Pioneers of AI: Designing AI for people and the planet, with Aza Raskin

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I'm thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale Summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reid Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Massad and more will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great or you want to build something great, we want you there with us too. Join us at mastersofscale.com/apply26.
That's mastersofscale.com/apply26.

**Aza Raskin** (1:36)
We didn't have the right to privacy until the technology was invented that required adding privacy into American law.
And that was Kodak's invention of the mass-produced camera. And once people could walk around, had a new interface, it was suddenly easy. There was no friction to capture images. Suddenly the elite got very interested and concerned about where they could be captured and brand us one of America's most brilliant legal minds. Supreme Court justice ended up sort of inventing this idea of privacy and adding it to the Constitution.
With AI, there are new domains of what it is to be human that were inaccessible to technology before, now accessible. Everything about us that isn't explicitly protected by 19th century law will end up being strip mined. And we can see this in the form now of the race to intimacy, the race to occupy the single most intimate slot in your life. And that opens up a whole new range of harm.

**Rana El-Khaloubi** (2:44)
That's Aza Raskin, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and the Earth Species Project. And what you just heard, how he weaves the past into our present moment, that's something he often does. Because Aza's scope is broad. He's seeking to understand how and why the most popular and powerful technology of our time tends not to center the human experience, or the Earth as a whole. And history can be helpful for that. In our conversation, you'll hear him reflect on several forks in the road, moments where technology took a certain path and the impact on humanity was huge. Aza and I first met at Peter Diamandis' Abundance Summit a few years ago. We share a belief that with a bit of intentionality, AI can benefit humanity. We dive deep into what needs to go right to achieve that goal. Also, a note before we start. This conversation includes a mention of death by suicide. Take care and thanks for listening.
I'm Rana El-Khaloubi and this is Pioneers of AI, a podcast taking you behind the scenes of the AI revolution.
Aza, welcome to Pioneers of AI. I'm so happy we're having this conversation.

**Aza Raskin** (4:08)
It's good to see you again, Rana.

**Rana El-Khaloubi** (4:10)
Yeah, it's great to reconnect.

**Aza Raskin** (4:11)
All right.

**Rana El-Khaloubi** (4:12)
Part of why I'm excited to have this conversation is I really feel like you were born to do this work.
So, I want to roll the clock all the way back to even your dad, Jeff Raskin. He was one of the early inventors of Macintosh for Apple. And I guess you joined him on some of these tech events and you gave talks when you were 10 So, tell us a little bit about your upbringing.

**Aza Raskin** (4:35)
Yeah. I mean, I think I was doomed to have no friends. My parents would carry me around actually in one of the original Macintosh carry cases. Most kids get strollers. I get that bumpy ride. But how I grew up is, so my mom is a nurse practitioner and she does, especially palliative care in hospice. And so there's a very particular kind of way that she exhibits care. It's like a very tactile care for helping people have dignity in their most important transitions. And my father started the Macintosh project at Apple.
A very different kind of care, sort of like at scale. And what my father was really obsessed about was like, what is it to be humane? And actually humane in the name Center for Humane Technology, that comes from my father.