This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam for Gozo so welcome to the show.

Today, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris.

In 2013, Harris, a product manager at Google, created an internal slide deck that went viral at the company,

warning of the consequences of the arms race to capture attention and the moral responsibility companies have and how they shape society.

As a result, he spent three years as a design ethicist

and product philosopher for Google, developing an ethical framework for how their technology

could interact with users. His framework was well received within the company. It was also ignored.

After three years of trying to improve Google from within, specifically Gmail and

Chrome, Harris left and began publicly sounding the alarm. He is now the co-founder of the Center

for Humane Technology. In his contributions to the widely seen 2020 documentary, The Social Dilemma,

inspired a wave of activism and legislation around the world, including

laws to protect kids and teenagers from the addictive lures of social media. In fact, since we

recorded this episode with Tristan, jurors in the first two trials in the U.S. targeting social

media firms over harm to children have found META and Google liable.

Tristan's co-founder at the center, Aza Raskin, actually testified at the New Mexico trial,

which ordered META to pay $375 million in damages. But as Harris has said, to these companies,

they see this payout as less a fine and more fee for doing business. What's monumental about

this case, though, is that it could lead to injunctive relief that requires meta to both pay

additional damages, and most importantly, make specific changes to its platforms and company operations,

potentially resulting in what many are calling a big tobacco moment for social

media. Harris, for his part, is hoping this groundswell of opposition can be parlayed into the fight

against artificial intelligence. The new film, The AI Doc, or How I Became an Apocalypse Optimist,

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