Dear Partners and Friends,

We, the CHT Board, wish to share an important change in how we pursue our mission of ensuring that today’s most consequential technologies serve humanity.

We have decided to refocus CHT where we believe it can contribute most: founder-led public communication and decision-maker influence. These strengths helped reshape the social media landscape and now position us to do the same with AI.

As part of this refocusing, we will wind down our in-house policy, litigation, research, and other programs, reducing staff in those areas. This is a strategic shift, not a reflection of the outstanding contributions and impact of our talented and committed team. In areas we are stepping back, we intend to support and highlight other organizations advancing this work.  

We want to explain why we’re making this change, what comes next, and how we’re supporting departing colleagues and program transitions.

CHT has pursued two valuable approaches: founder-led public communication and decision-maker influence, and team-led institutional change through research, policy, and legal accountability. Both have made crucial contributions. But as AI accelerates, sustaining a nimble communications operation alongside a full programmatic institute within a small organization has created persistent tradeoffs in priorities, messaging, pace, situational analysis, and leadership attention.

After years of pursuing an integrated approach, the Board has concluded that CHT should concentrate its talent, funding, and leadership attention where its capabilities are most distinctive and its potential impact the greatest. This focus will help us respond quickly and invest boldly at a critical moment for AI.

This means stepping back from our in-house research coordination, policy and litigation advisory work, evaluations of AI’s psychosocial impacts, and planned fellows program. We recognize the outstanding contributions of the colleagues who built these programs. Rather than operating these programs ourselves, we will use CHT’s reach to highlight promising work by others across the AI ecosystem.

CHT will center its work on public education, targeted briefings, and private coordination - building on the founders’ record of reaching broad audiences and engaging influential decision makers.

Through films, podcasts, talks, and national media, we will shape public understanding of AI and the choices ahead. CHT has played a critical role in documentaries including The Social Dilemma, which reached an estimated 100 million people, and The AI Doc, which reached No. 8 on Netflix’s U.S. movie chart. Our podcast has over 31 million downloads, while agenda-setting talks include The AI Dilemma, with 3.6 million views, and Tristan’s TED talk on AI. Tristan’s recent national media appearances have reached over 40 million people, engaging audiences across the political spectrum—from Joe Rogan and Bannon’s War Room to Jon Stewart and Anderson Cooper 360.

We will also work directly with influential decision-makers through targeted briefings that deepen their understanding of AI and the responses needed to meet the scale of the challenge. This builds on Tristan and Aza’s participation in the Senate’s first AI Insight Forum, their meeting with Pope Leo ahead of his AI encyclical, and their recent in-depth discussion of AI with Bill Gates.

Our third focus is private coordination: bringing leaders across technology, government, media, and philanthropy together behind the scenes to explore coordinated action and ways to change the incentives driving the AI race. While much of this work cannot be shared publicly, it complements our public education and briefings by creating opportunities for leaders to act together.

The Board believes this combination of public reach, cross-partisan engagement, and relationships with senior decision-makers represents CHT’s most distinctive opportunity for impact. Concentrating our talent, funding, and leadership attention around these strengths will allow us to respond more quickly and invest more boldly.

CHT founders accompanied by Julie Johnston, CHT’s Chief of Staff, will now lead the organization and co-founder Randy Fernando will act as Interim Executive Director during this transition. 

We are deeply grateful to our departing colleagues for the care and commitment they have brought to CHT. Their work across research, policy, communications, fundraising, and operations has helped make CHT what it is.

Their achievements include AI product liability frameworks, the AI Roadmap, advice to policymakers and state attorneys general, expert support for litigation involving Character.AI and OpenAI, coordination and development of evaluations of psychosocial impacts of AI, and the launch of the AI and What Makes Us Human initiative, which included the Stop AI Drift campaign. In recognition of the importance of this work and to honor our active commitments to partners, the Board has supported continuing the AI and What Makes Us Human initiative—including the Stop AI Drift campaign—through the end of October. Staff will complete this milestone phase before fully concluding CHT’s programmatic operations.

The departing executive team and staff pursued these initiatives with total dedication, executing on strategies approved by the Board and building deep trust with external allies, policymakers, and co-litigants. We explored supporting an independent organization to carry the programmatic work forward, but it will not be launching. We recognize that this decision to refocus CHT disrupts active commitments that staff built in good faith. 

We take responsibility for this transition and are prioritizing direct support to help departing staff communicate seamlessly with their networks, honor their work, and find new opportunities and homes for their work. The Board has also committed financial support for departing colleagues to help them successfully transition. We will work directly with affected funders, partners, and collaborators on what this transition means for their projects and commitments, including next steps and points of contact.

Thank you for your trust and partnership, which have made all of this work possible. We welcome your questions and the chance to talk through what this change means for you.

Warmly,

CHT Board of Directors