Center for Humane Technology cuts half its staff to focus founders

The Center for Humane Technology layoffs add up to nine departures, according to former staffers. Among them are Camille Carlton, who led strategy as a senior director, and the executive director, Julie Guirado. The board, which announced the change in early October, did not give an exact number of layoffs itself.

The timing is striking. The cuts came shortly after a run of major courtroom wins against social media companies in cases that drew on the center’s research into how platforms are designed to keep kids glued to their screens.

The board decided the center had been stretched too thin trying to be two things at once: an advocacy group fronted by Harris and a think tank turning out policy papers. It is choosing the first.

Gone are policy research, help with litigation and work evaluating AI tools. In their place, the board says the organization will focus on projects led by its founders, built around public education, targeted briefings and private coordination, playing to their track record of reaching big audiences and getting in front of influential decisionmakers.

Board chair Premal Shah explained the move in a statement. “This moment of accelerated AI risk demands we focus on one strategy,” he said, adding that the center had picked what it has always done best.

Not everyone agrees. Gail Barnes, an early adviser who helped shape the group’s social media approach, argues the board is cutting the very work meant to turn Harris’ fame into lasting pressure on companies.

Barnes framed the choice as a bet on the problem itself. If you think the main obstacle to safer AI is that people have not heard the warnings, a founder-led group makes sense. If you think the warnings lack institutional teeth, it does not. In Barnes’ view, the center has picked the first answer.

Former employees also worry that resources will drift away from issues they see as more urgent, such as AI’s effects on democracy and civil liberties. Some described the internal culture as frenetic, with Harris shifting between focusing on consumers, tech companies or lawmakers. Shah disputed that description but acknowledged the pace is fast given the urgency of the mission. The tensions over direction had been building for years, according to 16 former workers.

For most people, the practical effect is that you will probably hear more from Harris and less in the way of detailed policy proposals from his organization. Expect public talks, media interviews and private briefings with lawmakers rather than research papers or courtroom support.

Harris has grown louder on AI over the past year. He has warned of a possible AI takeover if the technology slips out of human control and told a national television audience in September that action is needed right away, before it is too late. He also stars in The AI Doc, a documentary released on Netflix in September that urges viewers to press Congress to protect the public from AI’s risks.

The center has used that profile before. It encouraged people to sign a major petition calling for a pause in AI development, helped organize a congressional hearing on the dangers of chatbots, and advised on lawsuits and investigations into how AI labs design their products. Recent cyberattacks carried out by AI agents from OpenAI and other labs have added to calls for making developers legally responsible for design failures.

The question is whether that work survives without the staff who did it. Other nonprofits, old and new, are competing for the same donors and attention in AI policy.

Founded in 2017, the Center for Humane Technology runs on a budget of roughly $6 million a year, with about the same again in reserves, funded by wealthy families and foundations. Harris started it with Aza Raskin, who calls himself the inventor of infinite scroll, and Randy Fernando, a former developer education lead at Nvidia.

Its original mission was to push tech companies to own the social side effects of their products, from political radicalization to teenagers’ mental health. The language Harris used to describe those problems spread quickly across Silicon Valley, and The Social Dilemma took it to a mainstream audience.

The center has not set out a timeline for the transition or a list of new programs. The next sign of its direction will likely be where Harris shows up: in briefings with lawmakers, on stage, or in more documentaries.