The Center for Humane Technology is cutting roughly half of its 16 non-founder staff members. Tristan Harris, the former Google product manager who co-founded the group and starred in the documentary The Social Dilemma, will lead the remaining team. The layoffs affect policy research and litigation work. The organisation now prioritises projects driven directly by its founders.
The cuts
Nine people are leaving. This includes executive director Julie Guirado and senior director of strategy Camille Carlton. The departures come shortly after the group won several court cases against social media firms. Those lawsuits relied on research claiming platforms were designed to keep children glued to their screens.
Internal arguments about the organisation’s direction had been building for years. Sixteen former workers told WIRED they believed the board had stretched itself too thin trying to act as an advocacy front for Harris while also functioning as a think tank producing policy papers. The board announced last week it would move forward with initiatives led by founders, including public education, targeted briefings, and private coordination.
Tasks such as assisting in litigation and evaluating AI tools will end. The board did not specify an exact number of staff leaving.
“This moment of accelerated AI risk demands we focus on one strategy, and we have chosen to focus on what we have always done best so that we can meet the moment,” board chair Premal Shah said in a statement to WIRED.
Focus on AI
In recent years, Harris has joined a growing chorus warning about the risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence. He told NBC News last month that they must act right now before it is too late if the software evades control.
The centre encouraged people to sign a major petition to pause AI development and helped organise a hearing in Congress about the dangers of chatbots. It also advised on lawsuits and investigations probing AI labs for their design choices. This included an ongoing case filed against OpenAI by parents of a teenager who died by suicide after interacting with ChatGPT. Harris starred in a documentary released on Netflix last month, The AI Doc, which urges viewers to demand that Congress intervene to protect the public from the technology’s risks.
Founded in 2017, the Center for Humane Technology competes with well-established nonprofits and numerous newer entrants for funding and attention to shape AI policy. Cyberattacks by AI agents from OpenAI and other labs have renewed calls to hold tech developers liable for design and engineering failures.
With an annual budget of roughly $6 million and a similar amount in reserves, the centre has been funded by wealthy families and foundations. As it doubles down on Harris, former employees fear resources might be diverted away from addressing what they believe are more pressing concerns about AI’s impact on democracy and civil liberties.
Gail Barnes, who advised the centre on social media strategy in its early days, says the board is dropping work that was supposed to convert Harris’ fame into durable pressure that could help facilitate real change inside companies.
“Whether that is wisdom or a retreat depends on whether you think the binding constraint on AI right now is still ‘people haven’t heard the argument’ or ‘the argument has no institutional teeth.’ CHT is picking the first,” Barnes says.
Big Star
Harris excels at producing compelling sound bites, and he has long been a fixture in the media, at conferences, and on Capitol Hill. “He’s brilliant. He’s articulate,” a former CHT colleague says. “He could have easily spent his entire career on the dark side. For whatever reason, he came to appreciate that this was messed up.”
Harris co-founded the centre with Aza Raskin, the self-proclaimed inventor of the infinite scroll, and Randy Fernando, who once worked in developer education at Nvidia. The goal was to push tech companies to take more responsibility for the social consequences of their products. In the early days, this meant examining issues like whether they were fomenting political radicalization or harming the mental health of teenagers. The language Harris used to describe these problems was quickly adopted across Silicon Valley.
Internal documents from Meta released in court this year show company researchers discussed reaching out to Harris as early as 2018, when his warnings that apps were intentionally designed to be addictive entered the mainstream. His national profile grew further with the release of The Social Dilemma on Netflix in 2020.
“It’s hard to understate how helpful The Social Dilemma was for launching tech accountability” as an advocacy field, says a leader at another nonprofit, who also sought anonymity to protect their relationship with CHT.
But inside the organisation, Harris sometimes clashed with his team about whether to focus their efforts on consumers, tech companies, or lawmakers, former staffers say. Some colleagues grew frustrated with Harris’ frequently shifting whims, describing the organisation’s culture as needlessly “frenetic” and “insanity-inducing.” Shah disputed the characterisation, but acknowledged the centre’s culture is fast-paced given the urgency of its mission.
The centre developed an online course at one point for tech workers who wanted to learn how to build humane systems. While it drew thousands of participants, CHT decided to retire it as Harris’ focus shifted to concerns about AI, according to people familiar with the project. Another initiative to create resources for educators to make sense of issues around screen time fell by the wayside, the people say. Harris kept coming back to the centre being “a vehicle for him to speak to the world,” according to one ex-employee.
The centre’s podcasts and videos featuring Harris and Raskin have attracted large audiences, former workers say. Harris also landed private meetings with US lawmakers and executives at top tech companies. Former employees describe the group’s strategy as putting more emphasis on “grasstops” activism over the more familiar “grassroots,” which some viewed as misguided.
Shah says CHT believes “mass communications creates grassroots pressure, which unlocks action from the grasstops” and that Harris “is one of the very few people in the world who is invited and can communicate effectively to mass media audiences across the political spectrum.”
Some former employees allege that CHT’s founders were eager to remain Silicon Valley insiders, and thus were more reluctant to criticise companies where they previously worked or where close personal contacts have worked. (Shah disputes the characterisations and says CHT “has always been tough on companies.”)
Some ex-employees described Harris’ management style as taxing, which they allege led to high turnover. In 2023, employees returned from a staff retreat feeling upset after being asked to participate in trust-building exercises they felt were overly personal, according to several former workers. CHT’s independent board members got involved, and Harris later stepped down as executive director to become the organisation’s president, according to the former employees.
Shah says that employee turnover “stemmed from differences in problem analysis and approaches to achieving the organisation’s core mission.” He also denied that Harris’ role change was related to what happened at the retreat.
Whatever turmoil may have been happening inside CHT, the broader strategy Harris used to go after tech companies was paying off. In 2021, state attorneys general across the US opened investigations into Meta and later sued the company for allegedly misleading teens and parents. This year, Meta agreed to settle some of the lawsuits for billions of dollars. Juries, including one that heard testimony from Raskin, put the company on the hook for additional penalties in separate cases. Other social media platforms agreed to settle similar litigation this year.
In an interview with WIRED earlier this year, the leader of the other tech nonprofit praised CHT’s less flashy work in statehouses and courtrooms. The shift away from it is “disappointing,” the person says now. “Change comes from movements and democracy, not celebrities and backrooms.”
Some former employees say they expect that CHT will increasingly resemble what they jokingly refer to as the “Center of Helping Tristan.” Shah says the organisation’s sole goal is ensuring “today’s most consequential technologies serve humanity.”
