Tristan Harris

And the reason why is because they don't have a good answer for where this all goes, if they have this particular conversation.

They can distract and talk about all the amazing benefits, which are all real, by the way.

Because social media did give us many benefits, but at the cost of systemic polarization, breakdown of shared reality, and the most anxious and depressed generation in history, that systemic effect is not worth anything.

It's not, again, no social media.

It's a differently designed social media that doesn't have the externalities.

What is the problem?

We have private profit and then public harm.

The harm lands on the balance sheet of society.

It doesn't land on the balance sheet of the companies.

And the companies exploit that.

And every time we sell with cigarettes, with fossil fuels, with asbestos, with forever chemicals, with social media, the formula is always the same.

Immediately print money on the product that's driving a lot of growth.

Hide the harm, deny it, do fear, uncertainty, doubt, political campaigns that's so merchants of doubt, propaganda that makes people doubt whether the consequences are real.

Say, we'll do a study.

We'll know in 10 years whether social media did harm kids.

They did all of those things.

But we don't, A, we don't have that time with AI.

And B, you can actually know a lot of those harms if you know the incentive.

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, said, if you show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.

If you know the incentive, which is for these companies, AI, to race as fast as possible, to take every shortcut, to not fund safety research, to not do security, to not care about rising energy prices, to not care about job loss, and just to race to get there first, that is their incentive.