With AI, what gets measured gets optimized. Right now, that's AI capability, not human wellbeing. In this episode, Aza Raskin talks with researchers Imran Khan & Jared Moore about Humane Evals: CHT's push to measure what AI does to us, not just what it can do.
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.
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You can read more about Jared’s work at his website.
Related pieces by Imran on the CHT Substack:
The website for the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics
KoraBench, the child safety AI benchmark that Imran referenced
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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.