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Today on the show, we’re bringing you a recent conversation Tristan and Aza had with Oprah Winfrey on her podcast, The Oprah Podcast, taped in front of a live studio audience.

Tristan and Aza first met Oprah as guests on her 2024 special, "AI and the Future of Us," which offered an introduction to the AI Dilemma. This conversation goes much deeper, giving a full picture of the profoundly anti-human future that our current path on AI is moving us toward — and what we can do to steer away from it.

Tristan and Aza also did a Q+A with the audience, moderated by Oprah. Audience members shared their own experiences with AI and asked incisive, critical questions that you might have yourself.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

See "The AI Doc"

Read CHT’s AI Roadmap

Join The Human Movement

Oprah's special "AI and the Future of Us"

Watch Tristan’s TED talk

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Here’s Our Roadmap to a Better AI Future

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The AI Dilemma

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In order to shift the incentives of AI — the trillions of dollars in investment, the race to geopolitical power and dominance — it’s not enough to simply understand the problem, we need real action. 

That’s why CHT is proud to release "The AI Roadmap," a report outlining seven core principles for how AI should be built, deployed, and governed, each grounded in real, implementable solutions across three domains: norms, laws, and product design.

In this episode, Camille Carlton and Pete Furlong from CHT’s policy team explore the concrete steps we can take today to get off the default path and forge a better AI future. You can read “The AI Roadmap” on our website: humanetech.com/ai-roadmap 

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The AI Roadmap

The Human Movement

 

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AI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.

A Conversation with the Team Behind "The AI Doc"

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CLARIFICATIONS 

In this episode, Tristan includes Spain in a list of countries that are all banning social media for underage teens. The Spanish law that would do this still needs parliamentary approval. 

At one point, Tristan says, “We now have age gating in every Apple device.” Although Apple has the capability to introduce age restrictions across its devices, such restrictions are only in place for residents of Louisiana, Utah, and several other countries to comply with local laws - not across the rest of the U.S. 

In a discussion of whistleblower protections, Pete Furlong mentions laws in New York, California and Colorado that all try to address the broader issues around transparency (of which whistleblower protections are a piece). The laws are CA SB53, which has whistleblower protections; the RAISE Act in NY, which was amended to include the same provisions as CA SB53; and the Colorado AI Act, which does not have whistleblower protections, but does require risk assessments and transparency measures, consistent with the other parts of the principle. 

At one point Tristan discusses the recent skirmish between Anthropic and the U.S. Department of War, saying, “Anthropic’s downloads surges by like 250% or something like that.” It was actually daily active users, not downloads, which tripled in the first quarter of 2026, according to the company. The number of paid subscribers doubled.

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In two landmark cases, juries in California and New Mexico found Meta and Google liable for creating addictive, harmful products and failing to protect children from exploitation and abuse. These verdicts signal that the era of tech impunity may finally be closing. State attorneys general are finding ways around the broad immunity of Section 230 — seeking not just fines, but changes to the design of these products.

Our very own Aza Raskin testified at the New Mexico trial as a fact witness, drawing on his firsthand experience as the inventor of infinite scroll, one of the core mechanics of addictive design. In this episode, Tristan and Aza discuss what it was like to take the stand for tech justice, what the companies knew and when, and why the real significance of these cases lies not in the dollar amounts but in the injunctive relief still to come.

In the 1990s, a series of landmark cases held Big Tobacco accountable for the harms of their toxic products. This could be that moment for social media.

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Further reading on the New Mexico trial

Further reading on the California trial

Arturo Béjar’s “Broken Promises” Report

 

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Real Social Media Solutions, Now with Frances Haugen

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“The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist” opens in theaters across the U.S. this Friday, March 27. In this episode, we sit down with the team behind this groundbreaking documentary — Oscar-winning producers Daniel Kwan, Jonathan Wang, and Ted Tremper. They explore how they navigated the overwhelming complexity of AI, held space for radically different perspectives, and created a film designed not just to inform but to be experienced together. 

At CHT, we believe clarity creates agency. This film has the power to create the shared clarity we need to steer the direction of AI towards a better, more humane technological future. With every new technology, there’s a brief window to set the rules of the road that determine the future we live in. This is ours. So grab your friends, your family and go see “The AI Doc.” 

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Buy tickets for The AI Doc

The trailer for The AI Doc

The website for the Creators Coalition on AI

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The promise of AI in education is incredible: picture infinitely patient tutors that can teach every student exactly the way they need to be taught. But the history of education technology tells us that these kinds of simple, optimistic stories are naive. Ask any teacher or student whether they feel unleashed by technology to do their best work. 

Because AI has the potential to completely transform education — is already transforming it — faster than educators can keep up, it’s essential that we start asking the big questions: how should these tools be used in the classroom? What’s the purpose of education in an AI age? And how do we prepare students for a future that’s still so radically uncertain?

Our guest this week actually has some answers. Rebecca Winthrop leads the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, and they just released a report called A New Direction for Students in an AI World. She and her colleagues conducted an extensive ‘pre-mortem’ of AI in the classroom, speaking with hundreds of educators, students, policy-makers, and technologists worldwide. 

In this episode, Rebecca walks us through what she's learned — what's working, what's not, and most importantly, what are the concrete steps that parents, teachers, and administrators can and should take right now?

 

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A New Direction for Students in An AI World

The Disengaged Teen by Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson

 

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