Lawfare Daily: DHS Assistant Secretary Mary Ellen Callahan on AI Threats
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mary Ellen Callahan, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary, joins Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to discuss the DHS’s recently released report on the potential of AI to lead to the production of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) threats. Assistant Secretary Callahan shares the origins of the report, its key findings, and DHS’s next steps. This conversation also explores pre-existing enforcement gaps in biological and chemical regulations and ongoing efforts to bolster AI expertise in the federal government. The DHS report is available here. More information on the AI Corps is available here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the Lawfair Podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of Lawfair at Patreon.com slash Lawfair. That's Patreon.com |
| 0:16.4 | slash Lawfair. Also check out Lawfair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, lawfare no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:31.6 | It was a learning curve, there's no doubt about it, but I'm really proud of the work that my team and I did to get this to not be alarmist, but also to identify a path where we could help mitigate the risk of a |
| 0:46.4 | weapon of mass destruction being created through AI. |
| 0:50.0 | It's the Law Fair Podcast. I'm Kevin Frazier, an assistant professor at St Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell fellow at Law Fair, with Department of Homeland Security, Assistant Secretary Mary Ellen Callahan. |
| 1:05.2 | We have this whole of community effort where everyone is looking at this together. |
| 1:10.0 | We can create, develop, and utilize guardrails to avoid reverse engineering or creation of novel |
| 1:17.6 | pathogens. |
| 1:18.6 | Today we're talking about the DHS's report examining the possible |
| 1:23.1 | misuses of AI, leading to the production of chemical, |
| 1:26.5 | biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. |
| 1:30.7 | Back in October of 2023, the Biden administration issued an executive order on safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI. |
| 1:41.0 | That lengthy executive order included a heck of a lot of provisions. One that may have |
| 1:46.2 | flown under the radar was a directive that the Department of Homeland Security, quote, |
| 1:51.2 | evaluate the potential for AI to be misused to enable the development |
| 1:56.8 | or production of CBRN threats while also considering the benefits and application of AI to counter those threats." |
| 2:05.0 | The DHS recently finalized that report and now Assistant Secretary Mary Ellen Callahan |
| 2:12.0 | is here to break down its results and I guess one |
| 2:15.2 | thing we should start with is what the heck does CBRN stand for? |
| 2:19.3 | CBRN or CBRN is chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear threats. |
... |
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