SAN FRANCISCO, April 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- SFJAZZ Center –– Over 300 people, representing a broad and influential spectrum of leaders, decision makers and scholars from in and around the technology industry, gathered today at San Francisco's SFJAZZ Center to hear Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, Co-Founders of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT), launch Humane: A New Agenda for Tech – a powerful, more hopeful path for technology. Human downgrading is a systems-level explanation for how we ended up in the middle of a technology-driven existential crisis due to increasing the extraction of human attention. CHT's new agenda calls on all technology creators to approach innovation to protect a deeper understanding of our basic human nature and focus on benefitting rather than "downgrading" humanity.
To help catalyze this Agenda with urgency that matches the globally accelerating scale of the issue, CHT announced a number of steps to engage the technology community in a positive direction forward:
Human Downgrading
While our technology has been feverishly and profitably upgraded, humanity has been downgraded
While most conversation around technology and AI was concerned with when it would surpass human intelligence, we forgot to think about what would happen when it surpassed human weakness. We are in that moment today. CHT's New Agenda for Tech posits that all human beings are born with the same root vulnerabilities and that when they are exploited across billions of people over decades, the result is widespread systemic failure: addiction leading to depression and suicide, polarization leading to isolation and radicalization, election hacking leading to untrusted results, loss of attention, loss of ability to think critically, sleep disorders, etc. This is human downgrading.
A system-level understanding of the problem brings unified language to set a new course across every discipline informing tech and human interaction:
"As a lone Product Manager and Design Ethicist at Google in 2013 trying to get a few people to pay attention, I had very little hope," said Tristan Harris, Co-Founder of CHT. "Thanks to people like CHT Advisors Roger McNamee, Sandy Parakilas, Renee DiResta, our Co-Founder Aza, brilliant storytellers like Max Stossel, scientists like Guillaume Chaslot, and far too many others to name who've come forward with similar knowledge and experience, the conversation has dramatically shifted to holding tech's feet to the fire of its deep accountability. The Center for Humane Technology is very excited to move beyond the cacophony of minor product grievances and to build a broad movement of concerned technologists setting a positive, hopeful path forward."
Humane: A New Agenda for Tech was live-streamed on CHT's newly-updated website humanetech.com, and was attended by icons, founders, VCs, CEOs, designers and innovators from across the industry. A replay of the event will be available on CHT's website soon at humanetech.com. For more information about how you can get involved in our Humane Agenda, go to humanetech.com.
About CHT
Launched in 2018 by deeply concerned tech ex-insiders — including world-renowned design ethicist Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, inventor of infinite scroll — the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) is an independent nonprofit aiming to realign technology with humanity. We have named Human Downgrading as the systemic issue eroding our social fabric, and launched a Humane Movement as a creative and cultural awakening that inspires technologists to look back at the limits of human nature being overwhelmed by technology, and to design products and businesses that benefit humanity. The Center for Humane Technology receives generous lead support from The Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Foundation, Omidyar Network, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Knight Foundation, Evolve Foundation, Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the J.W. Couch Foundation, among others.
Learn more and view the full presentation at humanetech.com
Subscribe to our podcast at humanetech.com/podcast
Follow us on Twitter @HumaneTech_
MORE INFORMATION AND IMAGES FOR PRESS:
Colleen Haikes
SOURCE Center for Humane Technology