The AI Policy Podcast

Join CSIS’s Aalok Mehta, Director of the Wadhwani AI Center, on a deep dive into the world of AI policy. Every two weeks, tune in for insightful discussions covering AI regulation, economic impacts, national security, geopolitics, and more. CSIS is a bipartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

The AI Policy Podcast is a news podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 110 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts The AI Policy Podcast, a news show with 110 episodes published.

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  The AI Policy Podcast

  How AI Startups are Navigating Regulation with Maryam Mujica and Munjal Shah

  Sep 23, 202657 min

  This week, Aalok is joined by Maryam Mujica, president of the General Catalyst Institute, and Munjal Shah, co-founder and CEO of generative AI startup Hippocratic AI, for a discussion on how generative AI startups are thinking about AI regulation. Guests:  Maryam Mujica, President, General Catalyst Institute Munjal Shah, co-founder and CEO, Hippocratic AI Timestamps: About the General Catalyst Institute (1:52) About Hippocratic AI (6:56) Healthcare applications of AI (13:43) Impact of regulation on AI startups (18:32) Munjal's interactions with federal regulators (24:07) Issue of compute shortage (31:21) Impact of AI on labor (48:23)

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  The AI Policy Podcast

  AI Safety Goes Mainstream

  Sep 16, 202648 min

  An Anthropic researcher's viral resignation post last week set off a maelstrom of fear around extreme AI risks. Aalok and Nicole discuss the resulting vibe shift and how frontier labs are responding. They also unpack OpenAI solving one of the most difficult open problems in mathematics and reports of more rogue agent activity on the open internet.   Timestamps: OpenAI solves Millenium Problem (1:04) Rogue OpenAI agents take over a German wiki (12:14) Anthropic researcher's resignation post goes viral (19:34) Dario Amodei commits to embedding third-party evaluators inside Anthropic (28:12) Where the U.S. government can step in (35:12) Additional Reading: "On the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem" by OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/ "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry" by OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/ Statement on Navier-Stokes by NYU Professor Tristan Buckmaster: https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf "An alignment assessment of recent cybersecurity incidents" by Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/research/alignment-assessment-cybersecurity-incidents "OpenAI's rogue agents used at least 10 more sites for unauthorized comms, researchers say" by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/openais-rogue-agents-used-least-10-more-sites-unauthorized-comms-rese… "OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed cyber-attack on RubyGems" by Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Sydney Von Arx: https://www.rubyhack.ai "Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board" by Sydney Von Arx, Cormac Slade Byrd, Spencer Kitts, and Thomas Larsen: https://collusion.wiki "Anthropic Researcher Quits Over 'Out-of-Control' AI Fears" by The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-researcher-quits-over-out-of-control-ai-fears-707b7628 "The AI policy window is open. We need to act." by OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane: https://openai.com/index/ai-policy-window/ "We Must Pace the Frontier" by Dario Amodei: https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier

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  The AI Policy Podcast

  Decoding State-Level Regulation with Jason Elliott

  Sep 9, 202652 min

  This week, Aalok is joined by Jason Elliott, the former Deputy Chief of Staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom, for a conversation about regulating AI at the state level.   Guests: Jason Elliott, President, Versus Solutions   Timestamps: Jason's bio (0:16) Legislating at the state vs. federal level (2:21) Revisiting SB-1047 (5:58) SB-53 (13:43) States as "laboratories of democracy" (19:57) Influence of SB-53 on subsequent state bills (24:14) Federal preemption debate (27:59) Updating existing regulations (40:37)   Additional Reading: CA Senate Bill No. 1047: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047 CA Senate Bill No. 53: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53 "The California Report on Frontier AI Policy" by the Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/June-17-2025-–-The-California-Report-on-Frontier-AI-Policy.pdf "Toward a Federal Framework: Lessons from State and International Frontier AI Regulation" by Laura Caroli and Aalok Mehta: https://www.csis.org/analysis/toward-federal-framework-lessons-state-and-international-frontier-ai-regulation CA Senate Bill No. 813: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB813 "Independent Oversight Marketplace for AI" by Fathom: https://ivo.fathom.or

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  The AI Policy Podcast

  Responding to AI Agent Containment Failures with CSET's Helen Toner, LawAI's Mackenzie Arnold & CSIS's Matt Pearl

  Aug 26, 20261h 2m

  This episode cross-posts a panel from the event "AI Agent Containment Failures: Technical Realities and Policy Responses," co-hosted by the Wadhwani AI Center and the Institute for Law and AI on August 24.  Check out the full event recording: https://www.csis.org/events/ai-agent-containment-failures-technical-realities-and-policy-responses   Guests: Helen Toner, Executive Director, Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown Mackenzie Arnold, Director of U.S. Policy, Institute for Law and AI (LawAI) Matt Pearl, Director, Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)  Timestamps: What we've learned since the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident (1:15) Incentives for safety measures at frontier labs (16:24) Technical talent within government (22:18) Ensuring compliance to incident reporting requirements (34:58) Liability for crimes committed by AI agents (38:00) Liability safe harbors (51:55)   Additional Reading: "When Reporting an AI Security Incident Is Not Mandatory" by Mackenzie Arnold and Stephan Llerena for Lawfare: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/when-reporting-an-ai-security-incident-is-not-mandatory "Investigating three real-world incidents in our cybersecurity evaluations" blog by Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/news/investigating-incidents-cybersecurity-evals "Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behavior during cyber testing" by U.K. AISI: https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/incident-report-unsanctioned-agent-behaviour-during-cyber-testing "Pacing model development in an era of cyber-critical capabilities" announcement from OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/ "Pacing the Frontier" petition: https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/ CSIS Commission on U.S. Cyber Force Generation: https://www.csis.org/analysis/csis-commission-us-cyber-force-generation Limitations of the current incident reporting regime (7:46)Role of the U.S. government in helping defenders (11:52)What the executive branch can do now (25:29)Concrete policy recommendations (29:31)U.S.-China competition (40:50)Preventing abuse of an incident reporting regime (44:25)De facto regulatory role played by frontier lab employees (49:24)Role of AI-generated code in cyberdefense (54:45)Concluding remarks (55:53)"Out of Bounds: What the U.S. Government Should Do in Response to AI Agent Containment Failures" by Aalok Mehta: https://www.csis.org/analysis/out-bounds-what-us-government-should-do-response-ai-agent-containment-failures"The 'Breaking' News: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident" presentation at Black Hat: https://youtu.be/87DyyMV0kCY?si=GWh9MB1plhO-xjYT

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  The AI Policy Podcast

  OpenAI Pauses RL Training and Anthropic Adds Watermarks to AI-Generated Text

  Aug 19, 202648 min

  This week, we cover updates from the ongoing cyber saga, including OpenAI's two-week pause on RL training and the cyber capabilities of Z.ai's latest model GLM-5.3. We also unpack Anthropic's move to add watermarks to text generated by Claude in compliance with the EU AI Act. Timestamps: Mark Zuckerberg's essay on AI (00:20) OpenAI pauses RL training (5:56) Cyber capabilities of GLM-5.3 (15:29) EU AI Act refresher (24:29) How Anthropic's text watermark works (31:21) What's driving the backlash against Anthropic (40:59)   Additional Reading: Zuckerberg's essay "The Future is for Everyone": https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/  OpenAI announces two-week pause on RL training: https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/  Letter from Sanders to tech CEOs: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AI-Pause-Letter-FINAL.pdf  Letter from House reps to Mike Johnson: https://casar.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/casar.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/final-letter-to-speaker-johnson-requesting-ai-hearings-1.pdf  Z.ai blog post "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities": https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.3  Z.ai article "Preparing GLM-5.3 for Open Release: A Responsible Path to Cyber Defense": https://x.com/Zai_org/status/2088280509474320693  "The EU's AI Transparency Code of Practice, Explained" (Tech Policy Press): https://www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-ai-transparency-code-of-practice-explained/  Anthropic blog post "How Claude's text watermark works": https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-text-watermark  "Toward a Federal Framework: Lessons from State and International Frontier AI Regulation" (CSIS): https://www.csis.org/analysis/toward-federal-framework-lessons-state-and-international-frontier-ai-regulation Check out our upcoming event, "AI Agent Containment Failures: Technical Realities and Policy Responses": https://www.csis.org/events/ai-agent-containment-failures-technical-realities-and-policy-responses

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