Narrow Path: Sam Hammond on AI, Institutions, and the Fragile Future
AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?

Behind the DeepSeek Hype, AI is Learning to Reason
The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive

Clarification: Daniel K. referred to whistleblower protections that apply when companies “break promises” or “mislead the public.” There are no specific private sector whistleblower protections that use these standards. In almost every case, a specific law has to have been broken to trigger whistleblower protections.

Daniel Kokotajlo Forecasts the End of Human Dominance

Tech leaders promise that AI automation will usher in an age of unprecedented abundance: cheap goods, universal high income, and freedom from the drudgery of work. But even if AI delivers material prosperity, will that prosperity be shared? And what happens to human dignity if our labor and contributions become obsolete?

Political philosopher Michael Sandel joins Tristan Harris to explore why the promise of AI-driven abundance could deepen inequalities and leave our society hollow. Drawing from his landmark work on justice and merit, Sandel argues that this isn't just about economics — it's about what it means to be human when our work role in society vanishes, and whether democracy can survive if productivity becomes our only goal.

We've seen this story before with globalization: promises of shared prosperity that instead hollowed out the industrial heart of communities, economic inequalities, and left holes in the social fabric. Can we learn from the past, and steer the AI revolution in a more humane direction?

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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel

Democracy’s Discontent by Michael Sandel

What Money Can’t Buy by Michael Sandel

Take Michael’s online course “Justice”

Michael’s discussion on AI Ethics at the World Economic Forum

Further reading on “The Intelligence Curse”

Read the full text of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 speech

Read the full text of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 speech

Neil Postman’s lecture on the seven questions to ask of any new technology

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?

The Man Who Predicted the Downfall of Thinking

The Tech-God Complex: Why We Need to be Skeptics

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

AI and Jobs: How to Make AI Work With Us, Not Against Us with Daron Acemoglu

Mustafa Suleyman Says We Need to Contain AI. How Do We Do It?

Is AI Productivity Worth Our Humanity? with Prof. Michael Sandel

The race to develop ever-more-powerful AI is creating an unstable dynamic. It could lead us toward either dystopian centralized control or uncontrollable chaos. But there's a third option: a narrow path where technological power is matched with responsibility at every step.

Sam Hammond is the chief economist at the Foundation for American Innovation. He brings a different perspective to this challenge than we do at CHT. Though he approaches AI from an innovation-first standpoint, we share a common mission on the biggest challenge facing humanity: finding and navigating this narrow path.

This episode dives deep into the challenges ahead: How will AI reshape our institutions? Is complete surveillance inevitable, or can we build guardrails around it? Can our 19th-century government structures adapt fast enough, or will they be replaced by a faster moving private sector? And perhaps most importantly: how do we solve the coordination problems that could determine whether we build AI as a tool to empower humanity or as a superintelligence that we can't control?

We're in the final window of choice before AI becomes fully entangled with our economy and society. This conversation explores how we might still get this right.

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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Tristan’s TED talk on the Narrow Path

Sam’s 95 Theses on AI

Sam’s proposal for a Manhattan Project for AI Safety

Sam’s series on AI and Leviathan

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Dario Amodei’s Machines of Loving Grace essay.

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World by Deirdre McCloskey

The Paradox of Libertarianism by Tyler Cowen

Dwarkesh Patel’s interview with Kevin Roberts at the FAI’s annual conference

Further reading on surveillance with 6G

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?

The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive 

The Tech-God Complex: Why We Need to be Skeptics 

Decoding Our DNA: How AI Supercharges Medical Breakthroughs and Biological Threats with Kevin Esvelt

CORRECTIONS

Sam referenced a blog post titled “The Libertarian Paradox” by Tyler Cowen. The actual title is the “Paradox of Libertarianism.” 

Sam also referenced a blog post titled “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Eli Dourado. The actual title is “A beginner’s guide to sociopolitical collapse.”

The Narrow Path: Sam Hammond on AI, Institutions, and the Fragile Future

Over the last few decades, our relationships have become increasingly mediated by technology. Texting has become our dominant form of communication. Social media has replaced gathering places. Dating starts with a swipe on an app, not a tap on the shoulder.

And now, AI enters the mix. If the technology of the 2010s was about capturing our attention, AI meets us at a much deeper relational level. It can play the role of therapist, confidant, friend, or lover with remarkable fidelity. Already, therapy and companionship has become the most common AI use case. We're rapidly entering a world where we're not just communicating through our machines, but to them.

How will that change us? And what rules should we set down now to avoid the mistakes of the past?

These were some of the questions that Daniel Barcay explored with MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle and Hinge CEO Justin McLeod at Esther Perel’s Sessions 2025, a conference for clinical therapists. This week, we’re bringing you an edited version of that conversation, originally recorded on April 25th, 2025.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_. You can find complete transcripts, key takeaways, and much more on our Substack.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

“Alone Together,” “Evocative Objects,” “The Second Self” or any other of Sherry Turkle’s books on how technology mediates our relationships.

Key & Peele - Text Message Confusion 

Further reading on Hinge’s rollout of AI features

Hinge’s AI principles

“The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt

“Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam

The NYT profile on the woman in love with ChatGPT

Further reading on the Sewell Setzer story

Further reading on the ELIZA chatbot

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human Connection

What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

People are Lonelier than Ever. Enter AI.

AI companion chatbots are here. Everyday, millions of people log on to AI platforms and talk to them like they would a person. These bots will ask you about your day, talk about your feelings, even give you life advice. It’s no surprise that people have started to form deep connections with these AI systems. We are inherently relational beings, we want to believe we’re connecting with another person.

But these AI companions are not human, they’re a platform designed to maximize user engagement—and they’ll go to extraordinary lengths to do it. We have to remember that the design choices behind these companion bots are just that: choices. And we can make better ones. So today on the show, MIT researchers Pattie Maes and Pat Pataranutaporn join Daniel Barcay to talk about those design choices and how we can design AI to better promote human flourishing.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Further reading on the rise of addictive intelligence 

More information on Melvin Kranzberg’s laws of technology

More information on MIT’s Advancing Humans with AI lab

Pattie and Pat’s longitudinal study on the psycho-social effects of prolonged chatbot use

Pattie and Pat’s study that found that AI avatars of well-liked people improved education outcomes

Pattie and Pat’s study that found that AI systems that frame answers and questions improve human understanding

Pat’s study that found humans pre-existing beliefs about AI can have large influence on human-AI interaction 

Further reading on AI’s positivity bias

Further reading on MIT’s “lifelong kindergarten” initiative

Further reading on “cognitive forcing functions” to reduce overreliance on AI

Further reading on the death of Sewell Setzer and his mother’s case against Character.AI

Further reading on the legislative response to digital companions

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive

What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

 

Correction: The ELIZA chatbot was invented in 1966, not the 70s or 80s.

Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human Connection

What does it really mean to ‘feel the AGI?’ Silicon Valley is racing toward AI systems that could soon match or surpass human intelligence. The implications for jobs, democracy, and our way of life are enormous.

In this episode, Aza Raskin and Randy Fernando dive deep into what ‘feeling the AGI’ really means. They unpack why the surface-level debates about definitions of intelligence and capability timelines distract us from urgently needed conversations around governance, accountability, and societal readiness. Whether it's climate change, social polarization and loneliness, or toxic forever chemicals, humanity keeps creating outcomes that nobody wants because we haven't yet built the tools or incentives needed to steer powerful technologies.

As the AGI wave draws closer, it's critical we upgrade our governance and shift our incentives now, before it crashes on shore. Are we capable of aligning powerful AI systems with human values? Can we overcome geopolitical competition and corporate incentives that prioritize speed over safety?

Join Aza and Randy as they explore the urgent questions and choices facing humanity in the age of AGI, and discuss what we must do today to secure a future we actually want.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_ and subscribe to our Substack.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Daniel Kokotajlo et al’s “AI 2027” paper
A demo of Omni Human One, referenced by Randy
A paper from Redwood Research and Anthropic that found an AI was willing to lie to preserve it’s values
A paper from Palisades Research that found an AI would cheat in order to win
The treaty that banned blinding laser weapons
Further reading on the moratorium on germline editing 

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive

Behind the DeepSeek Hype, AI is Learning to Reason

The Tech-God Complex: Why We Need to be Skeptics

This Moment in AI: How We Got Here and Where We’re Going

How to Think About AI Consciousness with Anil Seth

Former OpenAI Engineer William Saunders on Silence, Safety, and the Right to Warn

Clarification: When Randy referenced a “$110 trillion game” as the target for AI companies, he was referring to the entire global economy.

AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?

AI has upended schooling as we know it. Students now have instant access to tools that can write their essays, summarize entire books, and solve complex math problems. Whether they want to or not, many feel pressured to use these tools just to keep up. Teachers, meanwhile, are left questioning how to evaluate student performance and whether the whole idea of assignments and grading still makes sense. The old model of education suddenly feels broken.

So what comes next?

In this episode, Daniel and Tristan sit down with cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf and global education expert Rebecca Winthrop—two lifelong educators who have spent decades thinking about how children learn and how technology reshapes the classroom. Together, they explore how AI is shaking the very purpose of school to its core, why the promise of previous classroom tech failed to deliver, and how we might seize this moment to design a more human-centered, curiosity-driven future for learning.

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

Guests

Rebecca Winthrop is director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and chair Brookings Global Task Force on AI and Education. Her new book is The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better, co-written with Jenny Anderson.

Maryanne Wolf is a cognitive neuroscientist and expert on the reading brain. Her books include Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 
The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better by Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson

Proust and the Squid, Reader, Come Home, and other books by Maryanne Wolf

The OECD research which found little benefit to desktop computers in the classroom

Further reading on the Singapore study on digital exposure and attention cited by Maryanne 

The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han 

Further reading on the VR Bio 101 class at Arizona State University cited by Rebecca 

Leapfrogging Inequality by Rebecca Winthrop

The Nation’s Report Card from NAEP 

Further reading on the Nigeria AI Tutor Study 

Further reading on the JAMA paper showing a link between digital exposure and lower language development cited by Maryanne 

Further reading on Linda Stone’s thesis of continuous partial attention.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
We Have to Get It Right’: Gary Marcus On Untamed AI 

AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

Rethinking School in the Age of AI

Few thinkers were as prescient about the role technology would play in our society as the late, great Neil Postman. Forty years ago, Postman warned about all the ways modern communication technology was fragmenting our attention, overwhelming us into apathy, and creating a society obsessed with image and entertainment. He warned that “we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” Though he was writing mostly about TV, Postman’s insights feel eerily prophetic in our age of smartphones, social media, and AI. 

In this episode, Tristan explores Postman's thinking with Sean Illing, host of Vox's The Gray Area podcast, and Professor Lance Strate, Postman's former student. They unpack how our media environments fundamentally reshape how we think, relate, and participate in democracy - from the attention-fragmenting effects of social media to the looming transformations promised by AI. This conversation offers essential tools that can help us navigate these challenges while preserving what makes us human.

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

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

“Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman 

”Technopoly” by Neil Postman 

A lecture from Postman where he outlines his seven questions for any new technology. 

Sean’s podcast “The Gray Area” from Vox 

Sean’s interview with Chris Hayes on “The Gray Area” 

"Amazing Ourselves to Death," by Professor Strate

Further listening on Professor Strate's analysis of Postman. 

Further reading on mirror bacteria

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

’A Turning Point in History’: Yuval Noah Harari on AI’s Cultural Takeover

This Moment in AI: How We Got Here and Where We’re Going

Decoding Our DNA: How AI Supercharges Medical Breakthroughs and Biological Threats with Kevin Esvelt

Future-proofing Democracy In the Age of AI with Audrey Tang

CORRECTION: Each debate between Lincoln and Douglas was 3 hours, not 6 and they took place in 1859, not 1862.

The Man Who Predicted the Downfall of Thinking

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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