CENTER FOR HUMANE TECHNOLOGY
- Status
- ACTIVE — AI and social-media public-education nonprofit (Center for Humane Technology, a California 501(c)(3) in San Francisco, EIN 82-3492182, formed 2017, exemption June 2018); co-founders Tristan Harris (President), Aza Raskin and Randima Fernando (Interim Executive Director); FY ended 30 June 2025 revenue $5,785,317, 93.4 percent contributions, expenses $5,807,076, grants paid $0; on 1 October 2026 its Board announced a refocus on public communication and decision-maker briefings and a wind-down of in-house policy, litigation, research and other programs; runs 'Stop the AI Drift' with the Seismic Foundation through the end of October 2026
- Hazard — Reach
- 56.7
- RCH / FND / ENT
- 6 / 6 / 5
- Conduct
- WATCH — CAMPAIGN PARTNER OF THE SHARED-BOARD CLUSTER, WITH MOST FUNDERS SHOWN AS LOGOS AND A PROGRAM WIND-DOWN ANNOUNCED MID-CAMPAIGN
Institutional Archetype
THE INSIDER WITH THE MICROPHONE — the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) describes itself as “an independent, technically grounded nonprofit organization informed by an insider understanding across leading technology companies and power players across the AI ecosystem” (Center for Humane Technology). Its Form 990 gives the mission in one sentence: “Center for Humane Technology is a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that today’s most consequential technologies, such as AI and social media, actually serve humanity” (ProPublica, CHT FY2025 Form 990). It makes films, a podcast, talks and briefings, and it asks lawmakers for a short list of things: liability, duties of care, limits on human-like design, whistleblower protection. It is the public-attention end of the AI-governance layer this site documents, as Seismic Catalyst Foundation is the paid-media end; the two now run one campaign. This profile scores the position, not the founders, the board, the funders or the campaign partner.
The finding is a channel with a name on it. The evaluators, the state statute and the funders mapped on this site make a policy ask in committee rooms; CHT makes it on cable news, on a Netflix documentary and, with Seismic, on the New York subway. Its own Board then announced on 1 October 2026, in the middle of that campaign, that it will “wind down our in-house policy, litigation, research, and other programs” and keep what it calls “founder-led public communication and decision-maker influence” (Center for Humane Technology, Strategic Update, October 1, 2026). The cluster Seismic sits in is set out on the evaluator alliances map; CHT is not on any of that cluster’s returns, and this page reads CHT from its own filings.
Mandate & Origin
Self-description. “CHT is not against technology. We are against the misaligned incentives that distort the promises of technology in our society” (Center for Humane Technology, The CHT Perspective). Its history page says what it is for: “Our work increases public awareness around critical tech issues, spurs policy that incentivizes better tech design, and empowers individuals and communities to discover their agency in today’s evolving tech landscape” (Center for Humane Technology, Impact and Story). Its home page lists three jobs: mass communications, “targeted briefings, conference presentations, and convenings” for policymakers, technologists, media and funders, and “private coordination with asymmetric actors” (Center for Humane Technology).
Origin. “In 2018, Tristan joined forces with fellow technologists Aza Raskin and Randima Fernando to found the Center for Humane Technology.” The story begins with Harris’s “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention” presentation while he was a design ethicist at Google and the “Time Well Spent” movement (Center for Humane Technology, Impact and Story). The return gives the legal record: Center for Humane Technology, 77 Van Ness Ave Ste 101-1601, San Francisco, EIN 82-3492182, “Year of formation: 2017,” California domicile; ProPublica’s organization page shows an IRS ruling date of June 2018 and NTEE code U05 (ProPublica, Center for Humane Technology; ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990). Its books and records are kept by Sutro Li Inc of San Francisco and its returns are prepared by Crosby & Kaneda CPAs LLP.
Who runs it. The FY2025 return (fiscal year ended 30 June 2025, signed 18 March 2026 by Julie Guirado, Director of Operations) prints: Daniel Barcay, Executive Director, $273,514; Tristan Harris, President, $243,592; Aza Raskin, Program Advisor, $239,863; Casey Mock, Chief of Staff, $199,902; Camille Carlton, Policy Director, $181,711; Abby Hall, $130,607; Jessica Smorowski, Operations Manager, $129,861; Julie Guirado and Maria Bridge, both COO, $95,687 and $96,410, each at 40 hours. Directors: Ben Rattray (Chair/Secretary), Premal Shah (Treasurer), Gayle Karen Young, Peter Wang and Lea Endres, each at 2 hours and $0. Schedule J reports totals of $290,016 for Barcay, $259,434 for Harris and $260,924 for Raskin (ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule J). CHT’s team page now lists Harris as “Co-Founder & President,” Randima Fernando and Raskin as “Co-Founder,” Julie Johnston as Chief of Staff and Casey Shea as Director of Strategic Communications; its board section lists Endres (NationBuilder), Harris, Rattray (Change.org), Shah (Kiva.org), Wang (Anaconda) and Young (Cultivating Leadership) (Center for Humane Technology, Team and Board). The 1 October letter says “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” (Center for Humane Technology, Strategic Update).
Governance on the return. Five voting members, all five reported independent (Part VI lines 1a and 1b); no family or business relationship among officers (line 2, No); 22 individuals employed in 2024 and 5 volunteers; minutes of the board and committees documented. A written conflict-of-interest policy (line 12a, Yes) with annual disclosure and monitoring (lines 12b, 12c, Yes); a written document retention policy (line 14, Yes); no written whistleblower policy (line 13, No). Part IV line 34 answers No to being related to any tax-exempt or taxable entity, and no Schedule R is filed. Schedule O says compensation “was reviewed by a third party consulting firm who used comparable data to help recommend compensation amounts” and that “As required by the Nonprofit Integrity Act in California and IRS regulations, certain documents are available to the public upon request” (ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule O).
Funding & Backers
Money in, six years. ProPublica’s organization page lists total revenue by fiscal year: $894,347 (FY2018), $2,932,088, $5,246,727, $3,495,036, $2,332,710, $9,457,658 (FY2023), and the two later returns read here, $3,581,637 (FY2024) and $5,785,317 (FY2025), together $33,725,520 as printed (ProPublica, Center for Humane Technology; ProPublica, FY2024 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990). FY2025 in full: contributions and grants $5,401,973 (93.4 percent), program-service fees $167,000, investment income $197,107, other $19,237; expenses $5,807,076 (program $4,697,128, management $627,525, fundraising $482,423); net loss $21,759; year-end assets $6,142,722 (cash $1,786,539, publicly traded securities $4,038,055, pledges receivable $222,000), liabilities $149,915, net assets $5,992,807, of which $895,095 donor-restricted. The prior year, FY2024, shows a $2,747,838 deficit on $6,329,475 of expenses, and FY2023’s $9,457,658 includes one noncash contribution of cryptocurrency valued at $4,903,833 on Schedule M, 51.0 percent of that year’s $9,611,835 in contributions (ProPublica, FY2023 Schedule M; ProPublica, FY2023 Form 990).
Who the donors are. The public Schedule B prints the word “RESTRICTED” in the name and amount columns in every return read (FY2023, FY2024, FY2025), so no donor of $5,000 or more is named on the IRS record (ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule B). Three funders publish what they gave:
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation: one 2025 grant, $600,000 over 36 months, “for general support ($450,000), and project support ($150,000) for the Interventions Map Project,” funding area Just Societies, Democracy, Rights, and Governance (Packard Foundation, Center for Humane Technology).
- Future of Life Institute: $500,000 recommended, “Support for AI-related policy work and messaging cohesion within the AI xrisk community,” published 19 October 2023 (Future of Life Institute, Center for Humane Technology). See Future of Life Institute.
- Survival and Flourishing Fund, SFF-2025 round: a recommendation by Jaan Tallinn, “General support,” total $468,000 (Main $344,000, Freedom $92,000, Mean $32,000, with a $50,000 speculation grant shown beside it). The SFF-2024 table lists no CHT, and the SFF-2026 table read does not list it either (Survival and Flourishing Fund, SFF-2025; SFF-2024; SFF-2026). See Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jaan Tallinn.
The supporter wall. CHT’s team-and-board page carries the heading “Thanks to our generous lead supporters” over about forty logo images without text or amounts. The images link to Coefficient Giving, the Einhorn Collaborative, the Eucalyptus Foundation, the Argosy Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Jewish Community Foundation (jcfsandiego.org), the Laidir Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Oregon Community Foundation, Pershing Square Philanthropies, the Proton Foundation, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, the Inner Foundation, the Thriving Futures Foundation and the Mariposa Foundation; other logo files are named for the Chris Larsen fund, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Okta, Porticus, the Wolfensohn Family Foundation, the Clark Shannon Buerk Family Foundation and a number of individuals and family funds (Center for Humane Technology, Team and Board). No amount, year or purpose appears with any of them. Coefficient Giving’s site search for “Humane Technology” returns staff-donation and progress posts and no grant to CHT (Coefficient Giving, search “Humane Technology”). The Ford Foundation grants database and the Omidyar and Hewlett grant pages did not return a text record to a plain request.
Money out. Grants and similar amounts paid: $0 in FY2025; $395,000 in FY2024, listed on Schedule I as Ben Franklin Society Library $25,000 (“AI Mapping”), Campaign for Accountability $75,000 (“Legal advocacy”), Hopewell Fund $220,000 (“Lights on Lab”) and Moms Against Media Addiction $75,000 (“Get Media Savvy”); $0 in FY2023 (ProPublica, FY2024 Schedule I). FY2025 compensation of current officers and key employees is $840,645 and other salaries $2,256,080 (Part IX lines 5 and 7). Part VII, Section B lists five contractors over $100,000: Bryson Gillette LLC (Santa Barbara, “Communications,” $435,104), Holland & Knight (“Legal & strategy,” $329,483), Adfero (Washington, “Communications,” $144,000), Sunshine Sachs (New York, “Comms & mobilization,” $109,653) and Sasha Fegan (“Communications,” $103,922). Schedule G lists $187,989 of fundraising-consultant payments (Erlam Incorporated $89,589, Ruth Richerson Consulting $71,150, and three smaller lines). Part IX line 11d, lobbying fees, is $0. In FY2024 the contractor list was Bryson Gillette $318,224, Holland & Knight $261,170, Jonah Sachs $174,497, Boom Kick LLC $131,462 and BYT Media $104,000; Schedule L reports $40,752 of “Facilitation services” paid to Janet Logothetti, “Former Board” (ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule G; ProPublica, FY2024 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2024 Schedule L). The four communications contractors named above total $792,679, 13.7 percent of FY2025 expenses.
Compensation and lobbying, as printed. Schedule J (FY2025): Barcay base $273,514, retirement $6,932, benefits $9,570, total $290,016; Harris base $243,592, retirement $1,250, benefits $14,592, total $259,434; Raskin base $239,863, retirement $9,601, benefits $11,460, total $260,924. The return reports no severance, no deferred plan and no equity pay (Schedule J line 4). Part IV line 4 answers Yes to lobbying; Schedule C shows a section 501(h) election with direct lobbying of $40,108 in FY2025 against a $440,354 nontaxable amount, and $295,836 in the year beginning in 2023 and $14,419 and $4,528 in the two before, four-year total $354,891 against a $1,540,713 base (ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule C; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule J). Part IV line 3 answers No to political campaign activity.
Institutional Voice & Intent
CHT’s register is the insider’s warning: a diagnosis of “incentives,” a plain-English metaphor, a short list of fixes. Its pages are written for lawmakers, parents and viewers, and its best-known artifacts are two films, a podcast and the 2023 “AI Dilemma” talk.
- On the problem: “AI is slowly eroding the parts of life that make us human” (It’s Not You, It’s AI, Center for Humane Technology).
- On what companies owe: “AI companies owe a duty of care to the public”; “AI needs independent oversight, rigorous testing, and real transparency”; “AI should have internationally agreed upon limits” (Center for Humane Technology, The AI Roadmap).
- On liability: “CHT was one of the earliest voices in the call to use liability to drive responsible AI innovation” (Center for Humane Technology, Policy: Shifting Incentives).
- On verification, Harris in his own podcast’s words: “we urgently need to build the verification technology that would make that trust possible” (Center for Humane Technology, We Need AI Treaties).
- On the evaluator layer: “We need a credible, independent, and influential array of AI psychosocial evaluations”; of AI judges, “AI judges, just like human ones, have known biases”; and “We’re building our own psychosocial evaluation prototype to learn firsthand what the real methodological challenges are” (Center for Humane Technology and Imran Khan, What is AI doing to humans? Why aren’t we measuring it?).
- On the platform defence, Harris to the Senate in 2021: “It’s like Exxon talking about the number of trees they have planted, while their extractive business model hasn’t changed” (Harris, written statement, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, 27 April 2021).
Stated intent: to ensure AI “serves humanity’s best interests,” by illuminating “systemic incentives,” through “mass public education,” “targeted briefings to decision-makers” and “private cross-sector coordination.”
Observed intent: A $5.8MM public-education charity whose return shows 93 percent contributions from donors the public form does not name, $793,000 to four communications firms, $40,108 of direct lobbying, no grants in the latest year, a campaign run with Seismic and a Board letter, dated 1 October with the campaign running to the end of that month, that closes the in-house policy, litigation and research programs while the founders keep the media and briefing work.
Gap: CHT presents itself as “independent” and its return supports it on governance (independent board, no related organizations, no AI lab among the names on its supporter wall). What the return and the pages cannot show is who gave most of the $33.7MM, since the IRS record names none and the site prints logos without amounts. The related-charity cluster the campaign partner sits in discloses its overlaps on its own returns; CHT’s return discloses none, and none is documented for CHT. The gap is the usual one for a persuasion charity: reach is public, money is not.
Interest: The position CHT argues is that AI companies should be liable for what their products do and subject to outside testing, and the ties documented run to funders and partners that would also gain from a liable, tested, regulated AI industry. What each would pay, as documented:
- A liability regime for chatbots and frontier AI. Position, in CHT’s words: “AI companies owe a duty of care to the public.” What it pays: litigation against AI companies, in which CHT “currently serves as expert consultant to the plaintiff’s co-counsels” (Center for Humane Technology, Litigation Case Study: Character.AI and Google). Best case, CHT’s: Camille Carlton, “Judge Conway’s ruling is the most significant challenge yet to Silicon Valley’s culture of developing, deploying, and profiting from defective and harmful AI products” (Center for Humane Technology, Statement on the Character.AI ruling). Who else gains: the plaintiffs and their co-counsel, and plaintiffs in later cases.
- A market in independent AI testers. Position, in CHT’s words: “AI needs independent oversight, rigorous testing, and real transparency.” What it pays: demand for evaluators, including the psychosocial evaluators CHT wanted built, the same market the Fathom statute and Humane Intelligence sell into. Best case, CHT’s: “What gets measured gets fixed.” Who else gains: evaluators and whoever funds them.
- A public that asks for it. Position, in the campaign’s words: “Hold AI companies legally responsible when their products cause harm, ban the manipulative designs that prey on people — especially kids, and give people control over their own data, face and voice” (It’s Not You, It’s AI, Center for Humane Technology). What it pays: an audience, which CHT counts at over 120 million, and a constituency to write to Congress through the campaign’s Contact Congress tool. Best case, CHT’s: it is a plain consumer-protection ask in the language of kitchen tables. Who else gains: any funder or lobbyist whose ask matches.
Interest is a documented fact about each position, not a claim about motive, and not a verdict that the argument is wrong. Each best case is stated at the strength its author states it.
Position in the Apparatus
The campaign and its partner. CHT’s page: “Stop the AI Drift is an initiative from the Center for Humane Technology, in partnership with the Seismic Foundation” (It’s Not You, It’s AI, Center for Humane Technology). Seismic’s post, bylined Casey Shea, CHT, and Alice Anselmi, Seismic: “We at Center for Humane Technology and Seismic Foundation have partnered to roll out ads in the New York City subway system,” and “You’ll be able to see Stop the AI Drift ads in the New York City subway system now through late October” (Seismic Foundation, The Public Isn’t Buying What the AI Industry Is Selling). The Board’s letter treats the campaign as part of the “AI and What Makes Us Human initiative” and says it “has supported continuing the AI and What Makes Us Human initiative—including the Stop AI Drift campaign—through the end of October,” after which staff will conclude “CHT’s programmatic operations” (Center for Humane Technology, Strategic Update). Seismic’s TY2025 return lists Ergo Impact, Halcyon Futures, Fathom AI and Sentinel Bio as related and reports an $87,500 gift from Halcyon Futures (ProPublica, Seismic TY2025 Schedule R). See Seismic Catalyst Foundation, Ergo Impact, Halcyon Futures, Fathom and Sentinel Bio. CHT’s own return answers No to related organizations, files no Schedule R, and prints none of those names; no CHT page read names any of the four charities.
Where it sits. Against the other organizations on this site, CHT is the loudest and the least bound. It is the public face of the liability ask that Seismic markets; it funds no one now and passes no statute, unlike Fathom; it tests nothing yet, unlike Humane Intelligence, though it said in April 2026 that it was building a psychosocial-evaluation prototype and, in the same Board letter, that it would step back from “evaluations of AI’s psychosocial impacts.” Its project director for that work was Imran Khan, formerly CEO of the British Science Association (Center for Humane Technology, Imran Khan). Its largest named funders overlap those of the funding layer documented on this site: the Survival and Flourishing Fund, the Future of Life Institute, and a Coefficient Giving logo and an Omidyar Network logo on its supporter wall. See Open Philanthropy (Coefficient Giving).
Government and the courts. CHT says its policy work “ranges from supporting state laws to participating in high-level discussions with federal lawmakers,” and that it is “currently supporting groundbreaking litigation against Character.AI and Google” (Center for Humane Technology, Policy: Shifting Incentives). Harris gave written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law on 27 April 2021, and CHT’s podcast page says “Tristan and Aza were invited speakers at the event, along with Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, and other leaders” at the first closed-door AI Insight Forum in September 2023 (Harris, written statement; Center for Humane Technology, Inside the First AI Insight Forum in Washington). The Board letter adds a meeting with Pope Leo and a discussion with Bill Gates. Its policy page lists, among its Substack items, “CHT Statement in Response to State Moratorium on AI Legislation” (Center for Humane Technology, Policy: Shifting Incentives).
A named ratchet organization, in a list. CHT’s Policy Reforms Toolkit includes, under “Accountability for Harms,” a mechanism reading “Global Disinformation Index risk ratings of media sources” (Center for Humane Technology, Policy Reforms Toolkit). It is one line in a list of existing and proposed measures, and the page does not say whether CHT endorses it.
Actions & Leadership Choices
CONDUCT: WATCH — CAMPAIGN PARTNER OF THE SHARED-BOARD CLUSTER, WITH MOST FUNDERS SHOWN AS LOGOS AND A PROGRAM WIND-DOWN ANNOUNCED MID-CAMPAIGN. No wrongdoing is alleged. The structural points are three. A public-attention charity whose return names no donor ran its flagship campaign with a partner charity whose own return lists four related charities and a gift from one of them. Its supporter page names about forty funders with no amounts, while three publish theirs. And its Board ended the policy, litigation and research programs on 1 October, with the campaign running to the end of the month. CHT’s own best case is the plain one: it is an independent, founder-led communicator with a clean governance record, its funders are the foundations and families it names, and a Board entitled to refocus did so and honored the campaign commitment.
What it has done. Two films that CHT says reached “an estimated 100 million” (The Social Dilemma) and the Netflix top ten (The AI Doc); a podcast with “over 31 million downloads”; an AI Roadmap of seven principles; expert support to the Character.AI plaintiffs, whose motion to dismiss was denied on 21 May 2025 per CHT’s case study; briefings of legislators; and a campaign with Seismic (Center for Humane Technology; Center for Humane Technology, Litigation Case Study: Character.AI and Google). On 8 October 2026 its Substack said that Harris had appeared on a long list of programs after Dario Amodei’s call for slower AI development, and that “We’ve also been working behind the scenes to unlock coordinated action” (Center for Humane Technology, AI Everywhere).
The 1 October refocus. The Board writes that the in-house policy, litigation, research and fellows programs end, that “We explored supporting an independent organization to carry the programmatic work forward, but it will not be launching,” and that it will “support and highlight other organizations advancing this work.” It lists among the achievements of the departing team: “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.” The fellows program had been opened for applications on 17 June 2026 (Center for Humane Technology, Strategic Update; Center for Humane Technology, Emerging Voices in AI & Society Fellows Program). The third focus the letter keeps is “private coordination,” which it describes as “bringing leaders across technology, government, media, and philanthropy together behind the scenes … While much of this work cannot be shared publicly.”
Where the money goes. Program services were $4,697,128 of $5,807,076 in FY2025, 80.9 percent; pay for officers and key employees and other salaries is $3,096,725; $792,679 went to four communications firms; direct lobbying was $40,108. The return reports no grants. The next return (FY2026, ending 30 June 2026) will show a year in which the Board has since changed the program mix.
Alliance Map
| Axis | Tie | Since | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate | Center for Humane Technology, California 501(c)(3), San Francisco, EIN 82-3492182; President Tristan Harris; Interim Executive Director Randima (Randy) Fernando; co-founder Aza Raskin; five voting directors (Rattray, Shah, Young, Wang, Endres), all independent; 22 employees; no related organization | 2017 formed; ruling June 2018 | ProPublica, Center for Humane Technology; ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990 |
| Corporate | Campaign partner: Seismic Foundation (Seismic Catalyst Foundation), “Stop the AI Drift”; New York subway ads through late October 2026 | 2026 | It’s Not You, It’s AI, Center for Humane Technology; Seismic Foundation, The Public Isn’t Buying What the AI Industry Is Selling |
| Corporate | Contractors over $100,000, FY2025: Bryson Gillette LLC $435,104; Holland & Knight $329,483; Adfero $144,000; Sunshine Sachs $109,653; Sasha Fegan $103,922 | FY2025 | ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990 |
| Ratchet | None as funder, partner, contractor or board member on its return or pages; its Policy Reforms Toolkit lists “Global Disinformation Index risk ratings of media sources” as one proposed mechanism | n/a | Center for Humane Technology, Policy Reforms Toolkit |
| Movement | Funders: Jaan Tallinn through SFF-2025, $468,000; Future of Life Institute, $500,000 (2023); Packard Foundation, $600,000 (2025); supporter logos for Coefficient Giving, Omidyar Network, Hewlett and others | 2023 to 2025 | SFF-2025; Future of Life Institute; Packard Foundation; Center for Humane Technology, Team and Board |
| Movement | Grants out, FY2024: Hopewell Fund $220,000; Campaign for Accountability $75,000; Moms Against Media Addiction $75,000; Ben Franklin Society Library $25,000 | FY2024 | ProPublica, FY2024 Schedule I |
| Agency | No government service, grant or contract on its return; written testimony to Senate Judiciary subcommittee (27 April 2021); invited speakers at the Senate AI Insight Forum (September 2023); direct lobbying $40,108 FY2025 under a 501(h) election | 2021 to 2026 | Harris, written statement; Center for Humane Technology, Inside the First AI Insight Forum; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule C |
| Legal | Expert consultant to the plaintiff’s co-counsels in Garcia v. Character Technologies (motion to dismiss denied 21 May 2025); CHT is not a party | 2024 to 2026 | Center for Humane Technology, Litigation Case Study; Center for Humane Technology, Statement on the ruling |
| Diaspora | None documented as a diaspora-organization role, diaspora-PAC donation, foreign-government service or FARA registration on the pages cited | n/a | ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990 |
These run at the same time. One charity, nine years old, reaches 120 million people on its own count, files a return naming no donor, partners with a campaign charity that lists four related charities, and tells its supporters on 1 October that the part of it that wrote policy and supported litigation is closing. The overlap with Seismic’s cluster is the partner’s, not CHT’s; what is CHT’s is the unnamed money and the timing.
Reach Assessment
Institutional: $5,785,317 of FY2025 revenue and $33.7MM over eight returns; 22 employees in 2024; five independent directors; net assets $5,992,807; a campaign partner with $5.25MM in first-year contributions. Memetic: by its own count, over 120 million people reached through media, an estimated 100 million for The Social Dilemma, the AI Doc in Netflix’s top ten, a podcast above 31 million downloads, a Substack, a Contact-Congress tool on the campaign page and a New York subway campaign (Center for Humane Technology; It’s Not You, It’s AI, Center for Humane Technology).
Civilizational: For scale, the SFF-2025 round recommended $34.33MM in total, and CHT’s $468,000 is 1.4 percent of it (Survival and Flourishing Fund, SFF-2025). CHT’s budget is small beside the funding layer; its weight is that it is the best-known name in the cluster.
Score note. Attack 6, defense 6 and hp 5 on first-hand receipts: three Form 990s (FY2023 to FY2025) with Schedules B, C, G, I, J, L, M and O, its own site, campaign page, Board letter and Substack, and three funders’ own pages. Peers: Seismic Catalyst Foundation (4/3/3, hazard 33.3), the campaign partner; CHT is two above on reach and three above on insulation because its return reports no related charity, five independent directors and named funders, and two above on entrenchment because of its age and its archive, until the wind-down. Ergo Impact (4/3/3, hazard 33.3) is the adviser in Seismic’s cluster; Humane Intelligence (5/4/3, hazard 40) is the nearest evaluator and sells services rather than a message; Fathom (7/7/6, hazard 66.7) sponsors a chaptered statute and sits above CHT on all three; the Survival and Flourishing Fund (6/8/6, hazard 67) is a CHT funder and level on reach. Hazard 56.7 sits below Fathom and the Survival and Flourishing Fund and above Humane Intelligence.
Score basis. Atk 6 is reach: CHT’s own count is more than 120 million people through media, an estimated 100 million for one film, a podcast over 31 million downloads, written testimony to a Senate subcommittee, an invitation to the Senate’s first AI Insight Forum, expert support in a federal case that survived a motion to dismiss, and $40,108 of direct lobbying; nothing binds a lab, agency or legislature to act, and the in-house policy and litigation programs end on 1 October 2026 (Center for Humane Technology; Center for Humane Technology, Strategic Update; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule C). Def 6 is funding insulation: 93.4 percent of revenue is contributions, the public Schedule B names none, five of five directors are independent, there is a written conflict policy and a compensation review, no written whistleblower policy, no related organization, and three funders publish amounts of $468,000, $500,000 and $600,000 against about forty names with none (ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule B; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule O). Hp 5 is entrenchment: a nine-year organization with $5,992,807 of net assets and a content archive, whose Board has ended its programs and found no independent successor (ProPublica, Center for Humane Technology; Center for Humane Technology, Strategic Update).
Sources: Center for Humane Technology; Team and Board; Impact and Story; The CHT Perspective; Policy: Shifting Incentives; Policy Reforms Toolkit; The AI Roadmap; Imran Khan; Litigation Case Study: Character.AI and Google; Strategic Update, October 1, 2026; Inside the First AI Insight Forum in Washington; It’s Not You, It’s AI; CHT Substack, What is AI doing to humans?; CHT Substack, Statement on the Character.AI ruling; CHT Substack, We Need AI Treaties; CHT Substack, Emerging Voices Fellows Program; CHT Substack, AI Everywhere; Seismic Foundation, The Public Isn’t Buying What the AI Industry Is Selling; ProPublica, Center for Humane Technology; ProPublica, FY2025 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule B; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule C; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule G; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule J; ProPublica, FY2025 Schedule O; ProPublica, FY2024 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2024 Schedule I; ProPublica, FY2024 Schedule L; ProPublica, FY2023 Form 990; ProPublica, FY2023 Schedule M; ProPublica, Seismic TY2025 Schedule R; Packard Foundation, Center for Humane Technology; Future of Life Institute, Center for Humane Technology; Survival and Flourishing Fund; SFF-2024; SFF-2025; SFF-2026; Coefficient Giving, search “Humane Technology”; Harris, written statement, Senate Judiciary, 27 April 2021
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