When Tristan Harris realised he wanted to warn the world about the dangers posed by social media, he created The Center for Humane Technology. It was 2018 and Harris, a former Google designer who’d worked on addictive digital tools, was terrified about what “app” culture was doing to our brains. So through his non-profit organisation and documentaries such as The Social Dilemma, he urged policymakers to pay attention.
Fast forward five years, and it is clear that policymakers did not listen. Despite social media companies trumpeting their improved oversight, controls remain lax. Meanwhile, as academics such as Jonathan Haidt have noted, the mental health of young people has deteriorated dramatically in tandem with the rise of social networks.
Last month Harris, along with his colleague Aza Raskin, gave a presentation about artificial intelligence to the Aspen Ideas Institute that was probably the most lucid and chilling AI tutorial that I have ever seen.