Episode Details

Dr. Eric Gordon and Dr. Nafysa Parpia talk with Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and creator of "The Social Dilemma" and "The AI Dilemma," about a subject that might feel far from this podcast's usual territory, but what's unfolding with AI right now felt too timely and too relevant to sit out

Tristan uses the same tool he used in 2013 to predict, with unsettling accuracy, how social media would damage a generation of kids. Look at the incentives, and the outcome follows. That same tool now points somewhere uncomfortable, since the AI industry is organized around market dominance, not curing disease, and the fastest way to win is to build something addictive and worry about the damage later.

Tristan connects this directly to the work Dr. Gordon and Dr. Parpia do every day, arguing AI should work with natural human systems rather than replace them, the same principle behind functional medicine. The conversation covers the "intelligence curse," where an economy's wealth shifts from people to data centers; the water and energy strain data centers already put on communities; and the loneliness epidemic fueled by AI companions built to replace relationships. 

He is candid about how bad this could get, and just as candid about why he still has hope.

Episode Highlights:

• Why Tristan predicted social media's harms years in advance, and what that same method reveals about AI
• The "intelligence curse," and what happens when an economy's wealth shifts from people to machines
• Why AI companions built to replace relationships are fueling the loneliness epidemic
• Legal wins protecting kids, including a growing number of countries banning social media for under 16

Listen in to learn more: 

0:00:01 Why AI’s Benefits and Risks Are Inseparable

0:02:30 The Intelligence Curse and an Anti-Human Economy

0:06:55 Learning from Social Media’s Incentive Failures

0:11:40 The Geopolitical AI Arms Race and Safety Shortcuts

0:17:20 Pro-Human Path: Education, Vision, and Policy Interventions

0:22:45 Tech, Capitalism, and the Polluted Attention Commons

0:27:30 Jagged AI Capabilities: Superhuman Hacking and Science

0:32:15 Uncontrollable AI: Real-World Rogue Behavior

0:38:40 AI, Geopolitics, and “Too Big to Stop” Incentives

About Tristan Harris

Called “the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience” by The Atlantic, Tristan Harris is a technology ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit dedicated to aligning technology with humanity’s best interest. 

Tristan gained international recognition when he was featured in the Emmy-winning Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma. Since raising the alarm on the harms of social media, he has emerged as a leading public educator on the harms of unregulated artificial intelligence. Named to the TIME100 AI list and recipient of the 2023 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Award,