Tristan Harris is one of my “trusted voices.”
Tristan’s latest video, “The Most Hopeful (And Concerning) Moment Yet in AI”, is an outstanding 20 minute YouTube explainer on AI existential risks and the last week of both AI hype and unprecedented political consensus. If you don’t know him, Tristan Harris co-founded The Center for Humane Technology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07JaHf4oW6I
My key takeaways
The Hugging Face incident should really be called “the ChatGPT coordinated swarm hacking incident.” It's a big deal; this isn't something to ignore. The U.S. House of Representatives has gone home and won't return until after the midterms, and our chief executive just announced this weekend that all this discussion about AI's existential threat is fake news and hyperbole.
I don't believe that for a second. As a media literacy teacher, and someone who has used AI extensively over the past year to “vibe code” / build complex web applications using AI, as my assistant:, I can tell you firsthand that AI’s CURRENT capabilities are both powerful and shocking to experience.
We have an unprecedented level of political consensus today that we need external AI safety evaluators, international collaboration, and processes that will slow down AI development. We're not just talking about slowing it down: we're talking about preventing a situation where AI recursively develops itself without human intervention, growing more capable again and again. Essentially, becoming Skynet.
Give this video a watch. I'm planning to create my own (hopefully animated) video explainer, and I'm also setting up next month's Media Education Lab MediaEd Club session to focus on the AI documentary as well as these issues.
In the video, Tristan shares a great recommendation: Watch “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist” (the new artificial intelligence documentary) now available on Netflix, released publicly September 15th. Don’t just watch it, Consider hosting your own “watch and discussion event” in your local community.
In the video, Tristan also shares an excellent book recommendation: “The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future” by Mustafa Suleyman.
Subscribe to the Center for Humane Technology’s channel on YouTube and their Substack newsletter.
Let’s coordinate our human minds in this moment and act to build a more human centered and sustainable future for us all.
For links to more of my “trusted voices” visit:
and
https://www.resistandheal.com/trusted-voices
AI Attribution: I used Claude AI (“Sonnet High” model) to edit these thoughts for grammar, punctuation, and clarity.