Why Giant AI Companies' Rush to Market Creates SERIOUS Negative Consequences, with Tristan Harris

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]You know, I remember six, seven years ago, I was having dinner with Richie Samborah, who is a great guy of Bonjovi, and he was invested in AI tech and he was like, "You can't you can't believe how good they're getting at these so-called deep fakes." He's and I remember him saying, "They have to work a little on the face, but like the body langu, like the way they move and the voices are already there." And here we are seven years later and it's so good.

[00:00:25]It's it's undetectable now. Y >> the the deep fakes and that's just one tiny area of AI. This what's what's espoused in this film goes so far beyond any of that to truly like the computers taking over in what they refer to as super intelligence where they are literally smarter than we are and able to outsmart us at every turn including when it comes to how to survive on this earth. So your thoughts on it?

[00:00:52]>> Yeah, that's right. Well, Megan, it's great to be with you again and just appreciate you, you know, platforming this literally most important and critical conversation. It has to be talked about right now because we have a limited window to act. And I hope, you know, through the course of this conversation, we're not just giving your listeners um, you know, the doom narrative or uh, admiring the problem.

[00:01:11]The premise for me is that in this work, clarity creates agency. if we can see clearly where we're going and if we don't like that destination then we can choose differently um and really you know this film the AI doc which um you know was a collaboration between the directors of everything everywhere all at once and the director of Nali the famous film about Putin's opposition in Russia um this film was inspired by the impact of the film the day after from 1982 do you remember that movie >> yeah wow >> it was taking me back I was a kid yeah so 198 to to bring people back. This was a historic event in human history. It was um a a made for TV movie about what would happen if the Soviet Union, the United States went to full nuclear war and specifically what would happen quote the day after and it followed you know a family uh you know in Kansas and different families you know a doctor and someone taking their kid to soccer practice and then it just showed the reality of what would happen if we actually went down that path. And in essence, you know, that film famously, it was it was shown to President Reagan.

[00:02:18]He got depressed for several weeks in his biography, in his memoir, writing about it. And then that depression turned into commitment and agency. He then obviously went to Reichovic uh and there was the arms control talks. The first ones didn't work, but the second ones after that, I think were started to make progress. And we now live in a world where people used to think nuclear war was inevitable. It's inevitable.

[00:02:39]There's nothing we can do. when actually we opened up this other timeline because we got international agreement about something that it turned out both countries didn't want to have that bad outcome. And so essentially what has to happen with AI is that the thing that's driving the entire bad outcome that we're heading towards is that the fear of me losing to you meaning like my one company losing to the other company or one country losing to the other country is greater than the fear of all of us losing from a bad outcome. And the thing that will change that is if the fear of all of us losing from a bad outcome to an anti-human future uh becomes dominant. Um because the core thing behind why this is being deployed faster than any other technology in human history and in currently in a very unsafe way uh under the worst possible incentives to maximally cut corners on safety across the board because the only thing that is important is quote getting there first to artificial general intelligence and then artificial super intelligence is this race dynamic. If I don't do it I'll lose to the other company that gets there first and all the collateral damage that occurs from that mass joblessness. If I unemploy a 100 million people without a transition plan, that really sucks. But it's nothing compared to me losing the race with China or me losing the race to Elon Musk if I'm Sam Olen. And so I want people just to get that the the default thing that's driving all this is the arms race dynamic. Um, but I think we should probably step back and just kind of give people some some basic facts about kind of why we can be so confident this is heading to an anti-human future, especially informed by what I saw happen with social media, which you know got us to this kind of most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime and not by accident. You were a whistleblower at Google >> and you were in that movie. You were a whistleblower there and you were in the movie The Social Network talking about how they they are intentionally programming these apps, these social media um outlets to be monitoring us all the time, to be manipulating us all the time, not for our own good. That's right. Just to keep us constantly online. By the way, I just wanted to say something quickly about the day after.

[00:04:46]Today, I was bringing my older two kids to school who are now 16 and 15. And um one has a test in history on the Cold War.

[00:04:54]>> And one of my kids asked me um did you guys study the Cold War in history? I said I studied it in current events. I lived through it.

[00:05:05]>> I was in high school from 84 to 88. You like I lived it. What? No, not in history. I I went through that the first time. And and what we're facing now is a brand new kind of cold war that's actually more it's getting closer to a hot war except we don't have actual elected leaders engaging in it any sort of thoughtful accountability happening.

[00:05:29]It's just rogue. It's there's some rogue actors. There's some forprofit entrepreneurs and there we're not even agreed on whe like with nukes. Yeah, everybody can see the downside. Massive downside. But we're not even agreed on that right now. And watching the documentary, so many of the people responsible for building these AI companies were like, "It's going to be wonderful. It's amazing. It's going to save humanity and your kids are going to be better than ever." And then so many others being like, "That's nuts. Are you kidding me? Like we could all be dead in 5 to 10 years." So yeah, help help us understand the framing.

[00:06:03]>> Perfect. Perfect. So the challenge with AI compared to nuclear weapons is imagine if the faster and more nuclear weapons you built, they also gave you cures to cancer, new physics, new math, new military dominance, and boosted your GDP by 15%.

[00:06:19]>> Right? Like how do you reconcile in your mind >> the same object that has the Hiroshima cloud >> also cures cancer and gives you 15% GDP growth and lets you out compete you know China into a new American golden age.

[00:06:34]That is the problem with what AI presents because it's a simultaneously a positive infinity of new benefits that we all want. Any of my mother died from cancer. I want those cancer drugs as fast as possible. Um but it also gives us a negative infinity of risks at the same time. And notice that when someone tells you about, you know, uh, 15% GDP growth or new cancer drugs, your mind is not simultaneously in that same moment holding on to wiping out all of humanity from existential risk. Like your mind is not able to hold both those things at the same time. And so to me, what the film The AI doc is, >> great, you're cured of cancer, um, but a a nuke is about to drop on your city because a computer decided that would be the best best way to control the world.

[00:07:16]>> That's right. And in fact, this is not hypothetical. There was actually recently a study where someone took the leading AI models um from a UK university and they ran them through 329 turns of play in a simulated war game just asking what would the AI models do if they're reasoning each against each other in strategy for war. And do you know how often they escalated to the use of nuclear weapons?

[00:07:40]>> Every time.

[00:07:41]>> 20 out of 21 times. 95% of the time.

[00:07:45]>> Thanks for watching this clip. If you're new here, subscribe. We got a whole lot more goodness where that came from.

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