Talk

The A.I. Dilemma

Mar 2023 🇺🇸 Center for Humane Technology

In this presentation, Tristan Harris and Center for Humane Technology co-founder Aza Raskin argue that the rollout of generative AI is repeating a pattern they trace back to social media's own history: powerful new capabilities deployed under competitive pressure faster than institutions, norms, or safeguards can adapt. Drawing an explicit parallel to the engagement-driven design harms they associate with earlier social platforms, the talk warns that AI systems built for engagement, persuasion, or anthropomorphic attachment could compound existing concerns about attention, misinformation, and children's development unless deployed with more deliberate safeguards. The presentation is a synthesis argument aimed at technologists and policymakers rather than a new peer-reviewed study. TechKids Foundation includes it as Harris's central framework connecting his earlier social-media design critique to AI-era concerns falling under this library's ai-confusion category.

~3.6 million views

Center for Humane Technology's own account of the talk states it reached an estimated 3.6 million views and informed AI policy briefings, including to U.S. state governors' offices.

CITATION

Harris, Tristan, and Aza Raskin. "The A.I. Dilemma." Center for Humane Technology, presented March 9, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ

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