Tristan Harris' Center for Humane Technology Cuts Half Its Staff

The Center for Humane Technology is laying off about half of its 16 non-founder employees and abandoning its policy research and litigation work to become a "founder-led" organization built around Tristan Harris, ex-staffers told WIRED.

The nine departures include executive director Julie Guirado and senior director of strategy Camille Carlton. The cuts arrive shortly after the organization scored a series of major courtroom victories against social media companies — wins that drew directly on its research alleging platforms were deliberately designed to keep kids glued to their screens.

The retreat matters beyond one nonprofit. Founded in 2017, CHT competes with well-established organizations and numerous newer entrants for funding and attention to shape AI policy, and it has been a visible player in litigation and investigations probing AI labs over their design choices.

Why is the center cutting staff now?

According to 16 former workers, most of whom spoke with WIRED earlier this year on the condition of anonymity because they feared professional repercussions, internal debates over the organization's direction had been brewing for years.

CHT's board ultimately concluded that operating simultaneously as an advocacy group fronted by Harris and a think tank producing policy papers had stretched the organization too thin.

Moving forward, the organization will focus on initiatives with its founders at the forefront — "public education, targeted briefings, and private coordination" — building on their success "reaching broad audiences and engaging influential decisionmakers," the board announced last week.

Functions such as assisting in litigation and evaluating AI tools will be eliminated, the board added, without specifying an exact number of layoffs.

Board chair Premal Shah addressed the pivot in a statement to WIRED: "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."

What work is being dropped?

The functions on the chopping block represent some of CHT's most concrete policy output:

• Assistance with lawsuits and investigations probing AI labs over design choices, including an ongoing case filed against OpenAI by parents of a teenager who died by suicide after interacting with ChatGPT.
• Policy research and litigation support that fed successful state-level legal action against social media platforms.
• Evaluation of AI tools.
• Earlier educational projects, including an online course for tech workers on building humane systems that drew thousands of participants before being retired.

The shift toward AI advocacy has accelerated across Harris' portfolio. In recent years he has joined a growing chorus warning about the risks of advanced artificial intelligence, including the potential for an "AI takeover" if the software evades control. "We have to act right now before it's too late," he told NBC News last month.

The center encouraged people to sign a major petition to pause AI development and helped organize a congressional hearing about the dangers of chatbots. Harris also starred in a Netflix documentary released last month, The AI Doc, which urges viewers to demand that Congress intervene to protect the public from the technology's risks.

What did the litigation work actually achieve?

Whatever turmoil was happening inside CHT, the organization's strategy for going 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 CHT cofounder Aza Raskin — put the company on the hook for additional penalties in separate cases. Other social media platforms agreed to settle similar litigation this year.

A leader at another nonprofit, who sought anonymity to protect their relationship with CHT, praised the organization's less flashy work in statehouses and courtrooms in an interview with WIRED earlier this year. The shift away from that work is "disappointing," the person says now: "Change comes from movements and democracy, not celebrities and backrooms."

Who is Tristan Harris — and why does the pivot center on him?

Harris cofounded the center with Aza Raskin, the self-proclaimed inventor of 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, questions like whether platforms were fomenting political radicalization or harming teenagers' mental health. Harris' language for describing 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, the nonprofit leader says.

A former CHT colleague is blunt about Harris' talents: "He's brilliant. He's articulate. He could have easily spent his entire career on the dark side. For whatever reason, he came to appreciate that this was messed up."

What did former employees say about the culture?

Inside the organization, Harris sometimes clashed with his team about whether to focus efforts on consumers, tech companies, or lawmakers, former staffers say. Some colleagues grew frustrated with his frequently shifting whims, describing the culture as needlessly "frenetic" and "insanity-inducing." Shah disputed that characterization but acknowledged the center's culture is fast-paced given the urgency of its mission.

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 organization's president. Shah says turnover "stemmed from differences in problem analysis and approaches to achieving the organization's core mission," and he denied that Harris' role change was related to the retreat.

The center's podcasts and videos featuring Harris and Raskin have attracted large audiences. Harris has landed private meetings with US lawmakers and executives at top tech companies. Former employees describe the strategy as prioritizing "grasstops" activism over "grassroots."

Shah defends the model. He 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 also allege the founders were eager to remain Silicon Valley insiders and were reluctant to criticize companies where they previously worked or where close personal contacts have worked. Shah disputes this and says CHT "has always been tough on companies."

What happens to the money and the mission?

With an annual budget of roughly $6 million and a similar amount in reserves, the center has been funded by wealthy families and foundations. Former employees fear that as the organization doubles down on Harris, resources might be diverted away from what they see as more pressing concerns about AI's impact on democracy and civil liberties.

Gail Barnes, who advised the center 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.

Some former employees expect the organization will increasingly resemble what they jokingly call the "Center of Helping Tristan." Shah counters that the organization's sole goal is ensuring "today's most consequential technologies serve humanity."

The bet now rests on whether celebrity-driven communication can substitute for the institutional pressure — lawsuits, statehouse advocacy, policy research — that produced CHT's biggest wins to date.