Can We Avoid AI Catastrophe? (with Tech Ethicist Tristan Harris)
Can We Avoid AI Catastrophe? (with Tech Ethicist Tristan Harris)  
Podcast: Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Rating: Explicit Published On: Sun Sep 13 2026
Description: “I get calls from people inside of some of the AI labs,” says technology ethicist Tristan Harris. “And it feels like getting a call from Robert Oppenheimer before the atomic bomb.” Harris (a former Google insider and AI expert) has spent more than a decade sounding the alarm about the effects of technology on our wellbeing. He’s currently the co-founder of Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to align technology with humanity’s best interests.In light of Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon’s recent resignation (0:45), which has since been echoed by Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Sam Altman (OpenAI), and Elon Musk (1:30), we wanted to represent our prescient conversation with Harris from this spring. We discuss The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (6:30), how AI has developed over the past ten years (10:12), why the most powerful figures in tech are preparing for doomsday scenarios (13:15), the AI arms race underway (15:45), the ‘balance sheet of benefits’ that shapes Silicon Valley’s thinking around AGI (24:30) and the unsettling lack of control being exercised over their own nascent systems (33:55).On the back-half, we talk about Chat GPT’s role in the devastating death of teenager Adam Raine (40:30) [content warning], Tristan’s early ethical concerns about technology as a Stanford graduate working at Google (48:34), and the rewiring he attempted as part of the widely-seen 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma (53:00). To close, Harris outlines his tech safety practices to protect our future on the planet (1:08:05), top leaders’ prognostications of (p)doom at the hands of AI (1:10:43), and, as a counter, the ‘human movement’ that he believes can lead us to a narrow path toward a better future (1:17:30).Original air date: March 29, 2026As always, our email: talkeasypod@gmail.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.