Tristan Harris

Current Company

Center for Humane Technology — Co-Founder & President

Silicon Valley's Conscience

Tristan Harris co-founded the Center for Humane Technology after spending years inside Google as a design ethicist, where he wrote an internal presentation about how technology companies were designing products to maximize attention at the expense of user well-being. That presentation went viral within Google and eventually led Harris to leave the company and dedicate his career to reforming the attention economy from the outside.

Before Google, Tristan Harris studied computer science at Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab under B.J. Fogg, learning the exact techniques that tech companies use to create habit-forming products. That insider knowledge gives Harris a credibility that few technology critics possess — he understands the machinery of digital persuasion because he was trained to build it.

From The Social Dilemma to AI Governance

Tristan Harris became a household name through The Social Dilemma, a 2020 Netflix documentary that exposed how social media platforms engineer addiction, polarization, and misinformation. The film was viewed by over 100 million people and catalyzed a global conversation about technology regulation, children's online safety, and the ethical responsibilities of platform companies.

As President of the Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris has expanded his focus from social media to artificial intelligence, warning about the risks of deploying powerful AI systems without adequate safety measures. He has testified before Congress multiple times and advises governments worldwide on technology policy. Harris represents a new category of tech leader — one who measures success not in users or revenue, but in the alignment between technology and human flourishing.