AI Virtual Forum Panel: Move fast, move carefully, or it depends?

Fun panel on product counseling and AI regulation today. The regulations, how you know what matters for your company, how you track them, and how you advise on them. With AI, naturally.  Great discussion - takeaways:

👉 Most GCs are in ‘move fast’ mode, not the expected ‘it depends.’ A company's AI adoption culture shapes its regulatory approach more than any specific law. Not exactly earth shattering, but helpful to hear that other CEOs are also telling teams to innovate with AI or lose.

🔎 DIY research wins. We did a poll, and most in-house counsel attendees said they do their own regulatory research on new laws. Only 3% said they rely on outside counsel. Peer networks and industry groups are gold.

✅ Update your AI usage guidelines and policies! What started as simple LLM policies now need to cover agentic AI, third-party SaaS integrations, and AI browsers.

🤔 All that's old is new again. Most AI regulation and approval has strong parallels with or comes from existing law: IP, privacy, rules against discrimination, or consumer protection. We've been doing this work for years as in-house counsel. We just called it something else!

🚪 Embrace two-way doors. Jordan and I worked together at Amazon as lawyers on early Alexa. We used this framework to evaluate risk: when you can walk back through the door, your risk tolerance should be higher. Most AI decisions have a two-way door.

🌺 Avoid tall poppy syndrome. General maxim of regulatory counseling including on AI is that you want to run with the pack - not stick out too much on legal issues (unless you intentionally do). That means it's important to benchmark, keep current, and know where your company stands.

🇺🇸 Federal preemption of AI regulations might be coming. We've only been waiting 15 years on privacy, but you can't wait for perfect clarity. Topic for its own post.

🔴 Red team your products! As lawyers, do the best QA and get the products to break so the team fixes them and makes them better for customers.

🤝 Industry context matters. Financial services folks are on calls with regulators for bespoke AI conversations, while law firms face client pressure to adopt tools despite legacy contract limitations.

Thank you to excellent panelists Arianna Evers (Wilmer Hale), Jordan Hinkes (GC of Automattic), and Purvi R. Maniar (Laser Digital), to The L Suite (TechGC) for hosting and the audience for keeping it real and fun!