Tristan Harris

And the possible with social media was obviously we're going to give everyone a voice, democratize speech, help people connect with their friends.

But we don't talk about the probable, what's actually likely to happen due to the incentives, and how the business models of maximizing engagement I saw 10 years ago would obviously lead to rewarding doomscrolling, more addiction, more distraction, and that resulted in the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime.

Now, it was interesting watching kind of how this happened, because at first I saw people kind of doubt these consequences.

You know, we didn't really want to face it.

Then we said, well, maybe this is just a new moral panic.

Maybe this is just a reflexive fear of new technology.

Then the data started rolling in.

And then we said, well, this is just inevitable.

This is just what happens when you connect people on the internet.

But we had a chance.

to make a different choice about the business models of engagement.

And had we made that choice 10 years ago, I want you to reimagine how different the world might have been if we had changed that incentive.

So I'm here today because we're here to talk about AI.

And AI dwarfs the power of all other technologies combined.

Now, why is that?

Because if you make an advance in, say, biotech, that doesn't advance energy and rocketry.

But if you make an advance in rocketry,

that doesn't advance biotech.

But when you make an advance in intelligence, artificial intelligence that is generalized, intelligence is the basis for all scientific and technological progress.

And so you get an explosion of scientific and technical capability.