Tech leaders promise that AI automation will usher in an age of unprecedented abundance: cheap goods, universal high income, and freedom from the drudgery of work. But even if AI delivers material prosperity, will that prosperity be shared? And what happens to human dignity if our labor and contributions become obsolete?

Political philosopher Michael Sandel joins Tristan Harris to explore why the promise of AI-driven abundance could deepen inequalities and leave our society hollow. Drawing from his landmark work on justice and merit, Sandel argues that this isn't just about economics — it's about what it means to be human when our work role in society vanishes, and whether democracy can survive if productivity becomes our only goal.

We've seen this story before with globalization: promises of shared prosperity that instead hollowed out the industrial heart of communities, economic inequalities, and left holes in the social fabric. Can we learn from the past, and steer the AI revolution in a more humane direction?

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.

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The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel

Democracy’s Discontent by Michael Sandel

What Money Can’t Buy by Michael Sandel

Take Michael’s online course “Justice”

Michael’s discussion on AI Ethics at the World Economic Forum

Further reading on “The Intelligence Curse”

Read the full text of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 speech

Read the full text of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 speech

Neil Postman’s lecture on the seven questions to ask of any new technology

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

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AI and Jobs: How to Make AI Work With Us, Not Against Us with Daron Acemoglu

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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

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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.

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“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

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