← The Lawfare Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript85 lines
- [00:01]
Lawfare Host
The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of lawfare@patreon.com lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull, and the Aftermath.
- [00:32]
Madison H.
A Real Lemonade Pet Insurance Review by Madison H.
- [00:35]
Pet Insurance Reviewer
You know, I thought it was a little ridiculous to get pet insurance, but I really didn't want to not take my little kitten to the vet because of money. In the last eight months, I've taken him in six times because of ear infections and saved literally hundreds of dollars. He may even need to get surgery, and I couldn't consider it without Lemonade's help. I recommend Lemonade to all my friends constantly, and now I'm recommending it to you.
- [00:58]
Madison H.
Check it out@lemonade.com pet.
- [01:04]
Dean Ball
Race the Rudders, Race the sails. Race the sails.
- [01:07]
Madison H.
Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over.
- [01:10]
Lawfare Host
Roger, Wait, is that an enterprise sales solution?
- [01:15]
LinkedIn Ads Representative
Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started today at LinkedIn.com Terms and Conditions apply.
- [01:37]
Kevin Fraser
It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Kevin Fraser, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a senior editor at lawfare. Today we're bringing you something a little different. It's an episode from our new podcast series, Scaling Laws. Scaling Laws is a creation of lawfare and Texas Law. It has a pretty simple aim, but a huge mission. We cover the most important AI and law policy questions that are top of mind for everyone from Sam Altman to senators on the Hill to folks like you. We dive deep into the weeds of new laws, various proposals, and what the labs are up to to make sure you're up to date on the rules and regulations, standards and ideas that are shaping the future of this pivotal technology. If that sounds like something you're going to be interested in and our hunches, it is. You can find Scaling Laws wherever you subscribe to podcasts. You can also follow us on X and BlueSky. Thank you.
- [02:39]
Dean Ball
When the AI overlords take over, what are you most excited about?
- [02:43]
AI Policy Expert
It's not crazy, it's just smart.
- [02:46]
Dean Ball
Just this year, in the first six months, there have been something like a thousand laws.
- [02:50]
AI Policy Expert
Who's actually building the scaffolding around how it's going to work, how everyday folks are going to use it?
- [02:55]
Dean Ball
AI only works if society lets it work.
- [02:58]
AI Policy Expert
There are so many questions have to be figured out.
- [03:01]
Dean Ball
And nobody came to my bonus class.
- [03:03]
AI Policy Expert
Let's enforce the rules of the road.
- [03:05]
Kevin Fraser
Welcome back to Scaling Laws, the podcast brought to you by lawfare and the University of Texas School of Law that explores the intersection of AI law and policy.
- [03:15]
Dean Ball
Dean Ball, welcome to Scaling Laws.
- [03:17]
Madison H.
Thanks so much for having me.
- [03:19]
Dean Ball
So I was preparing for this podcast and I was trying to figure out what I could ask you, given that you're in the White House. And then I saw that this is your last day on the day we're recording this Monday. By the time we release this podcast, you will be a free man. You'll be your own citizen. So let's just start. Why did you decide to leave? And what's next for you?
- [03:41]
Madison H.
Yeah, so it's a few different reasons that all kind of came together at the same time. I think one. One way to think about it is like you sort of just have to. You have to know and be honest with yourself about what you're good at, and particularly in the context of the White House, not just what you're good at, but what you believe you can do an extraordinary job at. And I believed when, you know, when I was asked to sort of come in and told that the job at OSTP would. Would heavily involve, not only involve, but heavily involve leading the drafting of the action plan, I said, I think I can do that. When it comes to implementation, it's an entirely separate skill set that I don't have as much experience in. Right. Like I did management for a while. I was decent at it, but I didn't love it. It didn't make my heart sing. And it's essentially a kind of management implementing something like the action plan. It's more than that, but that's a big chunk of it. And I also don't have a ton of federal government experience. A lot of my background, as you both know, a lot of my professional research background and intellectual background is in state and local policy. So even by the standards of most policy wonks, I would say my knowledge of the federal government is fine, but it's intermediate fluency, not, you know, expert level fluency. And so, you know, there were so many things in federal life just in the four months that I was there where, you know, a lot of it was like, not necessarily a learning curve, but just like, lots of new concepts to learn and things like that. And I think that if you think you can do a B plus job at doing something like implementing the Action plan. It's a little bit like, you know, if you're on the sidelines in a stadium, you know, at a football game, and you're like, I think I can do a B plus job of catching this football well, then, like, you better not be about to get on the line for the Dallas Cowboys. You know what I mean? Because that's not acceptable. And that's what the White House is, right? It's the big leagues. And so I thought I could do it for the writing. And when it came to the. The dra. The implementation, I thought maybe not as much. And then on the flip side of that, kind of the same issue, but closely related, is that the politics of AI on the right right now are in such an interesting state of flux. And obviously, inside the White House, with some of the issues that came across our desk, many of them that came across our desk, I kind of had a front row seat to not just the things that were in public, but also many things that were said and talked about in private that really captured that state of flux. And I guess, like, reflecting on that, I feel like there's this enormous opportunity to create new. To guide the rhetoric in a good direction. I think right now, things could go in a really bad place or in a really good place, not just on the right, but in general. And that requires a degree of creative freedom, rhetorical flexibility, or, like, discursive flexibility, and also like policy freedom. You know, like the ability to throw out some policy ideas that you just can't do. You know, the White House is not about creative freedom. That's not the point of the White House. Right. It's not an ad agency. And so, you know, you can't. You can't just throw out ideas, and you can't just throw out, you know, political messages. Right? You have to. You have to stick to the sort of, like, the bounds of things that have been agreed to by the West Wing. Right. And that's fine. That's the way it should be. It's no criticism at all. And that's obviously not specific to this administration or anything like that. This is just a fact of being in the White House. But the kind of work I like to do is get my head around really thorny issues, try out a couple different things, sort of like a little bit bull in a china shop. Like, like, sort of like, go around and like, just try on different ideas, like hats. And you just really can't do that as a White House staffer without causing a number of minor, potentially major incidents. And probably being fired. So not only in other words, did I think maybe I would be not the best at the implementation, but actually that my style was very well suited to the action plan because that's exactly what you needed to do. What you needed to do was get your head around a bunch of thorny policy issues, figure out where to go, figure out how to optimize within a variety of very complex political constraints, and then find there's one high dimensional vector of this is the right path right here that we can sort of cobble together all the different coalitions and we can get this right. I can totally do that and I want to continue doing that. And I think the best place to continue doing that and the place that will be most helpful to the action plan itself and to the President's AI vision is outside of government.
- [09:17]
AI Policy Expert
So you mentioned so many deep, important concepts that we're going to have to spend hopefully several podcasts going into. I think this may become a anthology, but for the first thing I want to dive into is sorry, I'm going to restart. So Dean, you mentioned your heart singing, you mentioned playing for the Dallas Cowboys, you mentioned being a bull in the China shop. There's a lot that we can explore. But I want to start with what you would say to others who are thinking right now, hey, if I got called to serve in the federal government, any federal government, what was that learning curve like for you in terms of just saying, I have this expertise, I want to go help on policy, for lack of a better phrase, would you encourage others to follow in your footsteps? Or what's kind of your advice to folks who are saying I don't know where to go in terms of how to make a difference in AI policy? What's the pitch for and against getting involved at the federal level?
- [10:18]
Madison H.
It is the most incredible honor and opportunity that you will ever have in your life. And if you are lucky enough to be called to do it, you should probably find a way to say yes, I can only speak for the White House, which is for a lot of obvious and some non obvious reasons, like an extraordinary place within government. Right. It's not maybe typical. So like I can't speak for what it's like to work at any other agency in the federal government. And federal government's a very big place. So I will cabin my comments to the White House. And to say there that like, you know, in that context it's actually like in general and this might be specific to this administration, you know, I don't, that I don't know, but it was less bureaucratic, significantly less bureaucratic than I expected it to be. So when I say there's like a bunch of new concepts and things like that, I am literally talking about like very basic aspects of like the federal, you know, like the federal pay scale and like, you know, the ethics rules and like, you know. Oh, foia, right. I mean, I, who would have known that FOIA structured the incentives of public employees as much as it does, but it really does. And at the White House you also have the Presidential Records act, which is its own whole special thing, but the like in general, it is just like actually a quite flexible place. And so, I mean, maybe in particular it's a pitch for this administration because like, you can make a ton of difference as, as a scholar, you know, like, there aren't going to be that many people in the room and if you know a lot about something, you might well be, you know, the, the best positioned expert and people, you know, you can really influence the way that, the way that policy goes, a lot of it will be invisible, you know, so you have to be okay with that. Of course, you have to be okay with that in all ways. And you have to be okay with, you know, at the end of the day, you are not a representative of yourself. You're not worried about your own reputation. You're not a representative. You are a representative of the President of the United States. And that's an absolute commitment. And so, you know, you are implementing the President's vision. And if you disagree with the President's vision in any way, you have to be, you know, you have to be okay with that. Right. And again, that's not specific to this administration. That's true of working in government. And I think a lot of people also get this impression that like, oh, well, I know more than the President about this issue. He's not in the weeds on this. So like he's going to say something and maybe I'll do something that like, slightly diverges, but I know better and I know what he actually wants. Like, no, no, that's not the game. Um, you know, you, you, that, that's not, that's not quite how, how that, how that ought to work. Um, the other thing I would say is that you really do like, you, you, you've got to have policy ideas that are really well developed that you have lots and lots of fluency in because you will not have, you know, the, the, the constraints on your time and the amount of inbound that you will get just inbound Communications from people. And it's like people you've never met. It's everyone in your professional life. It's like people you went to high school with or you haven't talked to in 20 years. It's like all of that put together.
- [13:47]
AI Policy Expert
Were you getting active feedback on the action plan from that guy in your sophomore, like, English class saying, yo, Dean, why haven't you thought of this brilliant idea?
- [13:57]
Madison H.
There was, you know, there were so many people that reached out and including, yeah, I did actually have several people from my high school that I haven't talked to in like, two decades reach out to me. Practically two decades. So, like, the amount of time that you will have to respond to, like, extraordinarily weighty questions about policy and about, like, tactics and strategy, it would just, just. It'll just amaze you how little time you have on some things. It's like you have to make a call. You know, you have like 20 minutes or you have an hour to, like, think through this really complicated thing. So I'd say it's definitely a place that, like, White House at least is a place that rewards generalists, but it's also a place that rewards people that have, like, pretty well developed, like, you have to have a quite well developed sense of like, everything, you know, kind of that you want to do. So. Yeah, but no, it would be very hard for me to imagine unless, like, one of those things doesn't sound like it could, you know, it would work for you. And obviously you got to be willing to work like, very long hours and all that stuff. But, like, assuming any of that's, you know, like, assuming all that's true, I can't imagine why you would say no.
- [15:11]
Dean Ball
You said that it's a complicated time for AI policy on the political right. And I would just love for you to talk more about that. What do you mean? And what are the different potential futures you see for how this could all this all play out?
- [15:23]
Madison H.
Yeah. So, I mean, like, I think there is some portion of the right you have still the kind of techno libertarian types, and in some ways that's manifested itself as the new tech right, and in some ways not, I think that.
- [15:44]
Dean Ball
Has survived Elon Musk's defenestration from the coalition.
- [15:48]
Madison H.
I think in some. I mean, it's hard to. I don't really know what the new tech right is. You know, I don't consider myself to be a part of that. I mean, there's nothing new about my rightness. Right. I've been conservative for like 15 years. I've been conservative since I was 18 years old. So yeah, like, but there is kind of that and then you know, candidly, like there is some skepticism with which those people are viewed by others who have maybe see themselves and probably rightfully as having been in the right coalition for a longer period of time. You have of course, lots of members of the party who have very deep concerns about the influence of big tech on our society and our economy. And society versus economy is different for different people. There's the people who are really worried about it for the economy and financialization and software in the economy and want to move to sort of a more hardware based world. And then there are people who are worried about it more in terms of a society impact and that can relate to, you know, kids safety but also many other issues. And you know, also just politics though, right? Who? People who I think, you know, like, let's be real, like a lot of the companies that are producing these, you know, leading AI products are companies that like patted themselves on the back for undermining President Trump in his, in his first term. Right. Like patted themselves on the back about it.
- [17:34]
Dean Ball
What do you mean?
- [17:35]
Madison H.
Well, I mean I think like one good example is you know, Google and their refusal to work with the Department of Defense as like just one example. But there are others.
- [17:47]
Dean Ball
Do you think that's a, that's a Trump thing or do you think that's more of a. They don't want to work on some military project or something like that?
- [17:53]
Madison H.
It was totally a Trump thing. If Obama had been president, there's zero percent chance they would have done that. I'm convinced of that in my bones. It was about Trump. And I mean also like other things too. Right. Like working with the Department of Homeland Security. Right. Those contracts were often protested internally inside of big tech companies and not just Google. You know, I'm not just calling out Google, I'm calling it. This was a problem that we saw repeatedly and that gets, that's to say nothing of social media misinformation, all that stuff that you guys have talked about on various things. So like without like re. Rehashing that old history, the point is there's a lot of people that for a variety of reasons, whether you think they're good or bad, I happen to think they're pretty good. Share like have like a significant amount of skepticism about these companies and have kind of like they feel like they've heard all this before about like the promises of how great this is going to be and they feel like what they're seeing in front of their eyes is not necessarily like, particularly in line with those promises of a grand future. You know, there are people, for example, who called the relatively prominent people on the right who described the opening section of the action plan as utopian because it talked about the ability to unravel ancient scrolls once thought unreadable. And they're like, that's utopian. And I was like, that literally happened like 18 months ago. And actually the dude who did it, like, works for the Trump administration.
- [19:25]
Dean Ball
I still think that that may be the coolest thing that AI has done. I think probably alphafold is more important, but there's something about X raying old mud caked volcanic scrolls that I just said really does it for me.
- [19:38]
Madison H.
It is extremely cool. So, yeah, I think there's all these different things, and I think there's also AI means different things to different people in this world. So to some people, when you say AI, they'll think of LLMs. Other people, when you say AI, they actually still mostly are thinking about probabilistic recommender algorithms on social media. And so they're thinking of it more that way. And so there's a lot of, you know, this is a period in time. It reminds me a great deal of the, the late 18th century, sort of the last quarter of the 18th century, when, you know, linguists and etymologists will go back and look at the ways that the definitions of words changed and like, words like, change. The meaning of words changed like a lot in that time, which makes it really hard for originalists because it's like, what did that word mean? It's really different between, like, you know, 1770 versus the 1800, meaning of this word is, like, sometimes wildly different. I think we're living through a similar period of like, intellectual fertility. And so all that is happening all at the same time. And like, how exactly you disentangle it and figure out the right thing to say is super interesting problem.
- [20:56]
AI Policy Expert
Well, we know for certain that study of language from this period will see a huge uptick in delve, minimally. And that will prove insightful for a lot of linguists. Uh, but Dean, I'm, I'm curious if you think that following the AI action plan, and we want to get into the weeds of that in a second, but in the wake of the plan and following the initial fracas that happened around the AI moratorium, where we had Senators Cruz and Blackburn reach a deal, unreach a deal, and then just, we don't know where things stand necessarily on the hill right now. Is it your sense that this fracture or the different visions on the right, are they narrowing? Are they coalescing? Are we getting more agreement now? Are we kind of getting over the, for lack of better phrase, as you kind of threw out there, a sort of hangover from social media, the sense that we got social media so wrong that we have to respond faster and more harshly to AI, Is that a symptom that we saw just from the introduction of AI that we can see dissipate soon? Or do you think that's going to stick around?
- [22:06]
Madison H.
My guess is it will stick around. Well, it will definitely stick around. The question of whether it stays the same, dissipates or grows, I think is really dependent on, like, what happens next. I think it depends on that.
- [22:20]
AI Policy Expert
So what. What are the key factors that you'll be paying attention to? Is it like, because my thesis is that AI companions are going to become the fulcrum for people's perception of AI? Of. Because if you're a parent and you have a kid who uses some AI AI companion and it becomes their best friend and they don't want to come down for dinner, I think you hate AI. Now, if you have no connection to kids using AI companions or just don't care or never experience them, I think you're. You're kind of in a different universe from an AI policy perspective. But what factors are you paying attention to in this debate?
- [22:55]
Madison H.
Yeah, so, I mean, I think it is. It is right, that, you know, very, very likely a big chunk of this is going to be shaped by some kind of crisis, which is. By its stochastic. And so, like. Yeah, I think the whole, like, again, this is totally just me. This is totally not a White House opinion here. And like, this is not something that people a lot every. I'm not saying that. And winking like I've.
- [23:25]
AI Policy Expert
You're a free man, Dean. You're a free man.
- [23:28]
Madison H.
This wasn't like water cooler talk at the White House. Is my.
- [23:31]
AI Policy Expert
The badge is turned in, the phone is gone.
- [23:34]
Madison H.
Yes, that's right. But like, I think that some of these, like, let's not call it companion. Like, let's talk. I mean, let's be real and say, like, there's like, some, like, some of this is pornographic, right? There's like softcore and sometimes hardcore pornography being offered. Like, not by like a Russian, you know, bot farm, you know, the open source image gen or video gen model running on a Russian bot farm, but like, instead, like, models being offered by like, companies that have Very prominent institutional investors. And, like, you know, like. And I think that's a ticking time bomb. I thought that about character before the tort cases against, you know, the one in Florida, most prominently before those lawsuits. I thought character was a ticking time bomb. Not that character is explicitly sexual, though it often went there, you know, it often the product, at least, I haven't used. I have. I'm not a regular user. But, like, it certainly in the past it had a tendency to go to sexual places, including with minors. That's a ticking time bomb with, like, American society. I don't think that's just a ticking time bomb with conservatives, but that'll really affect how people see it. I think another thing in the physical world will be do the data centers increase the price of power or make electricity less reliable for many Americans? There are totally ways to deal with that issue. Right? Like, we can totally deal with that, but do we effectively do that or not is a really big question. So I think that if Americans view these companies as getting away with a kind of theft or getting away with, like, things that feel unfair, you know, I think, first of all, this is a democratic society, and it's up to the American people ultimately to decide, you know, what things feel unfair. Right. And vote based on that. And, you know, I think that will. That will bias AI, unfortunately, you know, it's very vulnerable AI. It's a very delicate thing. And you. The problem, though, is that even if you're, you know, if you're. If your goals are fully punitive and you just want to exact revenge, and maybe it's for stuff that happened on social media in 2018, and maybe it's for stuff that's happening right now, and maybe it's both or things that could happen in the future. You know, regardless of what those things are, I think that it is possible, especially through, like, a lot of the laws that we're seeing at the state level, it is possible to freeze our society in amber in a way that will make all of the problems we have worse. And so it seems to me that, like, that sort of area, that issue of, like, perception is going to matter a great deal. Because I will tell you something right now, like, you've got to do better than, like, you know, in the long term, you've got to do better than, like, well, we have to, like, you know, China, China, China. We have to, like, you know, that's a shipping of the org chart thing. That's a. Like, we can't agree on anything else. And again, that's The Democrats did this too, because the Democrats couldn't agree either. No one can agree. No one knows what to think. And so this is really articulating a vocabulary of like, what, what will the politics of AI be? I think it's still pretty paradigmatic. The last thing, last thing I will say is, you know, the President obviously called for a, for a preemptive framework in his, in his speech announcing the action plan. And you can't, I think, you know, he was very clear in what he said. He said we're going to have rules and we need rules that are more brilliant than AI itself is the way he put it. And, you know, I actually think that's, that's a bit of poetry that I like quite a bit because I do agree with that. I agree entirely with that. But that does not look like a moratorium. And that does not also look like your company releases some documents to the public about like the model's technical specifications or what your company did to mitigate biorisk. Like, excuse me, get out of here. You're not getting preemption and like a liability shield because you did that. Like, like, like, that's, that's insane. That's complete insanity. And no American will find that to be just so, you know, figuring out what it should be is its own whole can of worms. But I think that you have to answer, you have to, you have to answer that question head on. Depending on how we answer that question, I think we'll will determine a lot. If we answer it as one country, then we could end up, I think, in a very good place. If we don't answer it as one country and we end up resolving that by the States, then I think we could end up in a quite fractured place with a lot of really bad politics and bad economic outcomes as well.
- [29:08]
Dean Ball
So I'm curious about the last thing you said in terms of, look, if you want preemption, you got to do something more than just throw out some impact report. And I'm curious if that would have been your position going into this job, because I would have taken you, I would have guessed that sort of the pre White House Dean Ball would have been much more on the moratorium side than what I'm hearing now. And I'm curious if what you saw in the White House changed your mind on some of these foundational issues.
- [29:41]
Madison H.
It's actually funny. No, I gave an interview to give two interviews in fact, in like December. One of those like, you know, reporter look ahead things where they, you do a, you Do a, you know, it was on the record, but like an interview about like what, what, what should we expect from the Trump administration kind of a thing. And we talked about preemption in both those interviews. One of them was never published, but one of them was. And in both of them I was asked about the concept of a moratorium. And I specifically said I don't think that's going to work as a political matter. And I also don't think it's right as a policy matter. I think you can't, like, I think it's like I get the idea that like the states regulating stuff is a practical problem. I think that is true. At the same time, I think it doesn't, it's just, it puts you in a difficult political position quite frankly to, to say, you know, the, the moratorium like that, well, we're just not going to do anything. You know, I think a lot of it doesn't, it doesn't really meet where a lot of people are in the party. That being said, like, I think the moratorium had a very, you know, that's the, that was the abstract idea of a moratorium. I was talking about the actual moratorium. We got had like, I would say like a, quite well, it was fraught and there was a lot of debate about it, but it had like a pretty extensive carve out section of like all the different kinds of laws it did want to allow states to, to, to pass. But nonetheless, I think, you know, as, as we saw, you know, regardless of sort of my, my own prescriptive opinions about that, about that specific moratorium, I think what I would say is that it was obvious from the political reaction that it just didn't quite, it just didn't quite seem right to a lot of people. And so I think, you know, you will need to do something more and you will need to create some sort of sense of rules, whatever that might mean.
- [31:48]
Lawfare Host
DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Data brokers make a profit off your data. It's a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy private details about you. Your name, contact information, Social Security number, home address, even information about your family members. It can all be compiled by data brokers and sold online. And that can lead to identity theft, phishing attempt and harassment. But now you can protect your privacy with Delete me. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have been using Delete me since before they were ever an advertiser. With Lawfare, I have an active online presence. I'm out there. I make arguments that piss people off and sometimes there can be blowback for that. And my privacy really is important to me. I don't want people mucking around in my personality beyond that which I choose to make public. I've been a victim of identity theft. I've been harassed. I've never been doxxed. But you know, I expect it sometime. And if you haven't, you probably know someone who has. Delete Me can help. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for Lawfare listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.comLawfare20 and use the promo code Lawfare20 at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Lawfare20 and enter code Lawfare20 at checkout. That's join DeleteMe.com Lawfare20 code Lawfare20.
- [34:04]
LinkedIn Ads Representative
Why choose a sleep number Smart Bed Can.
- [34:06]
Madison H.
I make my site softer?
- [34:07]
AI Policy Expert
Can I make my site firmer? Can we sleep cooler?
- [34:11]
LinkedIn Ads Representative
Sleep number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your Sleep number setting it's the Sleep number biggest sale of the year all beds on sale up to 50% off the limited edition smart bed plus free home delivery with the purchase of any smart bed ends Monday. All Sleep number Smart beds offer temperature solutions for your best sleep. Check it out at a Sleep number store or sleepnumber.com today.
- [34:34]
BetterHelp Representative
BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.
- [35:17]
Matt from P1
Hey, it's Matt here from P1 with Matt and Tommy and this episode is sponsored by ebay. Swapping out your tyres. There's nothing like it with ebay. You find the feel you're looking for. From smooth highway rides to grip for rough terrain. Get all the tires you need at prices you'll love ebay. Things people love.
- [35:39]
AI Policy Expert
So the conversation from President Trump on the moratorium was kind of after the fact. After the the big fight occurred on the Hill. Do you expect that this is going to be a position from the White House that gets reiterated or that we continue to see expressed, or is this a position that's maybe convenient or part of the air action plan for now, but maybe is something that the administration may be willing to negotiate on or move away?
- [36:09]
Madison H.
Well, there's two things I want to disentangle, actually. I want to disentangle the state law related provisions that were in the action plan and then the President's statement of support for a legislative preemptive package. Because they are different, I would think a legislative preemptive package. I mean there's all sorts of questions there about how you structure that. I can't, you know, I, I can't speak to like what the White House will do in part because some of those things are conversations that I participated in and I can't, I can't share sort of like deliberative discussions that we had about, about things where White House doesn't have a, you know, hasn't like. But you know, I would say like the President said this and generally speaking, we take what the President says with an extreme degree of seriousness. And I think a lot of other members of the Republican Party do as well. And so, you know, I think, you know, I would take it quite seriously. You know, I would take it as a very serious thing that the, that the President is invested in, that he gets, that he personally cares about, et cetera. You know, this was not just something he read off of a teleprompter, right. This was, in other words, like it wasn't just something that was fed into him by speechwriting. Nothing that he says is to be very clear. But like this in particular was not. When it comes to the things in the action plans that deal with state laws, I would think of those as being much more narrowly tailored to specific sorts of things that we see. It's not every state with the stuff in the action plan. There's a lot of state laws that have passed, things relating to deepfakes or impersonation of other people or impersonation of style and things like that that that sect nothing to do with that was primarily aimed at a lot of the most actively regulatory bills that are percolating in the states and some areas where I actually think that some of those things might be quite useful policy instruments regardless of whether a legislative preemptive package passes.
- [38:31]
Dean Ball
So I want to make sure we don't let our entire conversation go by without talking about the actual substance of the action plan. And obviously there's a lot of stuff in it. We don't have to go line by line. But I just want to curious to get your high level. If you had to define the thesis of the action plan in a sentence, right. What to you does this document represent? What is the main takeaway? Obviously again, there's a lot of policy about energy and this and that and semiconductors and all that sort of interesting stuff to get into. But to the extent that you think it has an animating vision, like what is that one, one sentence animating vision?
- [39:05]
Madison H.
I think for me it would be that America and its institutions can successfully adapt by taking smart strategic steps. Right now we don't have to think pie in the sky about the future or pass some big new law. We can do it right now and we can make the AI future better as a result of those things and we can build it and we can lead the world and that we actually can do this. That it's possible to identify a common sense, grown up agenda in a way that, you know, for many years I think a lot of Americans didn't feel as though they got out of Washington. That for me is a big part of the agenda or a big part of the message, but that's a subtextual message.
- [40:05]
Dean Ball
Yeah. And like what would be the core actions here? Right? Like if there was, you know, one or two or three things, right. That the federal government, whether the executive branch unilaterally or working with Congress actually executed on, what would be the thing that would get us to that positive vision of AI?
- [40:28]
Madison H.
It's a good question. You know, it's just never really like I am so much of a fox and not a hedgehog that like, that's the way I see the world is like being made up of many, many, many different constituent parts and there's just a lot of stuff to do on, on all the different things. Certainly I would say like, you know, I think that frankly the three pillars of the plan, like get. Actually get at this pretty well though, right? Where it's like, what do we need to do? Well, we need to make sure that we have a regulatory environment that is conducive to innovation on like the product and deployment and adoption side of AI. That's number one. Number two, infrastructure. We need to make sure we can build the AI infrastructure and that we have the workforce that is equipped to build it as well the skilled workforce necessary to do that. And the third is both international diplomacy and security. Right. There's a whole global infrastructure that needs to be built and America is in pole position to do it right now, and we need to actually make sure that we do. And also there are all kinds of ways that AI in the hands of malicious foreign adversaries could present threats to America. And we have to be ready to counter those threats in, you know, all appreciable ways. So like, I think like, in that sense the, the core thesis of the action plan is like pretty much just those three pillars. The only other thing I would add to that though is like, like there's the. I think of the action plan as being actually composed of both a strategy and a plan where like, if you just look at the sub headers under each one of the pillars, there's like stuff that's like, you know, build world class scientific data sets. It's like bigger font in ital headers with like a paragraph of text below. If you just took those things, that would pretty much be the country's AI strategy. Right? And like, we could totally just put that out and be like, that's what we're, this is what we want to do. These are things we think are important and we want all the agencies to operationalize plans to respond to those strategic objectives. And we would like to work with Congress to do that. And we want industry and civil society and et cetera, et cetera, to respond to those things. This is where we want to steer the country. And then you can think of the action plan as being like, okay, within that, here are the things that we think. Here are the dials and knobs that we think we can turn right now. And so, you know, I think, I think those are like, that's just like an important thematic thing that like, we didn't make it, we didn't explicate that in the plan because, like, why would you. It's kind of a boring point, but like, to me it matters.
- [43:21]
AI Policy Expert
So speaking of, you know, turning gears, flipping levers, flipping switches, all that, one of the common responses that I saw was, okay, great, there are 90 recommendations, many of them a lot of folks support. But I'm curious how in your conversations with the agencies implicated, from the Department of Commerce to the Department of Energy, how were the conversations about, oh boy, you know, looking at the sum total of these recommendations, my agency now has a dozen or maybe even two dozen new action items. There's a little bit of uncertainty around funding, around talent, around institutional capacity. What was the conversation in drafting the action plan around actual implementation and execution on some of these really bold proposals on pretty tight timelines.
- [44:13]
Madison H.
Yeah. So the, you know, the text of the action plan and especially, like, the strategic parts of it, the strategic objectives. But also, like, a good number of the action items themselves were like they were in first draft, complete by the end of April, early May. Right. That was when it just was a document that lived on a very small number of people's computers. And then a lot of the labor with the action plan between then and July 23, when the plan came out, was a process of working with agencies and within the White House to get to scope every objective, every policy action. Exactly right. So a. To make it sufficiently specific sometimes to get it, like, technocratically right. It would be like, oh, well, that's not really the right way to do that. Other times it was like, should we do this or not? Right. And you kind of have that conversation. And then other times there were things that we changed the scoping of in light of talent and our workforce and funding and things like that. All those things, of course, come up. And we are very explicitly, with the action plan, we're not explicitly advocating for reallocations of agency budgets. We're saying that this is stuff that can be done within agencies. And so a lot of it was like, that process, that kind of just process of working with the agencies. So what that means, though, is that the action plan was, I would say, quite thoroughly baked with agencies by the time it came out. This wasn't a surprise to anybody who's named in it. Is it true that it is like, you know, like an ambitious plan that pushes on a wide variety of different fronts? Like, absolutely, yeah. And that was like, goal number one was like, let's make the best action plan. You know, let's make the best AI policy document that any government in the world has produced. Let's do that. But then, you know, within that, like, let's actually do things that we think we can credibly deliver. So figuring out exactly where that sweet spot is for every single one of those things is kind of like, was the hard part. That was substantively much harder than writing it, than writing the first draft, I should say. So, you know, is there execution risk? Like, totally. There's totally execution risk. But as far as things you can do preemptively to mitigate that execution risk, I think that we did as much of it as one could. And I also think that there's a lot of exceptionally capable people inside the administration who care a lot about these issues and who want to put this plan into fruition and also, by the way, who are going to come up with other Things to do that are consistent with the strategic objectives, but that might be supplementary to the policy recommendations. And we think that's great. Obviously I shouldn't say we anymore, but I personally, as a private citizen think that's great. And I would imagine that my former colleagues at the Office of Science and Technology Policy would concur.
- [47:54]
Dean Ball
Was it hard to get consensus on the action plan? Or maybe a different way of asking this is were there things that you would have wished made its way into the action plan, but that did not because at the end of the day, it was just not possible to get consensus on them.
- [48:14]
Madison H.
Establishing consensus took time and was not easy. But I. For reasons that, like, wouldn't be obvious to people on the outside, like, there was. There's a lot of stuff that you might look at and think like, oh, that probably was hard. And it's like, actually not really, because it turns out that the relevant agency actually really cares about this too. Is. It's like, fine, I would say, you know, I mean, there's some stuff that's like, relatively typical, right? It's like, well, you're adjudicating turf wars, right? Like, every agency wants to be mentioned in this and you have to, like. And every agency wants to be mentioned in every bullet point. You know, that's the platonic ideal from the perspective of the interagency. And so, you know, then you have to, like, you know, it's your job. It's my job as the person, you know, adjudicating all that to like, figure out what actually happens. Things like that, you know, there's just classic, normal things. Nothing, nothing nefarious or adversarial there. I. There are. There are a couple of things that I would say. There's nothing that, like, I personally like, deeply, deeply cared about and pushed for that didn't make it in. There are absolutely things.
- [49:35]
Dean Ball
Helps when you own the Google Doc.
- [49:36]
Madison H.
Yeah. Right.
- [49:37]
Dean Ball
As I discovered when I was in.
- [49:38]
Madison H.
Government, though I should say, for the. For any White House IT staffers who might be listening to this, we do not use Google Docs in the Executive Office of the President.
- [49:50]
AI Policy Expert
Definitely not. Nor signal.
- [49:53]
Madison H.
No, truly, like we.
- [49:55]
Dean Ball
I'm just, I'm just saying the joke you. You put on X about how you were a human Google Docs.
- [49:59]
Madison H.
But that's literally. That's why I was the human Google Doc is because I was incorporating all this information.
- [50:04]
Dean Ball
Oh, there was no Google. I see what you were saying. In lieu of Google Doc, it was poor Dean Ball in an office somewhere.
- [50:10]
AI Policy Expert
Dean as Google Doc. Yeah.
- [50:11]
Madison H.
It was the Google Doc. Yes. Taking many word documents and compressing them into one. Because we can't. Yeah, in EOP you can't use Google Docs for reasons of the Presidential Records act, which I mentioned earlier. So at least that's my understanding. There are definitely things though that I think we all would have wanted in and that some people, you know, felt like, you know, we have to say no. Right, you have to say no. So there's a lot of ideas and policy directions that we ultimately said no to and there's a lot of great ideas from the RFIs that we received, you know, that we ultimately said no to, the comments that we received from the public that we had to say no to for our interest of brevity and focus. So there are things like that. But at the end of the day, I think we all work together in really quite a congenial way. And I think most people in the administration ended up at a place that we were all pretty happy with it.
- [51:13]
Dean Ball
Let me ask you one last process question, and this is maybe getting back to this point that you mentioned about the politics of AI on the right. And the question is about sort of the tension between the political side of this and the policymaking side of this, which obviously this kind of tension always exists in any White House. One thing that struck me, and this was especially true with the EO about woke AI and this was part of the AI action plan discussion of speech was in some places it felt like there were sort of two different audiences and two different authors on some of these documents. And so like that EO in particular. Right. The kind of section one preamble was pretty sharp rhetorically criticizing DEI and wokeness and critical race theory and transgenderism in sort of pretty strong, I think it's fair to say, kind of right wing or mega terms. And then the rest of the argument or the rest of the EO rather was this like very, I think much more sort of small C conservative discussion about unbiased AI principles. And a lot of the rhetoric and terms in the first section just kind of drop out. It almost felt like my law firm colleague Rene Diresta, we did a podcast about this and she sort of made the joke that it was almost as if there was a ignore all previous instructions starting in section two. Obviously you're talk about whatever you're comfortable talking about, but it certainly felt like to me this was an example of the tensions in doing policymaking in a very called charged rhetorical environment. And I'm sort of curious if that sounds if my read between the lines of how some of this stuff was put together is consonant with what you experienced.
- [52:59]
Madison H.
So in some ways, sure, but I think in a lot of ways it ends up being the conversations. I can't go into detail on them, of course, of what other. I could say what I said. Right. But I can't say what other people said about those things. But I would say at a high level, the conversations around everything in the actual plan, including that executive order, were quite nuanced and focused throughout. So, so the, the. There is this issue of, you know, of. Of political bias in AI, and we have absolutely seen, you know, what, what you would call like DEI or WOKE principles embedded into these things. And like, you know, I think, yeah, I don't want to attribute this view to every single member of the Biden administration, but the general thrust that I got from the Biden admin a lot of the time was that traditional AI safety, like existential and catastrophic risk type people were useful idiots. For people that wanted to insert a, you know, sort of political agenda into AI systems, that, that made a lot of people very, very worried, including me. It's actually like, it's frankly, it's part of the reason I got into AI policy in the first place.
- [54:33]
AI Policy Expert
And just to flesh that out, you're saying that the concern around AI safety and the need for things like audits and evals was a vehicle for the Biden administration to get to some of the DEI related concerns. Is that the useful idiot?
- [54:49]
Madison H.
Because it was always yes and right. It was always yes and it was always like, yeah, of course we're worried about Biorisk, and we're also worried that the model might misgender someone. Right? It was this kind of thing, right? And like, certainly, you know, AI enabled misinformation. Like, of course that can and should sound dystopian, at least in my. Well, I think it can for sure as a factual matter and should also as a prescriptive matter, in my view, sound dystopian. So for the government to be adjudicating what misinformation is and is not. So that is like a, I think, a very real concern. But the interesting thing about that is that when you think about that issue, you actually get. Get pretty quickly into what I would view as some of the deepest issues about, you know, about AI like that that are out there, right? You're talking, you're getting into issues of like, what is really going on inside of this thing? What kind of values does it have? Is it manipulating me in some way, right? I mean, can imagine if an AI system, an advanced AI system, say like GPT7 or something multiple generations from now or even today's, was in some way programmed to undermine whoever the President was at that time. And we had no way of knowing it because it was smart enough to make its moves extremely subtle. Well, like that seems like something that the government has a very, very clear interest in understanding for at the very least the models that it procures, I think. And so that's where we bracketed, that's where that EO ultimately comes down, is that's where we bracket the issue. We are absolutely making a statement that is, you know, about this broader concern about the values systems and how they're going to interact with our society. But the policy is limited to the things that, you know, we felt was within our power to do. Because of course there are things that are not within our power to do. And I think most people, when the rumors of that leaked, of that executive order leaked, most people thought we were going to go in like shockingly broad ways that I have to tell you, you know, like we're not. That was never really the contour of the deliberations internally about that. Those kinds of things, like what we were always trying to do is like what we actually felt with high conviction we could do. And so we weren't trying to police speech between an AI company and a private citizen. We're not trying to go within a country mile. We're not trying to define what unbiased means in all settings. We're not trying to define what truth is and not truth, et cetera. We're trying to elicit transparency about how models are grappling and how AI companies are grappling with these very weighty issues in the development of their models. And so in that sense, I think the EO is responsive to a core concern that literally animated my personal decision to get into AI policy was a central theme of the President's AI related campaign of the party platform, and also implicates, I think, issues that, that are going to be with us for a long time.
- [58:49]
AI Policy Expert
So speaking of things that are within your power, Dean, you have now accumulated even more power when it comes to AI policy insights. And I'm sure at least a fraction of our listeners are wondering where in the world is Dean Ball headed next? What in the world will he do next? And I guess one place I'd be curious to start is how much of a hand you want to play in some of these state level AI Fights. You were one of the folks who helped author or dream up SB813, which we did a podcast on with Andrew Friedman of Fathom, currently pending before the California State Legislature. Are we going to see you in Sacramento? Are you a DC man? Are you going to be testifying before every state legislature? What's, what's next for you? Where are you headed?
- [59:36]
Madison H.
I would very happily. Well, I absolutely plan to work on both state and federal issues, work on local issues if I need to, if it makes sense. But no, I absolutely, I'll go where interesting things are happening and things that merit ultimately my readers attention. So to answer actually the question, the immediate question of like where I'm going next, I will be joining as a senior fellow at the foundation for American Innovation, which is a wonderful think tank in D.C. that I was affiliated with before. I will probably have some other projects and affiliations that I announce in the coming weeks, but and I will also be resuming regular weekly publication of my substack Hyperdimensional, which was mostly paused during my time in government. So, you know, and in there and other outlets too. I absolutely plan to write about the state issues. I will also write about federal issues. There's a lot of state bills that I think deserve attention right now and debate and all sorts of stuff. So I'm looking forward to that. I think that'll be, that'll be a lot of fun. And you know, I think like there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of amazing, in fact, I mean the difficult part about working at the White House, like I was, I was actually like relatively narrow as an AI policy scholar. Like I had like a couple things that I was like really into. I was like really into like liability. I wrote quite a bit about the transparency stuff, AI and science. I wrote a decent amount about manufacturing, some things like that. But the AI policy advisor job at OSTP really caused me to broaden the lens and so particularly around things like the electrical grid. There is a lot that I have learned. I went very, very deep into that. And actually that's one thing I would say if I wish we could have been more specific in the action plan on the electric on the grid stuff. It's the one thing that's like sort of like much higher level objectives. It's really more of a preview of, of plans that are kind of in motion right now. It's explicitly framed that way really in the plan, in the action plans. At the end of the day, we had a very good reason which is that the stuff wasn't baked yet and it's extremely complicated stuff. But there are some really exciting ideas there that I developed. And so if anything, the thing that's daunting to me is how am I going to? Where am I going to? I have to find all these different specialized outlets for all this different stuff and how am I going to find homes for all these different ideas I want to develop?
- [62:36]
Dean Ball
So yeah, well, you're always welcome to come join us at lawfare. Thanks Dean for coming on and again, congratulations on, I think a really impactful and very positive and I think especially across the whole spectrum, which is a rare thing these days, but a very positive and very impressive four months in government.
- [62:58]
Madison H.
Thanks guys. I really appreciate it.
- [63:01]
Kevin Fraser
Scaling Laws is a joint production of lawfare and the University of Texas School of Law. You can get an ad free version of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter at our website lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our written work@lawfairmedia.org you can also follow us on X and Blue sky and email us at scaling laws lawfair media.org this podcast was edited by Jay Venables from Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thank you for listening.
- [63:48]
Madison H.
Foreign.
- [63:59]
Paige from Giggly Squad
This is Paige, the co host of Giggly Squad. I use Uber Eats for everything and I feel like people forget that you can truly order anything, especially living in New York City. It's why I love it. You can get Chinese food at any time of night, but it's not just for food. I order from CVS all the time. I'm always ordering from the grocery store. If a friend stops over, I have to order champagne. I also have this thing that whenever I travel, if I'm ever in a hotel room, I never feel like I'm missing something because I'll just Uber Eats it. The amount of times I've had to uber eats hair items like hairspray, deodorant, you name it, I've ordered it. On Ubereats you can get grocery alcohol everyday essentials in addition to restaurants and food you love. So in other words, get almost anything with Uber Eats. Order now for alcohol you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.