We Measure What AI Can Do. We Should Measure What It Does to Us.

In AI, what gets measured gets optimized. Right now, we're spending all our efforts to measure how capable and powerful models are, narrowly optimizing for those metrics while ignoring downstream consequences. What if we could flip this dynamic on its head? What if, instead of what AI can do, we start to measure what AI does to us? What if, instead of races to the bottom on capabilities and engagement, we could incentivize races to the top on safety, or better yet, on making us more resilient and developed human beings? That’s the mission of CHT’s Humane Evals program: we're bringing together researchers, psychologists, engineers, and technologists from across the entire AI ecosystem and beyond to build out the expertise and infrastructure we need to measure AI's impact on humans. Today on the show, Aza Raskin explores the Humane Evals project with Imran Khan, a researcher and strategist who's been leading CHT's efforts in this area, and Jared Moore, a computer scientist and researcher who's been at the forefront of measuring AI's psychological impact on users. If this sounds like something you're interested in working on, you can email us at evals@humanetech.com.   RECOMMENDED MEDIA You can read more about Jared’s work at his website. Related pieces by Imran on the CHT Substack: What is AI doing to humans? Why aren’t we measuring it?  Will Human-Like AI Hijack Human Psychology? A Black Box Problem: Missing Data On How AI Affects the Human Mind The website for the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics KoraBench, the child safety AI benchmark that Imran referenced   RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES The AI Dilemma Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His Death   Corrections:  Aza gave the wrong year for Sewell Setzer’s death. It was in 2024, not 2025.  Aza referred to Joseph Henrich as an evolutionary psychologist; he was actually a biological anthropologist.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.