Stay ConnectedJoin co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin every other Thursday to understand how new technologies are shaping the way we live, work, and think.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by our Senior Producer Julia Scott and our Executive Producer Josh Lash. We are a member of the TED Audio Collective.
Copyright: © 2019-2025 Center for Humane Technology
This is going to be the most productive decade in the history of our species, says Mustafa Suleyman, author of “The Coming Wave,” CEO of Inflection AI, and founder of Google’s DeepMind. But in order to truly reap the benefits of AI, we need to learn how to contain it. Paradoxically, part of that will mean collectively saying no to certain forms of progress. As an industry leader reckoning with a future that’s about to be ‘turbocharged’ Mustafa says we can all play a role in shaping the technology in hands-on ways and by advocating for appropriate governance.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma
This new book from Mustafa Suleyman is a must-read guide to the technological revolution just starting, and the transformed world it will create
Partnership on AI is bringing together diverse voices from across the AI community to create resources for advancing positive outcomes for people and society
Policy Reforms Toolkit from the Center for Humane Technology
Digital lawlessness has been normalized in the name of innovation. It’s possible to craft policy that protects the conditions we need to thrive
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_
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Last week, Senator Chuck Schumer brought together Congress and many of the biggest names in AI for the first closed-door AI Insight Forum in Washington, D.C. Tristan and Aza were invited speakers at the event, along with Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, and other leaders. In this update on Your Undivided Attention, Tristan and Aza recount how they felt the meeting went, what they communicated in their statements, and what it felt like to critique Meta’s LLM in front of Mark Zuckerberg.
Correction: In this episode, Tristan says GPT-3 couldn’t find vulnerabilities in code. GPT-3 could find security vulnerabilities, but GPT-4 is exponentially better at it.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
In Show of Force, Silicon Valley Titans Pledge ‘Getting This Right’ With A.I.
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and others discussed artificial intelligence with lawmakers, as tech companies strive to influence potential regulations
Majority Leader Schumer Opening Remarks For The Senate’s Inaugural AI Insight Forum
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) opened the Senate’s inaugural AI Insight Forum
The Wisdom Gap
As seen in Tristan’s talk on this subject in 2022, the scope and speed of our world’s issues are accelerating and growing more complex. And yet, our ability to comprehend those challenges and respond accordingly is not matching pace
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Spotlight On AI: What Would It Take For This to Go Well?
The AI ‘Race’: China vs. the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao
Spotlight: Elon, Twitter and the Gladiator Arena
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_
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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 ‘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_
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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
This paper argues for placing a greater weight on a state’s capacity to diffuse, or widely adopt, innovations
U.S. moves to cut research ties with China over security concerns threaten American progress in critical areas
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_
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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
Esther’s podcast that focuses on the hard conversations we're afraid to have at work
A young man strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the internet
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 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_
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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 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_
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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.
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_
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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
Center for Humane Technology’s recently updated Take Control Toolkit
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
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_
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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
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_
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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
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_
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