Can AI Be Built in Service of Life? A Conversation with Krista Tippett
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How does this episode introduce Krista Tippett and the Wisdom in Action context?
Hey, everyone. It's Tristan Harris, and welcome to Your Undivided Attention. Today, we're bringing you a conversation that I had with award-winning journalist Krista Tippett. And Krista Tippett is a dear friend, someone I've admired for a very long time. She's, of course, the Peabody Award-winning host of the On Being podcast. And she explores on that podcast spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and poetry, and the wisdom that we need to replenish and orient in the tender and tumultuous time that it is to be alive. Krista and I spoke remotely in front of a crowd while she was in person at the Wisdom in Action Forum in Australia. This was focused on trust in the age of AI. And during our conversation, we really just considered the question, what does it mean to build AI in service of life?
What does it mean to hold a collective problem this big as individuals? And how can we resist the spell of inevitability? I hope you enjoy it. And just before we dive in, I want to mention that Your Undivided Attention will be going on a short summer hiatus after this episode. So we'll be back in a few weeks.
So I actually have never done a Zoom interview or conversation before, and there you are now. So, Tristan, I think you know that this gathering opened yesterday for, I think, many, if not most of the people in the room, with watching the Apocaloptimist film. And it was offered as a kind of foundation and a frame for what I think are going to be, I want to say, life-giving, generative conversations. I'm not ready to give that word generative over to AI. For the next few days. And I know that, I mean, you were in the film, obviously, but my understanding is also you were a friend of the filmmaker so that even if you weren't directing the arc of the film, you were probably involved conversationally all along the way as what was being learned was being processed.
Yes.
So, you know, I wonder, and I don't think there's a lot that could surprise you at this point because you've been steeped in this for these years. But was there anything that surprised you about how it progressed and where it came out?
It's great to be with you, Krista. Great to see you and great to be with all of you there. I wish you could be there in person. You know, something that I appreciate about getting to talk with you, Krista, specifically, is we can dive into the other layers of what makes this a difficult topic and almost the psycho-spiritual dimension of even just relating to something as overwhelming, transformative and paradigmatic and confronting as AI. I think that many people, it sounds like, have hopefully seen the film. You'll notice that in the film, there's a director who is asking all these AI leaders, you know, is now a good time or bad time to have a kid? And I think a child is a way of basically creating a common, relatable question of what is the future going to be like?
Because children represent that future that we want to create. And, you know, one of the things that I'll share... hopefully in a constructive way, is I think the filmmaker Daniel, who's the director himself, had difficulty actually speaking to these people who were talking to him about the nature of what we were facing. And you'll see the turn in the film is when he feels like he has to find reflexive optimism or hope, where there's a kind of, we call it naive hope, where it's like, just make me feel good. Tell me it's going to be okay so I can go back to my life. And part of what AI represents and what Aza, my co-founder, and I talk about a lot is how it's really a rite of passage for our species because it's kind of enlightenment or wisdom or bust.
It's like, if we can be the wise version of ourselves, we can make it through this. Yeah. If we want to just reflexively fall into what makes us feel good, then we'll make choices that don't reflect the actual confronting difficulty of what we have to make possible right now. And I think the director himself faced that. And it was one of the challenges and opportunities in making the film.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How does this episode introduce Krista Tippett and the Wisdom in Action context?
0:04–8:16
2
What surprised Tristan and Krista about the Apocaloptimist film and its framing of AI?
8:16–15:46
3
How does fear shape public conversation and capacity to respond to AI risks?
15:46–52:25
4
What historical and policy analogies (The Day After, Indus Treaty, Taiwan law) illuminate AI governance?
52:25–53:44
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Your Undivided Attention
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