One of the hardest parts about being human today is navigating uncertainty. When we see experts battling in public and emotions running high, it's easy to doubt what we once felt certain about. This uncertainty isn't always accidental—it's often strategically manufactured. Historian Naomi Oreskes, author of "Merchants of Doubt," reveals how industries from tobacco to fossil fuels have deployed a calculated playbook to create uncertainty about their products' harms. These campaigns have delayed r...
Mar 20, 2025•51 min•Ep. 106
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 smartpho...
Mar 06, 2025•59 min•Ep. 105
When Chinese AI company DeepSeek announced they had built a model that could compete with OpenAI at a fraction of the cost, it sent shockwaves through the industry and roiled global markets. But amid all the noise around DeepSeek, there was a clear signal: machine reasoning is here and it's transforming AI. In this episode, Aza sits down with CHT co-founder Randy Fernando to explore what happens when AI moves beyond pattern matching to actual reasoning. They unpack how these new models can not o...
Feb 20, 2025•32 min•Ep. 104
When engineers design AI systems, they don't just give them rules - they give them values. But what do those systems do when those values clash with what humans ask them to do? Sometimes, they lie. In this episode, Redwood Research's Chief Scientist Ryan Greenblatt explores his team’s findings that AI systems can mislead their human operators when faced with ethical conflicts. As AI moves from simple chatbots to autonomous agents acting in the real world - understanding this behavior becomes cri...
Jan 30, 2025•35 min•Ep. 103
The status quo of tech today is untenable: we’re addicted to our devices, we’ve become increasingly polarized, our mental health is suffering and our personal data is sold to the highest bidder. This situation feels entrenched, propped up by a system of broken incentives beyond our control. So how do you shift an immovable status quo? Our guest today, Srdja Popovic, has been working to answer this question his whole life. As a young activist, Popovic helped overthrow Serbian dictator Slobodan Mi...
Jan 16, 2025•46 min•Ep. 102
2024 was a critical year in both AI and social media. Things moved so fast it was hard to keep up. So our hosts reached into their mailbag to answer some of your most burning questions. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted questions. We will see you all in the new year. We are hiring for a new Director of Philanthropy at CHT. Next year will be an absolutely critical time for us to shape how AI is going to get rolled out across our society. And our team is working hard on public awareness,...
Dec 19, 2024•40 min•Ep. 101
Silicon Valley's interest in AI is driven by more than just profit and innovation. There’s an unmistakable mystical quality to it as well. In this episode, Daniel and Aza sit down with humanist chaplain Greg Epstein to explore the fascinating parallels between technology and religion. From AI being treated as a godlike force to tech leaders' promises of digital salvation, religious thinking is shaping the future of technology and humanity. Epstein breaks down why he believes technology has becom...
Nov 21, 2024•47 min•Ep. 100
CW: This episode features discussion of suicide and sexual abuse. In the last episode, we had the journalist Laurie Segall on to talk about the tragic story of Sewell Setzer, a 14 year old boy who took his own life after months of abuse and manipulation by an AI companion from the company Character.ai . The question now is: what's next? Megan has filed a major new lawsuit against Character .ai in Florida, which could force the company–and potentially the entire AI industry–to change its harmful ...
Nov 07, 2024•49 min•Ep. 99
Content Warning: This episode contains references to suicide, self-harm, and sexual abuse. Megan Garcia lost her son Sewell to suicide after he was abused and manipulated by AI chatbots for months. Now, she’s suing the company that made those chatbots. On today’s episode of Your Undivided Attention, Aza sits down with journalist Laurie Segall, who's been following this case for months. Plus, Laurie’s full interview with Megan on her new show, Dear Tomorrow. Aza and Laurie discuss the profound im...
Oct 24, 2024•49 min•Ep. 98
Social media disinformation did enormous damage to our shared idea of reality. Now, the rise of generative AI has unleashed a flood of high-quality synthetic media into the digital ecosystem. As a result, it's more difficult than ever to tell what’s real and what’s not, a problem with profound implications for the health of our society and democracy. So how do we fix this critical issue? As it turns out, there’s a whole ecosystem of folks to answer that question. One is computer scientist Oren E...
Oct 10, 2024•26 min
Historian Yuval Noah Harari says that we are at a critical turning point. One in which AI’s ability to generate cultural artifacts threatens humanity’s role as the shapers of history. History will still go on, but will it be the story of people or, as he calls them, ‘alien AI agents’? In this conversation with Aza Raskin, Harari discusses the historical struggles that emerge from new technology, humanity’s AI mistakes so far, and the immediate steps lawmakers can take right now to steer us towar...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 97
It’s a confusing moment in AI. Depending on who you ask, we’re either on the fast track to AI that’s smarter than most humans, or the technology is about to hit a wall. Gary Marcus is in the latter camp. He’s a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist who built his own successful AI start-up. But he’s also been called AI’s loudest critic. On Your Undivided Attention this week, Gary sits down with CHT Executive Director Daniel Barcay to defend his skepticism of generative AI and to discuss w...
Sep 26, 2024•42 min•Ep. 96
AI is moving fast. And as companies race to rollout newer, more capable models–with little regard for safety–the downstream risks of those models become harder and harder to counter. On this week’s episode of Your Undivided Attention, CHT’s policy director Casey Mock comes on the show to discuss a new legal framework to incentivize better AI, one that holds AI companies liable for the harms of their products. Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology . Follow us on...
Sep 13, 2024•39 min•Ep. 95
[This episode originally aired on August 17, 2023] 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 technol...
Sep 06, 2024•45 min
Today, the tech industry is the second-biggest lobbying power in Washington, DC, but that wasn’t true as recently as ten years ago. How did we get to this moment? And where could we be going next? On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, Tristan and Daniel sit down with historian Margaret O’Mara and journalist Brody Mullins to discuss how Silicon Valley has changed the nature of American lobbying. Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology . Follow us on Twitter...
Aug 26, 2024•44 min•Ep. 94
It’s been a year and half since Tristan and Aza laid out their vision and concerns for the future of artificial intelligence in The AI Dilemma. In this Spotlight episode, the guys discuss what’s happened since then–as funding, research, and public interest in AI has exploded–and where we could be headed next. Plus, some major updates on social media reform, including the passage of the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act in the Senate. Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane...
Aug 12, 2024•37 min
AI has been a powerful accelerant for biological research, rapidly opening up new frontiers in medicine and public health. But that progress can also make it easier for bad actors to manufacture new biological threats. In this episode, Tristan and Daniel sit down with biologist Kevin Esvelt to discuss why AI has been such a boon for biologists and how we can safeguard society against the threats that AIxBio poses. Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology . Follow ...
Jul 18, 2024•33 min•Ep. 93
Will AI ever start to think by itself? If it did, how would we know, and what would it mean? In this episode, Dr. Anil Seth and Aza discuss the science, ethics, and incentives of artificial consciousness. Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness . Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology . Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_ RECOMMENDED MEDIA Frankenstein by...
Jul 04, 2024•48 min•Ep. 92
Climate change, political instability, hunger. These are just some of the forces behind an unprecedented refugee crisis that’s expected to include over a billion people by 2050. In response to this growing crisis, wealthy governments like the US and the EU are employing novel AI and surveillance technologies to slow the influx of migrants at their borders. But will this rollout stop at the border? In this episode, Tristan and Aza sit down with Petra Molnar to discuss how borders have become a pr...
Jun 20, 2024•46 min•Ep. 91
This week, a group of current and former employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind penned an open letter accusing the industry’s leading companies of prioritizing profits over safety. This comes after a spate of high profile departures from OpenAI, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever and senior researcher Jan Leike, as well as reports that OpenAI has gone to great lengths to silence would-be whistleblowers. The writers of the open letter argue that researchers have a “right to warn” the public a...
Jun 07, 2024•38 min•Ep. 90
Right now, militaries around the globe are investing heavily in the use of AI weapons and drones. From Ukraine to Gaza, weapons systems with increasing levels of autonomy are being used to kill people and destroy infrastructure and the development of fully autonomous weapons shows little signs of slowing down. What does this mean for the future of warfare? What safeguards can we put up around these systems? And is this runaway trend toward autonomous warfare inevitable or will nations come toget...
May 23, 2024•59 min•Ep. 89
Tech companies say that AI will lead to massive economic productivity gains. But as we know from the first digital revolution, that’s not what happened. Can we do better this time around? RECOMMENDED MEDIA Power and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson Professor Acemoglu co-authored a bold reinterpretation of economics and history that will fundamentally change how you see the world Can we Have Pro-Worker AI? Professor Acemoglu co-authored this paper about redirecting AI development onto...
May 09, 2024•47 min•Ep. 88
Suicides. Self harm. Depression and anxiety. The toll of a social media-addicted, phone-based childhood has never been more stark. It can be easy for teens, parents and schools to feel like they’re trapped by it all. But in this conversation with Tristan Harris, author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes the case that the conditions that led to today’s teenage mental health crisis can be turned around – with specific, achievable actions we all can take starting today. This episode was r...
Apr 11, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 87
Beneath the race to train and release more powerful AI models lies another race: a race by companies and nation-states to secure the hardware to make sure they win AI supremacy. Correction : The latest available Nvidia chip is the Hopper H100 GPU, which has 80 billion transistors. Since the first commercially available chip had four transistors, the Hopper actually has 20 billion times that number. Nvidia recently announced the Blackwell, which boasts 208 billion transistors - but it won’t ship ...
Mar 29, 2024•45 min•Ep. 86
What does a functioning democracy look like in the age of artificial intelligence? Could AI even be used to help a democracy flourish? Just in time for election season, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang returns to the podcast to discuss healthy information ecosystems, resilience to cyberattacks, how to “prebunk” deepfakes, and more. RECOMMENDED MEDIA Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page This acad...
Feb 29, 2024•35 min•Ep. 85
Was it political progress, or just political theater? The recent Senate hearing with social media CEOs led to astonishing moments — including Mark Zuckerberg’s public apology to families who lost children following social media abuse. Our panel of experts, including Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, untangles the explosive hearing, and offers a look ahead, as well. How will this hearing impact protocol within these social media companies? How will it impact legislation? In short: will anyth...
Feb 13, 2024•25 min•Ep. 84
Over the past year, a tsunami of apps that digitally strip the clothes off real people has hit the market. Now anyone can create fake non-consensual sexual images in just a few clicks. With cases proliferating in high schools, guest presenter Laurie Segall talks to legal scholar Mary Anne Franks about the AI-enabled rise in deep fake porn and what we can do about it. Correction : Laurie refers to the app 'Clothes Off.' It’s actually named Clothoff. There are many clothes remover apps in this cat...
Feb 01, 2024•43 min•Ep. 83
We usually talk about tech in terms of economics or policy, but the casual language tech leaders often use to describe AI — summoning an inanimate force with the powers of code — sounds more... magical. So, what can myth and magic teach us about the AI race? Josh Schrei, mythologist and host of The Emerald podcast, says that foundational cultural tales like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" or Prometheus teach us the importance of initiation, responsibility, human knowledge, and care. He argues these ...
Jan 18, 2024•36 min•Ep. 82
2024 will be the biggest election year in world history. Forty countries will hold national elections, with over two billion voters heading to the polls. In this episode of Your Undivided Attention , two experts give us a situation report on how AI will increase the risks to our elections and our democracies. Correction: Tristan says two billion people from 70 countries will be undergoing democratic elections in 2024. The number expands to 70 when non-national elections are factored in. RECOMMEN...
Dec 21, 2023•47 min•Ep. 81
You asked, we answered. This has been a big year in the world of tech, with the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence, acceleration of neurotechnology, and continued ethical missteps of social media. Looking back on 2023, there are still so many questions on our minds, and we know you have a lot of questions too. So we created this episode to respond to listener questions and to reflect on what lies ahead. Correction: Tristan mentions that 41 Attorneys General have filed a lawsuit again...
Nov 30, 2023•35 min•Ep. 80
