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📣 Tristan Harris's New TED Talk, and "AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?"
CHT Newsletter
Hi there,
We’ve got some great content for you this week.
The first is a talk Tristan Harris gave a couple of weeks ago at TED in Vancouver titled “Why AI is Our Ultimate Test and Greatest Invitation.” Tristan received a standing ovation from the crowd at TED. It's a compelling listen—and it's only 15 minutes of your time. Click on the green button to go through to the talk now.
There is some deep thinking in the talk, and Tristan has expanded out into a longer article (10 minute read, below). Tristan’s TED talk is a great companion piece to our podcast episode this week. It’s a deep dive on AGI between co-founders Aza Raskin and
.As you know, Silicon Valley is racing toward AI systems that could soon match or surpass human intelligence. There has been endless jockeying from experts and labs about whose going to ‘win’ the race to AGI and whose prediction is closest - sometimes I honestly feel like the conversation resembles talk in a sports bar.
That misplaced focus really distracts us from thinking about the enormity of the changes that are coming, and whether we can slow it all down. So do listen to this episode to understand more of the nuance in this conversation. This also a great listen if you need a neat primer on what AGI actually is.
We've extracted the key takeaways from the episode into a short-read article. Could you please let me know if you like that format?
and I are experimenting with the format and want to make them as useful and interesting as possible to you - so feedback is really welcome.Cheers,
The Narrow Path: Why AI is Our Ultimate Test and Greatest Invitation
This is an edited version of a talk given by Tristan Harris at TED in Vancouver on Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?
What does it really mean to ‘feel the AGI?’ Silicon Valley is racing toward AI systems that could soon match or surpass human intelligence. The implications for jobs, democracy, and our way of life are enormous.
AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?
AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to an AI system that can do anything a human can do at a computer.
Thoughts from within the current structure.
The first few minutes of Tristan‘s talk are incredibly telling about the context from which he is speaking. The premise that human intelligence is about cognition - the height of which is embodied in Nobel laureates - is a deeply engrained way of understanding our species that comes from within the colonialist, capitalist structure. in this structure, we have stripped away all other aspects and practises of intelligence that are alive in all of life and reduce them to human cognition - “computational brain power”. Empire separated us from nature and our humble place as the newbie’s on the block, and from the full spectrum of our inner resources: from spirit, from our ancestors, from our heart intelligence, intuition, etc. This is the thinking and perspective on which AI has been built and trained. An anemic, reductionist and fundamentally isolated perspective of Intelligence. it lacks any data sets related to the intelligence of plants, trees, water other beings who have been on the Earth, millions and millions of years longer than we have and any information it has about these comes from within the colonialist capitalist structure and our limited, audacious and depleted views. Through AI we are magnifying this depletion. The irony of comparing it to Noble laureates is that they very likely were tapping into this larger intelligence in order to do what they did. to say that AI can do this for a fraction of the cost is to completely and utterly disregard the cost to our home, the Earth and all her beings in creating and running massive data warehouses. Whatever pontification we undertake about how to use AGI for good from within this current perspective is doomed before it’s articulated. An AGI talk where a man gets up to the stage and tries to speak but instead wails and keens uncontrollably for 15 minutes- now that would be something worthy of these times.
Long-time CHT appreciator here. So I was disappointed to see this sentence
> As you know, Silicon Valley is racing toward AI systems that could soon match or surpass human intelligence.
presented as fact. Silicon Valley would like you to think that it is racing toward such systems. That idea creates higher stock valuations for some lucky folks but it has no basis in reality. Repeating it credulously perpetuates a massive grift with real environmental and societal implications. I look to CHT to do better.