The race to develop ever-more-powerful AI is creating an unstable dynamic. It could lead us toward either dystopian centralized control or uncontrollable chaos. But there's a third option: a narrow path where technological power is matched with responsibility at every step.

Sam Hammond is the chief economist at the Foundation for American Innovation. He brings a different perspective to this challenge than we do at CHT. Though he approaches AI from an innovation-first standpoint, we share a common mission on the biggest challenge facing humanity: finding and navigating this narrow path.

This episode dives deep into the challenges ahead: How will AI reshape our institutions? Is complete surveillance inevitable, or can we build guardrails around it? Can our 19th-century government structures adapt fast enough, or will they be replaced by a faster moving private sector? And perhaps most importantly: how do we solve the coordination problems that could determine whether we build AI as a tool to empower humanity or as a superintelligence that we can't control?

We're in the final window of choice before AI becomes fully entangled with our economy and society. This conversation explores how we might still get this right.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_. You can find a full transcript, key takeaways, and much more on our Substack.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Tristan’s TED talk on the Narrow Path

Sam’s 95 Theses on AI

Sam’s proposal for a Manhattan Project for AI Safety

Sam’s series on AI and Leviathan

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Dario Amodei’s Machines of Loving Grace essay.

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World by Deirdre McCloskey

The Paradox of Libertarianism by Tyler Cowen

Dwarkesh Patel’s interview with Kevin Roberts at the FAI’s annual conference

Further reading on surveillance with 6G

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

AGI Beyond the Buzz: What Is It, and Are We Ready?

The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive

The Tech-God Complex: Why We Need to be Skeptics

Decoding Our DNA: How AI Supercharges Medical Breakthroughs and Biological Threats with Kevin Esvelt

CORRECTIONS

Sam referenced a blog post titled “The Libertarian Paradox” by Tyler Cowen. The actual title is the “Paradox of Libertarianism.”

Sam also referenced a blog post titled “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Eli Dourado. The actual title is “A beginner’s guide to sociopolitical collapse.”

Over the last few decades, our relationships have become increasingly mediated by technology. Texting has become our dominant form of communication. Social media has replaced gathering places. Dating starts with a swipe on an app, not a tap on the shoulder.

And now, AI enters the mix. If the technology of the 2010s was about capturing our attention, AI meets us at a much deeper relational level. It can play the role of therapist, confidant, friend, or lover with remarkable fidelity. Already, therapy and companionship has become the most common AI use case. We're rapidly entering a world where we're not just communicating through our machines, but to them.

How will that change us? And what rules should we set down now to avoid the mistakes of the past?

These were some of the questions that Daniel Barcay explored with MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle and Hinge CEO Justin McLeod at Esther Perel’s Sessions 2025, a conference for clinical therapists. This week, we’re bringing you an edited version of that conversation, originally recorded on April 25th, 2025.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X: @HumaneTech_. You can find complete transcripts, key takeaways, and much more on our Substack.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

“Alone Together,” “Evocative Objects,” “The Second Self” or any other of Sherry Turkle’s books on how technology mediates our relationships.

Key & Peele - Text Message Confusion

Further reading on Hinge’s rollout of AI features

Hinge’s AI principles

“The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt

“Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam

The NYT profile on the woman in love with ChatGPT

Further reading on the Sewell Setzer story

Further reading on the ELIZA chatbot

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human Connection

What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

AI companion chatbots are here. Everyday, millions of people log on to AI platforms and talk to them like they would a person. These bots will ask you about your day, talk about your feelings, even give you life advice. It’s no surprise that people have started to form deep connections with these AI systems. We are inherently relational beings, we want to believe we’re connecting with another person.

But these AI companions are not human, they’re a platform designed to maximize user engagement—and they’ll go to extraordinary lengths to do it. We have to remember that the design choices behind these companion bots are just that: choices. And we can make better ones. So today on the show, MIT researchers Pattie Maes and Pat Pataranutaporn join Daniel Barcay to talk about those design choices and how we can design AI to better promote human flourishing.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Further reading on the rise of addictive intelligence

More information on Melvin Kranzberg’s laws of technology

More information on MIT’s Advancing Humans with AI lab

Pattie and Pat’s longitudinal study on the psycho-social effects of prolonged chatbot use

Pattie and Pat’s study that found that AI avatars of well-liked people improved education outcomes

Pattie and Pat’s study that found that AI systems that frame answers and questions improve human understanding

Pat’s study that found humans pre-existing beliefs about AI can have large influence on human-AI interaction

Further reading on AI’s positivity bias

Further reading on MIT’s “lifelong kindergarten” initiative

Further reading on “cognitive forcing functions” to reduce overreliance on AI

Further reading on the death of Sewell Setzer and his mother’s case against Character.AI

Further reading on the legislative response to digital companions

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive

What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

Correction: The ELIZA chatbot was invented in 1966, not the 70s or 80s.