Scaling Laws

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.

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, 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.

DZ Kalman, fellow at the Berkman Klein Center, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, senior advisor at Sinai & Synapses, and host of Belief in the Future, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to explore what religious traditions can teach AI governance.DZ and Kevin discuss religious responses to AI, Jewish technoculture, kosher supervision as a model for AI certification, and the limits of AI use in faith contexts. They also connect these traditions to contemporary debates about alignment, institutional trust, human dignity.

Laura Davis, founder of USLege, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to dive into how USLege is leveraging AI to transform the way professionals monitor and respond to government activity.USLege’s platform aims to be the answer to the prayers of many policy stakeholders. It captures and analyzes legislative hearings, regulatory discussions, and committee proceedings as they happen, surfacing policy signals that often emerge long before a bill is formally introduced. Kevin and Laura talk about the fragmented information systems that shape American policymaking, how AI tools are transforming the practice of government affairs, and whether technologies like “live government listening” could make legislative activity more transparent and responsive to public demands.

Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google and Alphabet, joins Kevin to discuss Google's proposal for a two-pronged approach to AI governance: a Frontier AI Regulatory Organization, which like FINRA, would operate as an independent, industry-based governance body overseen by a federal agency and the application of existing laws to widely-deployed, less capable systems.The two also discuss the timing behind this proposal and its relevance in light of the recent Hugging Face / OpenAI incident.Follow Kent: @kent_walker

Courtney Cox, Associate Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss her forthcoming article, Hardwiring Hercules?.It’s a great read that builds on Dworkin’s idea of a perfect adjudicator, Hercules. Courtney argues that the debate over a “right to a human decision” has missed a central problem: normative uncertainty. Machines may struggle to explain their decisions, but humans often struggle too—especially when judges are uncertain about what they ought to do. At the same time, the common response that people merely have a right to a “better decision,” whether by human or machine, assumes we know what “better” means. Courtney’s paper challenges both sides of the debate and asks what AI governance should look like when regulators, engineers, and judges cannot simply “hardwire Hercules.”

Nils Tracy, founder of Authorship, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to detail the challenges and solutions to deploying AI in highly sensitive contexts.Authorship enables users to map their AI policies to myriad use cases--from on-device AI tools to those connected to the cloud. It's a direct effort to tackle concerns that as AI use cases become more frequent and varied deployers may struggle to ensure compliance with key policies and laws.