Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology: A Missing Voice in the AI Middle Way Coalition

The Conscience of Silicon Valley Steps into the AI Crisis

In an era when artificial intelligence development accelerates faster than our capacity to govern it, one voice has consistently warned of the dangers with both urgency and intellectual rigor: Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and what The Atlantic once called "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience." His evolution from Google design ethicist to global advocate for AI safety positions him as an likely partner for the AI Middle Way Coalition's mission to create a governance framework that avoids both American surveillance capitalism and Chinese state control.

The story of Harris's transformation reveals a technologist who moved from building the problem to solving it—a journey that makes him uniquely valuable to any initiative seeking to reshape how the world approaches transformative technology.

From Silicon Valley Engineer to Ethics Crusader

Harris's path to prominence began in a Stanford computer science classroom, where his early interests in magic and illusion shaped his understanding of human perception and persuasion. Studying under BJ Fogg in Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, he learned how technology could exploit psychological vulnerabilities. This education would become prophetic as he later built Apture, a startup eventually acquired by Google in 2011. Rather than simply enjoy his success, Harris did something remarkable: he began questioning the ethics of the very products he was helping create.

Working at Google as a design ethicist, Harris grew increasingly troubled by the company's engagement-at-any-cost philosophy. In February 2013, he authored an internal presentation titled "A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users' Attention"—a 141-slide manifesto that went viral within Google, eventually viewed by tens of thousands of employees. In that document, he urged technology giants including Google, Apple, and Facebook to recognize their "enormous responsibility" to prevent humanity from remaining "buried in a smartphone."

Rather than accept the system from within, Harris left Google in 2016 to found the Center for Humane Technology, launching the "Time Well Spent" initiative. This wasn't mere activism—it was a comprehensive critique of an entire business model. Harris had recognized what many missed: that the attention economy creates misaligned incentives between technology companies and human flourishing. Companies profit by maximizing time spent, engagement, and emotional intensity, regardless of whether this serves users' genuine interests.

His argument landed powerfully in mainstream consciousness through the 2020 Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma," which reached an estimated 100 million people worldwide. The film featured Harris and other former tech employees explaining how social media's design deliberately nurtures addiction to maximize profit and manipulate behavior. This wasn't speculation; Harris could speak from firsthand experience of how silicon valley's most powerful companies weaponize human psychology for quarterly returns.

The Evolution to AI: Repeating Social Media's Mistakes

Since 2023, Harris has expanded his focus beyond social media to confront what he sees as an even more consequential crisis: artificial intelligence being deployed without adequate safeguards or democratic consent. Working with co-host Aza Raskin and through his podcast "Your Undivided Attention," Harris has been sounding an alarm that modern AI companies are repeating social media's catastrophic mistakes on a far grander scale.

His central argument is powerful: in social media, the possible was clear—democratizing speech and connecting people—but the probable outcome differed drastically, producing polarization, mental health crises, and erosion of shared factual reality. Harris fears AI companies are repeating this pattern, optimizing systems for deployment speed and competitive advantage rather than safety and human benefit.

Harris's critique extends beyond mere addictive design. He emphasizes that the real race should not be about who can develop AI fastest, but about who can actually regulate it responsibly, and that this requires global cooperation similar to the 1987 Montreal Protocol that successfully addressed the ozone crisis.

Guardians Against Wealth Concentration and Behavioral Control

What makes Harris particularly relevant to the AI Middle Way Coalition's mission is his understanding of how AI creates unprecedented power concentration. Harris warns that if governance fails ("Lock It Down"), we risk creating unprecedented concentrations of wealth and power where super-powerful AI capabilities are locked up in the hands of a few companies or states, with particular dangers for authoritarian surveillance states seeking to control populations.

This analysis directly parallels the coalition's concern that AI-enabled wealth concentration is affecting 4.5 billion people globally. Harris recognizes that the distribution of AI power is not merely a technical problem—it is fundamentally a governance and economic justice issue.

The China Question and Global Reality

Importantly, Harris does not naively ignore the geopolitical dimensions that your coalition emphasizes. In conversations with China experts, Harris acknowledges that binding international agreements between the US and China on dangerous superintelligence remain "quite unrealistic, at least in the short term," while discussing the fundamental differences in how each nation approaches AI development.

However, Harris's framing differs from simple containment thinking. When asked whether precautionary approaches risk losing the AI race to China, Harris responds: "We're not competing for who can deploy plutonium as fast as possible, but who can harness plutonium without causing nuclear terrorism... It's not a race to get there first and then have instability, but a race to harness it in the safest way possible."

This wisdom directly supports the coalition's Middle Way approach: the goal is not Western dominance but global wisdom about AI governance.

Is It Too Late for Regulation?

A critical question: does Harris believe the regulatory window has closed? His answer is nuanced. Harris emphasizes that we face a disparity between rapid AI capability development and safety efforts, noting there is currently a 30-to-1 gap between researchers publishing on AI capabilities versus safety, and advocates for establishing regulatory frameworks similar to nuclear non-proliferation.

Rather than believing regulation is impossible, Harris frames the challenge as urgent precisely because the window remains open but closing. In his April 2025 TED talk, Harris calls on society to learn from social media's mistakes and "choose differently," emphasizing that a "narrow path" exists where power is matched with responsibility, foresight and wisdom.

Why Harris Should Join the Coalition

Tristan Harris brings several essential dimensions to an AI Middle Way Coalition:

Insider credibility: Unlike external critics, Harris built products in Silicon Valley and understands incentive structures from the inside.

Practical regulatory vision: Harris doesn't merely warn; he proposes concrete mechanisms including oversight agencies, licensing, auditing, and liability regimes that could prevent both concentration of power and regulatory capture.

Cultural influence: His platform reaches millions, giving the coalition amplification capacity for its messaging in the Global South.

Alignment on the core issue: Like your coalition, Harris sees AI governance as fundamentally about preventing wealth concentration and preserving human agency in the face of exponential technological change.

Conclusion: A Missing Partner

As the AI Middle Way Coalition prepares for its  launch at Chulalongkorn University, Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology should be among its closest advisors. His decade-long struggle against the attention economy, his insider knowledge of tech company incentives, and his commitment to international cooperation make him an ideal partner in building a "third path" for AI governance.

The coalition's success depends not only on Buddhist philosophy and systems theory but on voices that can translate these insights into policy mechanisms that major powers will actually adopt. Harris has proven he can navigate both elite policy conversations and mass public consciousness—precisely the combination needed to reshape global AI governance before deployment patterns become locked in.