Scaling Laws

In this cross-pod episode, Alan and Kevin join Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin of Justified Posteriors to explore a big question: what should AI be for? The conversation begins with Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical. The group discusses how economists should think about the Church’s role in AI debates, what counts as an AI-related market failure, whether moral and religious institutions can help ad...

Shane Tews, host of Explain to Shane and nonresident senior fellow at AEI, 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, for a cross-post conversation about the AI and cyber executive order, workforce disruption, and the future of education. They also share their respective research agenda...

Janel Thamkul, former frontier counsel team member at Anthropic, joins Kevin Frazier to discuss what it means to practice law at the frontier of AI. This episode starts with a review of Janel’s fascinating and varied background. Next, she walks through her initial exploration of a career in art before eventually pivoting to the law based on some very formative experiences. Kevin and Janel then inv...

Alan Rozenshtein, Research Director at Lawfare and Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for Law & AI (LawAI), spoke with Christoph Winter, LawAI Founding Director and Assistant Professor of Law and AI at the University of Cambridge, and LawAI Senior Research Fellow Charlie Bullock, about their new paper "Radical Optionality: Governing Transformative AI Under Uncertainty," which argues that,...

Tom Davidson joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss AI timelines, explosive economic growth, and the increasingly urgent debate over “AI character” — the behavioral traits and decision-making tendencies embedded into advanced AI systems. Drawing on Davidson’s recent paper , “The Importance of AI Characte...

Owen Larter, Senior Director and Head of Frontier Policy and Public Affairs at Google DeepMind, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to provide an inside look at how DeepMind approaches frontier governance.  The conversation moves beyond the familiar U.S.-EU-China framing of AI policy to examine internationa...

Melissa Hutchins, founder and CEO of Certifi AI , 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 rise of deepfakes, non-consensual sexually explicit imagery, and the growing policy fight over AI-generated harms online. Drawing from both her professional work and her personal experience as a victim of cyberst...

Adeel Khan of MagicSchool AI and Ryan Trattner of StudyFetch join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the rapid integration of artificial intelligence into education. The conversation explores how AI tools are being used by both teachers and students, from automating lesson planning to providing personalized...

John McAuliff, a Delegate in the Viriginia House of Delegates, joins Kevin Frazier, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program and a Senior Fellow with the Abundance Institute, to discuss the ongoing debates around data centers at the state level.   John was one of the first candidates to recognize data centers as a key issue. He had to convince his polling team to put the issue on early s...

Cathy O’Neil, CEO of ORCAA and author of  Weapons of Math Destruction  and  The Shame Machine , joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to explore the promises and limits of algorithmic auditing. The conversation examines what audits actually do in practice, how organizations measure and mitigate bias,...

Sean Perryman, AI policy lead at Uber and lecturer on AI Governance and Ethics at Vanderbilt Law School, joins Kevin Frazier, the Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute, to explore the rapidly evolving debate over algorithmic pricing and AI governance. The conversation begins with the rise of state-level...

Deger Turan, CEO of Metaculus, joins Kevin Frazier to  unpack new forecasts  on how AI could reshape the labor market over the next decade. The conversation centers on a striking divergence between Metaculus forecasts and projections from institutions like the Bureau of Labor Statistics—raising fundamental questions about whether existing tools for understanding the economy can keep pace...

Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Research Director at Lawfare, and Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, spoke with Dean Ball, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former Senior Policy Advisor for AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology P...

Alan Rozenshtein, research director at  Lawfare , speaks with Justin Curl, a third-year J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, and Arvind Narayanan, professor of computer science at Princeton University and director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, about their new  Lawfare  research report, “ AI Won't Automatically Make Legal Services Cheaper ,” co-authored with Princ...

In this episode of Scaling Laws, Kate Klonick, Associate Professor of Law at St. John’s University and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and 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, are joined by Marietje Schaake, the International Policy Director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy...

Bennett Borden, Founder and CEO of Clarion AI Partners, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at UT and a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute, to discuss AI adoption as well as the future of the law and legal practice. The two explore Bennett’s unique background, Clarion’s AI interdisciplinary approach, and the importance of AI adoption. They also cover innovative work underwa...

In this episode of Scaling Laws, we explore how the "black box" of global greenhouse gas emissions is being cracked open by artificial intelligence and satellite imagery.  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, talks with Gavin McCormick, the founder of ClimateTrace, a global coaliti...

Scott Sullivan, professor of law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a leading contributor to the Manual on International Law Applicable to Artificial Intelligence in Warfare , joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to examine whether AI should be understood as a “normal” or “abnormal” technology. Drawin...

Senior Editor Kate Klonick interviews reporters Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on their recent article in the New Yorker, titled “ Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? ” In their 16,000-word piece, Farrow and Marantz create a cohesive narrative with receipts around Sam Altman, the products he's building at OpenAI, and how he's selling them not just to investors and the public, but...

Alan Rozenshtein, research director at Lawfare, spoke with Miles Brundage, founding executive director of the AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute (AVERI) and former senior advisor for AGI readiness at OpenAI, about the state of AI safety and accountability and AVERI's vision for independent third-party auditing of frontier AI companies. The conversation covered the weaknesses of curr...

Fabien Curto Millet , Chief Economist at Google, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and Research Director at Lawfare, to discuss the potential of AI to catalyze a productivity boom while also addressing labor market instability. The...

Nicholas Bagley, Professor of Law at Michigan Law, 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, for a live recording of the podcast in Ann Arbor. Thanks to Graham Hardig and Brinson Elliott for organizing a great event. Professors Bagley and Frazier start by analyzing a recent debate over...

Representative Nick Begich, Alaska's at-large member of Congress, joins Kevin Frazier, Director the the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute, to discuss the current state of AI policy on the Hill. As one of the few members of Congress with a background in tech, Rep. Begich offers a unique perspective on this unique an...

Kendall Cotton , Founder and CEO of Montana’s Frontier Institute, 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 Montana’s groundbreaking Right to Compute Act  and how Montana hopes to protect access to AI and related technologies. We will discuss the history and reach of this Act and why other states m...

Why Data Governance Is the Key to AI Biosecurity, with Jassi Pannu and Doni Bloomfield   Alan Rozenshtein, research director at Lawfare, spoke with  Jassi Pannu , assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and  Doni Bloomfield , associate professor of law at Fordham Law School, about...