a16z on Protecting Little Tech: The Techno-Optimist AI Policy Agenda with Matt Perault, Head of AI Policy

**Erik Torenberg** (0:00)
Hello, and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. Today, I'm pleased to have Matt Perault, Head of AI Policy at Andresen Horowitz, here to discuss a16z's approach to AI regulation, including their advocacy for AI policies that support experimentation and innovation by little tech startups, and their efforts to avoid common pitfalls like regulatory capture that could further entrench big tech incumbents. We cover a wide range of important topics, starting with a16z's core principle that regulating harmful AI use is a better approach than regulating the research and development process itself. We also cover the RAISE Act, sponsored by New York State Assemblymember and recent guest Alex Boris, and the challenges of setting appropriate thresholds for regulation, transparency requirements and what information companies should and shouldn't be required to disclose, and the pros and cons of California's SB 813, which could create a novel public-private regulatory framework that offers liability shields to companies in exchange for opt-in compliance. Overall I was again struck by how much common ground exists between the a16z worldview and that of many in the AI safety community, myself included. Our techno-optimist credentials are perhaps best proven by the fact that we began to take both the upside and risks of AI seriously years before the technology itself really started to work. And many of us share a16z's generally libertarian politics, veneration of entrepreneurship, and fear of concentration of power. With that shared foundation in mind, I think it is clearly good that someone is working to ensure that AI capabilities don't become unduly concentrated in just a handful of companies. And Matt does raise some important considerations in this conversation, including the possibility that SB 813 might create an unfair advantage for incumbents by setting the compliance cost for liability protection so high that only the biggest companies are able to participate. I've not yet studied this issue in depth, but it does strike me as a worthwhile red-teaming of the bill, and I definitely plan to raise that concern with some of the people who are advocating for SB 813 in an upcoming episode. Meanwhile, where important disagreements persist, and you will hear a few, it seems to me that they largely stem from disagreement on empirical questions, such as whether scaling laws do or don't imply that only a small number of hyperscalers will push the frontiers of AI forward over the next couple of years, and more importantly, differing expectations about just how powerful AI could become, and how soon that might happen. With those differences in mind, I am definitely more concerned than Matt is about the risks of secretive R&D processes, particularly if companies are allowed to double down on AI-powered machine learning research, to execute large-scale YOLO training runs without careful testing throughout the training process, and to continue deploying models internally without the same safety standards that have become industry best practice for public deployments. All this to me does seem to create the potential for surprising and potentially even irreversible harms, for which prevention is really the only viable option. That said, I still came away from this conversation feeling very optimistic that the overwhelming majority of non-ideological people who simply want what's best for everyone can converge on a shared understanding and smart policy ideas as more evidence comes in. I personally would love to see a research breakthrough that solves core AI safety and control issues on a technological level, and I would happily update my policy positions if that happens. On the other hand, it seems that mounting evidence of autonomous bad behavior from AI systems also has the potential to change at least some accelerationist minds. Timelines, of course, might be quite short, so it's critical to keep tracking all these developments in real time, and I look forward to continuing to bring people of very different perspectives together to grapple with the latest evidence in good faith as we move through this critical period. As always, if you're finding value in the show, we'd appreciate it if you'd share it with friends, post about it online, or leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. We welcome your feedback, too, either via our website, cognitiverevolution.ai, or by DMing me on your favorite social network. Finally, for now, a couple of quick disclaimers from me and from a16z, which, as you may know, recently acquired the Turpentine Network. First, from me. While I have lots of help in the production process and the business side of the show, for which I'm very grateful, I personally am solely responsible for all content on The Cognitive Revolution, including guest and topic selection, the questions I ask, and the editorial commentary that I offer. For this episode, with Matt in particular, I was under no pressure and I received no consideration to have him on the show. And while we did follow our usual practice of sharing questions in advance, and allowing our guest to review our edit and request any additional cuts, no topics were off the table and nothing meaningful was cut in the editing process. And second, this is directly from a16z. This information is for general educational purposes only, and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. Turpentine is an acquisition of a16z Holdings, LLC., and is not a bank, investment advisor, or broker-dealer. This podcast may include promotional advertisements. Individuals and companies featured or advertised during this podcast are not endorsing AH Capital or any of its affiliates, including but not limited to a16z Perennial Management LP. Similarly, Turpentine is not endorsing affiliates, individuals, or any entities featured on this podcast. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of capital. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, and the opinions presented cannot be viewed as an indicator of future performance. Before making decisions with legal, tax, or accounting effects, you should consult appropriate professionals. Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but Turpentine does not guarantee its accuracy. With that, I hope you enjoy this exploration of AI policy from the techno-optimist little tech perspective with Matt Perault, Head of AI Policy at a16z. Matt Perault, Head of AI Policy at a16z, welcome to The Cognitive Revolution. Thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited for this conversation. Obviously, AI policy is a hot topic, and I've got a bunch of different angles that I want to get into it with you on. But maybe just for starters, because I think we'll actually have a lot in common here, I noticed in my prep that you are a fellow at the Abundance Institute. So I wanted to just take a minute to give you the floor to share your dreams for the AI future of Abundance and get a sense for what you envision that looking like. Yeah. So my primary affiliation is as head of AI Policy at Andreessen Horowitz, but I have a couple of side things that I had started as an academic. Before this, I was at UNC Chapel Hill, running a center on technology policy. And so as a fellow at Abundance, that's one thing I've been able to continue. I'm also a fellow at the center that I used to direct, which is now at NYU. And those affiliations are awesome because they enable me to kind of continue working with certain communities that I really enjoyed working with in the past. And the Abundance Institute is a great organization. Christopher Koogman is the lead for it, and it's really focused on a regulatory agenda that can help unlock Abundance. And I've learned a lot from that group. They've got a great group of policy professionals, people who are interested around economic policy and stuff. They do a lot in energy, which has been interesting and obviously relevant to my current job at Andreessen Horowitz. So I've really enjoyed maintaining a close relationship with that group. The focus for me in the question that you ask, I think is going to be a little bit disappointing for you. People always ask tech people, regardless of where they sit in tech, to sort of forecast the future and what does the future of technology look like. I would say that's something that I've never been particularly good at. I'm not an engineer, I'm not a computer scientist. So the people who are really building the tools tend to sit on a different side of the house. I previously worked at then Facebook, now Meta. I was on the policy team, not on the product side. At Andreessen Horowitz, we've got a lot of people who really understand the technology really deeply. That's obviously an important part of my job is doing it as well as possible, but my focus is on the public policy side. So my orientation to the question is really, like, what is the right policy agenda to enable other people to unlock abundance? Like, how do you think about ensuring that the people who can create the tools are able to do that? And that doesn't mean just in total deregulation, that doesn't mean being able to do whatever an engineer wants to do, but it does mean trying to avoid regulatory models where the cost of those models, particularly for startups, for little tech companies, outweigh the benefits. And so, that's really the day-to-day focus on my work. So I hear you on all that. Do you... You gotta have some dreams though, right? I mean, the future of, like, for me, it's, you know, medical advances, equal access for everybody around the world to the sort of AI doctor, the robot maybe one day that's in my home that's, like, doing my dishes and picking up my kids' messes and stuff like that. Maybe it's one day, like, people don't have to work if they don't want to or even if they don't have work that they find intrinsically motivating or fulfilling. I don't know. I've always interested to hear, especially because you're so invested in this. I would love to hear sort of what animates you. All those things sound cool. I mean, both my parents and my sister are all mental health professionals. And I think, like, so when you talk about AI and medical care, I sort of think about breaking down barriers to access to mental health treatment. I mean, that's been something that I think I've had a conversation with about my parents since I was really little and they were talking to me about the value of having mental health support in your life. And that's hard for people to do for a bunch of different reasons. It can be cost prohibitive. It can be hard to identify a mental health care professional. It can carry a stigma. And so I think some of the advances there are really exciting and interesting. Obviously, it's important that that be done in a way that is consistent with providing a high quality level of care. But I think breaking down access barriers is a really key thing. I've been excited about it as someone who spends a lot of time writing and reading the benefits that AI can bring to the analytical process and to the writing process. It's a scary one because I think it's coming after my business model. Like my ability to have some level of writing competence has kind of always been a part of my skill set that has been important in my academic life, like as a student and then as a professor, and been important to my professional life too. And I think the ability of AI tools to develop thoughtful, clear prose is something that sort of corrodes. You have to be a differentiator on top of that. Another way to say it is, at one point when I was working at Facebook, I said to a boss, I understand my job now is to deliver a bad first draft to you. And his response was sort of funny. He was like, yeah, that's great. That's great. That's great. And then he was like, but every now and then, could you develop a good first draft? And to the extent that the jobs that some people in these fields have is to produce that first draft that enables people to provide feedback and critique, and then massage, and hopefully turn into a really good final. Now we have tools that are able to do first bad first drafts and maybe at some point do very good first drafts. So I think the fact that it's coming after a thing that has been kind of important to my professional life I think is like a really interesting, exciting opportunity, and also somewhat of a scary one, but one that I think is exciting because I think it will, again, play an important role in breaking down access barriers. Yeah. I feel that very much myself. Coding and even podcasting, I mean, Notebook LM, I feel like in many cases competes pretty effectively with what I'm able to do. So yeah, it's coming for all of us. I find that like, what is the balance for you on fear versus exciting motivator? Like I, like, you know, as a writer, I think if there's something exciting to feel like there's, usually it's a person, now it's a machine and people who are kind of like chomping at your heels. And I think that's like that can result in being more creative and being more like focused and devoted to parts of your craft in certain ways. It's also scary to feel like people are like potentially coming for your work if you don't perform particularly well. I haven't thought about it as a podcaster. What's the fear versus excitement balance?