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United States Tristan Harris is a computer scientist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, dedicated to realigning technology with human well-being.
Tristan is a co-founder and leader of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to align technology with humanity's best interests. CHT works to prevent the negative impacts of persuasive technologies.
Tristan was a Design Ethicist at Google until 2016. He studied how technology restructures attention, well-being, and behavior. He also worked on the Google Inbox product.
Tristan Harris was featured in the Netflix documentary 'The Social Dilemma,' which explores the hidden machinations behind social media and its impact on society.
Tristan Harris is a speaker for TED, where he shares insights on how technology is designed to manipulate attention and how to align it with human values.
Tristan Harris contributed to The Economist, arguing that the cure for AI worsening ills caused by social media is to impose change on AI firms' incentives.
Tristan Harris was interviewed by Jon Stewart on the topics of AI ethics and the intention behind technological innovation.
Tristan Harris joined the Council for Responsible Social Media project launched by Issue One in October 2022 to address the negative mental, civic, and public health impacts of social media in the United States.
Tristan Harris, born in 1983 or 1984, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He pursued his education at Stanford University, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science. During his time at Stanford, he interned at Apple Inc. and later began a master’s degree with a focus on human-computer interaction, taking a class at the Persuasive Technology Lab before deciding to leave the program. Early in his career, in 2007, Harris launched a startup called Apture, which was subsequently acquired by Google in 2011. This acquisition led him to work on the Google Inbox project.
While at Google, Harris authored a significant internal presentation in February 2013 titled “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention.” This 141-slide deck highlighted concerns about technology’s impact on human attention and urged major tech companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook to take responsibility for ensuring that users’ lives were not dominated by smartphones. This presentation was widely viewed within Google and initiated discussions that continued long after his departure. In December 2015, Harris left Google to co-found the nonprofit organization Time Well Spent, which later became the Center for Humane Technology (CHT). His work at CHT focuses on minimizing the negative impacts of digital technologies and aligning technology with humanity’s best interests.
Harris gained widespread recognition for his role in the 2020 Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” where he appeared as a primary subject. The film explored how social media platforms are designed to maximize profit by nurturing addiction and manipulating user behavior, highlighting the mental health implications, especially for adolescents. He has also been a prominent voice in advocating for tech reform, testifying before the United States Congress on multiple occasions regarding data privacy, persuasive technology, and the ethical implications of algorithms. Harris has been lauded for his efforts, with The Atlantic calling him “the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience” in 2016. He has been recognized on the TIME 100 Next Leaders Shaping 2021 list and Rolling Stone’s 25 People Changing the Future.
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