The Ethical Implications of AI Development Insights from Tristan Harris at TED 2025

I had the honor of attending TED 2025 a few weeks ago, and I'm still struck by Tristan Harris's (warning) talk on the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. You can view his talk here.

Tristan Harris is a leading technology ethicist. Drawing on lessons from the rise of social media, at TED 2025, Harris argued that the trajectory of AI is not inevitable but a matter of collective human choice.

He reflected on how society failed to anticipate and prevent the negative consequences of social media, such as addiction, polarization, and a mental health crisis among youth. 

He positioned AI as the most powerful technology humanity has ever created and described its development as our ultimate test of responsibility and wisdom. 

He also stressed that society must take responsibility for the development and use of AI and make conscious, responsible choices.

His comparison of AI to a group of Nobel Prize winners was very eye-opening. In his talk, he quoted Dario Amodei, suggesting that "AI is like a country full of geniuses in a data center…So imagine there's a map, and a new country shows up on the world stage with a million Nobel Prize-level geniuses in it. 

Except they don't eat, they don't sleep, they don't complain, they work at superhuman speed, and they'll work for less than minimum wage. "

Tristan Harris believes that "applied for good, that could bring about a world of unimaginable abundance…" He highlighted that "we're currently releasing the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology we've ever invented that's already demonstrating behaviors of self-preservation and deception that we've only seen in a sci-fi movie." 

And given the power of AI, his main question focused on how AI power will be distributed. Whether it is all open source with a decentralized power model, which may put knowledge in the hands of bad actors and lead to "chaos" or be concentrated in a few companies' hands, leading to "dystopia." 

His hope, plea, and suggestion for the future of our world is to "seek something like a narrow path, where power is matched with responsibility at every level."

I found his talk to be an uncomfortable, pivotal moment at TED. He urged us to learn from past mistakes and take collective, responsible action to guide the future of artificial intelligence. 

I encourage you to watch this talk and would love your reaction and thoughts about whether humanity may manage that narrow path and how.