The AI Conversation We Need to Have (with Tristan Harris)

The AI Conversation We Need to Have (with Tristan Harris)

From Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso by Higher Ground

March 29, 2026 · 1h 24m

About this episode

Tristan Harris discusses the ethical implications of AI and its impact on society.

“I got calls from people inside of some of the AI labs,” says technology ethicist Tristan Harris. “And it felt like getting a call from Robert Oppenheimer before the atomic bomb.”  Harris (a former Google insider and AI expert) has spent more than a decade sounding the alarm about the effects of technology on our wellbeing. He’s currently the co-founder of Center for Humane Technology , a nonprofit organization whose mission is to align technology with humanity’s best interests. He joins us this week to discuss his new film, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (6:30), how AI has developed over the past ten years (10:12), and why the most powerful figures in tech are preparing for doomsday scenarios (13:15). Then, we unpack why the AI arms race is being driven by the wrong incentives (15:45), the ‘balance sheet of benefits’ that shapes their thinking about AGI (24:30), and the unsettling lack of control they exercise over their own nascent systems (33:55). On the back-half, we talk about Chat GPT’s role in the devastating death of teenager Adam Raine (40:30) [content warning] , Tristan’s early ethical concerns about technology as a Stanford graduate working at…

People in this episode

Host: Sam Fragoso

Guest: Tristan Harris

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Center for Humane Technology, Google, Stanford

Books & works: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, The Social Dilemma

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