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Scaling Laws
Lawfare Daily: 'The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI’—A Conversation with Cory Doctorow
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Alan Rozenshtein, associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota and research director at Lawfare, and Kate Klonick, associate professor of law at St. John's University School of Law and a senior editor at Lawfare, spoke with science fiction novelist and technology journalist Cory Doctorow about about his new book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, which argues that AI is being deployed to turn workers into "reverse centaurs" who serve machines rather than direct them, and that the economics of the AI industry add up to an unsustainable bubble.
The conversation covered the distinction between centaurs and reverse centaurs in automation theory; why Doctorow thinks the AI business loses money on every customer and can't pencil out; whether the AI boom is a "productive residue" bubble like the dot-com fiber glut or a pure value-destroyer like crypto; how AI has fused with the state and the stock market, raising the prospect of a slow deflation rather than a clean crash; whether statistical inference can ever amount to genuine understanding; AI's effect on labor, from warehouse injury rates to the burden of "marking the AI's homework"; AI art and the problem of intention; security risks like "slop squatting"; and the threat of knowledge collapse and what it means for the future of education.
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Live from Columbia Law with Chloé Bakalar: What can constitutions teach us about governing AI?
52:25|Chloé Bakalar, ASI Ethics Lead at Responsible Superintelligence Institute (RESI) and a Senior Research Associate at University College London, joins Kevin Frazier, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, for a Scaling Laws Roadshow conversation recorded at Columbia Law School. Big thanks to Eliza Steffen for organizing a fantastic visit.Recorded on the eve of Constitution Day, Chloé and Kevin explore the purposes of political constitutions, the American experience with constitutional change, and debate the extent to which the U.S. Constitution constrains private power. They then turn to AI constitutions: who writes them, whose values they reflect, how those principles are interpreted and revised, and how we can tell whether they meaningfully constrain an AI system.The conversation closes by testing a broader proposal: whether governing advanced AI may require a dual constitutional structure—one governing the model itself and another governing the companies that develop and deploy it.Is Meta's Oversight Board a Model for AI Governance
46:33|Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law and a member of Meta’s Oversight Board, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law, and guest co-host Kate Klonick to discuss what frontier AI companies can learn from the Oversight Board. Yoshino recently co-authored a Tech Policy Press piece with fellow Board member Ronaldo Lemos arguing that meaningful AI oversight should feature independent and representative overseers, external standards, and transparent, reasoned decisions.The trio tests that proposal against some of the hardest questions raised by the Oversight Board’s own experience. Can a selective, precedent-setting institution provide meaningful oversight at AI scale? What gives a privately created board legitimacy to constrain decisions with global consequences? What powers would an AI oversight body actually need? And when does private oversight complement democratic regulation—and when might it merely give corporate power a new source of legitimacy?Here’s the Tech Policy Press piece.Algorithmic Disgorgement with Christina Lee [Live From LawAI's Workshop on Law-Following AI]
37:30|Christina Lee, Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Privacy and Technology Law Fellow at George Washington University Law School, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a senior fellow at the Abundance Institute, from the Institute of Law and AI’s Workshop on Law-Following AI in Cambridge, UK. They discuss her forthcoming article, Beyond Algorithmic Disgorgement: Remedying Algorithmic Harms. The conversation begins with the basics: what is algorithmic disgorgement, why did the FTC first use it in the Cambridge Analytica case, and how has the remedy evolved from data-deletion-plus-model-deletion orders into a much broader candidate remedy for AI harms? Christina explains why the remedy’s expansion matters, especially after the FTC’s Rite Aid settlement, where the alleged wrong was not unlawful data collection but the allegedly unfair use of facial recognition technology.They also discuss alternative remedies, including injunctions, post-processing, fine-tuning, machine unlearning, and training-data attribution. Finally, they wrap up with Christina’s professional journey and the future of legal education in the age of AI.Building AI Assurance Ecosystem with Bri Treece (PACT AI) and Dr. Rob Slone (UL Solutions)
50:00|Bri Treece, Executive Director of PACT AI, and Dr. Rob Slone, Chief Scientist & Innovation Officer at UL Solutions, join Kevin Frazier, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at Texas Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss a neglected layer of AI governance: the organizations that deploy AI in real-world products, services, and operations.They discuss why PACT AI was formed, what AI assurance can learn from other industries, and why evaluating AI cannot be a one-time exercise. The conversation also covers PACT AI’s 90-day formation process and UL Solutions’ pre-existing work on AI-enabled products. Finally, Kevin asks Bri and Rob to pin down the major barriers facing the broader AI assurance ecosystem.Founders & Founders: Brandon Mitchell of WriteSea
43:55|Brandon Mitchell, founder of WriteSea, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the growing role of artificial intelligence in workforce development. WriteSea’s platform provides AI-driven career guidance, helping job seekers refine resumes, practice interviews, and navigate modern hiring systems that increasingly rely on automated screening tools. As policymakers and the public writ large assess the extent to which AI will disrupt the labor market, Brandon's efforts warrant particular attention. New tools such as WriteSea may play a key role in helping entry-level workers find jobs that align with their skillset.AI Consciousness with Anil Seth
53:31|Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to examine whether artificial intelligence could ever be conscious.Drawing on Seth’s essay, “The Mythology of Conscious AI,” the pair attempt to define consciousness, develop the strongest arguments for and against machine consciousness, and assess what the current evidence can—and cannot—tell us. They also discuss the risks posed by AI systems that are perceived to be conscious and what AI labs, policymakers, and users should do amid profound uncertainty.Matt Abrams on Trust and the Migration to the Digital Age
48:18|Matt Abrams, technologist, investor, and co-founder of $1 Billion for Trust, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the collapse of institutional trust and how AI may accelerate — or potentially help reverse — that trend.The conversation explores Matt’s work to rebuild trust in information ecosystems, interpersonal relationships, and major institutions. Along the way, the duo examine the relationship between AI, information integrity, labor disruption, institutional legitimacy, and democratic resilience.Founders & Founders: Matthew Schwartz of Virgo
42:28|Matthew Schwartz, founder of Virgo, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss how AI is beginning to reshape gastroenterology. Virgo’s model is trained on one of the largest collections of endoscopy procedure videos ever assembled, opening new possibilities for earlier diagnosis, personalized treatment of diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, and faster clinical research.The duo also examine how medical imaging data can generate new “digital biomarkers,” what role AI might play in shortening clinical trials, and how regulators and healthcare institutions are grappling with the promise—and risks—of deploying AI in clinical environments.Daniel Kokotajlo on AI 2040: Plan A
01:03:17|Daniel Kokotajlo, former OpenAI researcher and executive director of the AI Futures Project, joins Kevin Frazier, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at Texas Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to detail his policy recommendation–AI 2040: Plan A. It’s a thorough analysis of a policy pathway to delaying superintelligence, which Daniel and his co-authors think is necessary to ensure that the disruptive effects of highly-capable AI systems do not outweigh the benefits. Kevin asks Daniel to explain scenario scrutiny, address feedback from other AI policy stakeholder such as Tom Davidson, and detail what led him to already alter his estimation of how likely it is that policymakers adopt Plan A.