Lawfare Daily: A Right to Warn: Protecting AI Whistleblowers with Charlie Bullock

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the wake of controversy over OpenAI’s restrictive nondisclosure agreements, a bipartisan group of senators has introduced the AI Whistleblower Protection Act. In this episode, Lawfare Research Director Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Charlie Bullock, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Law & AI and co-author of a new Lawfare article on the bill, about its key provisions. They discuss why this bill is an important, light-touch proposal that offers a way to increase government access to information about AI risks.

They cover two of the bill's most important features: how it fills a significant gap in existing law by protecting disclosures about “substantial and specific dangers” to public safety, even if no specific laws have been broken, and how the bill prevents companies from using contracts and NDAs to waive the whistleblower rights it creates.

To accompany the episode, be sure to read the new piece by Bullock and Mackenzie Arnold, "Protecting AI Whistleblowers.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising.
0:04.4	To access an ad-free version of the Lawfare podcast, become a material supporter of Lawfare at
0:11.5	patreon.com slash lawfare. That's patreon.com slash lawfare.
0:18.2	Also, check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter,
0:25.2	Lawfare No Bull, and The Aftermath.
0:32.0	In the 90s, my friend and fellow journalist Don Phillips was at the centre of the UK's dance music explosion.
0:40.5	By 2022, he had mysteriously disappeared
0:44.0	in one of the remotest parts of the Amazon jungle
0:46.7	with his friend Bruno Pereira.
0:49.8	In 2025, so many questions remain.
0:54.4	I'm Tom Phillips, the Guardian's Latin America correspondent.
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1:36.0	Our legal system hasn't yet caught up to the rapid progress of this technology,
1:40.2	and we haven't had a chance to decide whether that should be a violation of law or not.
1:44.6	So we would still ideally like people to be able to report that kind of danger,
1:50.3	substantial and specific danger as the language statute uses, to public safety.
	...

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