Ep 100: Lux Capital, IVP, and Insight Partners Talk Responsible AI Protocol

For our 100th episode, we're bringing you one story featuring three guests. Yesterday, over 40 VC firms including Lux Capital, IVP and Insight Partners signed a pledge to establish responsible AI protocol for their portfolio companies. VCs from those firms are here to share more. Real quick. Before we start today's show, we wanted to share that this is our 100th episode from our first episode in June with Bradley Tusk, Alberto Yepes and Will Robbins where we recorded audio inside a parked car and in an airport bathroom to now nearly 200 VC and founder interviews later covering over 300 stories. We want to say thank you. Thank you for listening to our show and supporting our big vision which is to become a company that completely changes the venture capital and tech media industry. We still have a long way to go, but we're excited about the future and look forward to sharing all of it with y'. All. Thank you, thank you for supporting Venture Daily. Yesterday, more than 40 venture capital firms signed their names to a voluntary commitment pledging to secure organizational buy in from their portfolio companies to responsibly develop and implement artificial intelligence. Led by nonprofit Responsible Innovation Labs, the guidelines surrounding AI include pledges to secure organizational buy in, forecast AI risks and benefits, and audit and test to ensure product safety. The IRL convened with the Department of Commerce ahead of the announcement to craft the voluntary agreement. Included in the 40 plus VC firms that signed the pledge are Lux Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Antler, Felicious Ventures, IVP and Insight Partners. The creation of these guidelines follows President Biden's recent executive order called Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. Biden's order was primarily focused on establishing guardrails for bigger AI companies but the most powerful models, the new voluntary guidelines from VC firms look to broaden the scope to thousands of smaller AI startups. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says the protocol is a quote, all hands on deck approach to ensure we are leaving no stone unturned to harness the power of AI for good while protecting people from its risks. But it's important to remember these commitments are just voluntary. Self enforcement will depend on each VC firm and its investors. For a deeper look into the responsible AI protocol, I spoke with investors from Insight Partners, IVP and Lux Capital, three VC firms that signed the pledge. Hi Shaheen.

Hey, my name is Shaheen. I'm a partner at Lux Capital.

Hi Samesh, Samesh Dash, IVP General Partner and hi Ganesh.

Hi, I'm Ganesh Bell, Managing Director with Insight Partners.

Shaheen, why have venture firms felt the need to outline their own guidelines to ensure responsible AI for startups. And what measures are in place to assure firms self enforce these guardrails?

That's a great question. So first of all, the expectation is that AI is going to be everywhere. Think about how compute ended up getting everywhere in the 80s, how the Internet ended up getting everywhere in the 90s. The Cloud Mobile became pretty much prevalent in the last 20 years. And the same is expected of AI. So for a technology that's expected to be so common, then there absolutely needs to be an understanding of the scope of its uses. Imagine you're Henry ford selling Model T's 100 years ago. You want to understand if you're able to drive these things on public roads before you start investing in factories. NVCs expect to heavily, heavily invest in this technology and having an understanding of where the government or partnering with the government on these guidelines is absolutely necessary.

Ganesh, same question. Why have venture firms felt the need to outline their own guidelines to ensure responsible AI for startups? And why? What measures are in place to assure firms self enforce these guardrails?

Yeah, so, you know, we just, we were at an event space and we just met with a lot of firms that sign into responsible innovation labs. We met with the Secretary of Commerce, Gina, and it's not industry versus government or this is not regulation. This is about how do we learn to be responsible and govern these technologies and, and how can we share some of the best practices across the ecosystem. So it's really the ecosystem coming together and that's why it's important to be in the ground floor, be part of the working group, share the learnings, and as a community, learn how to make this pie bigger.

Samesh Biden's recent executive order on artificial intelligence tasks. The Commerce Department with setting evaluation standards for the biggest AI companies with the most powerful AI models. But is the scope of these new guidelines from VC firms much broader and, and how many companies they will affect?

So I had the privilege of being at the White House for the executive order signing a week and a half ago. And I think the way to think about the executive order is more of a framework. It's almost like when an entrepreneur starts a business, they know that the journey could be 5, 10, 20 years in some cases. But the business plan is sort of an outline of their thinking about how that occurs. The executive order in AI is basically the White House's business plan that helps coalesce resources. And different departments outline the frameworks of important topics. I think everybody in D.C. will agree that this is A framework. This is obviously not law, and this is meant to be a guideline. It will evolve as the industry evolves and technology evolves. Venture capital industry is thinking a little bit more about, obviously a lot of that language you just referred to as some of the largest companies in the sector. But for the small companies, I think what's really important is to make sure that there is transparency, transparency, information sharing, that there's utilization of the technology for good. And I think the recognition, I would say, is in talking to many founders every day for the last year about AI and their and their technologies. I think what's clear is people recognize that there is dual use and they want to make sure that it is utilized to do good and help create jobs. But they're also cognizant that sometimes technology can be utilized for harm. And so people want to be compliant, people, people want to be transparent. People want this to go in the right direction. We've all seen what happened in the social media industry when things were left, I think, unchecked for too long. There could be pitfalls to that.

Shaheen? Well, the commitments outlined in the new guidelines aligned with the approach taken by Biden's recent executive order to find and limit national security risks.

Absolutely, absolutely. It's absolutely necessary for us to make sure that national security is taken into consideration here. It's absolutely necessary for there to be standards created. It's absolutely necessary for us to ensure that as it relates to health, as it relates to national security, that all these AI technologies that are developed are helping versus hampering or creating adverse effects.

Same question, Samesh. Will the commitments outlined in the new guidelines aligned with the approach taken by Biden's recent executive order to find and limit national security risks?

Yes. If you read the text, they outline the harms that could fall from utilizing AI technology around biological, chemical, nuclear weaponry. And I think what the government's doing, in conjunction with the Department of Defense and several agencies, is trying to prevent this technology from falling into the arms of bad actors. We just saw one of the worst terrorist attacks in human history that's occurred recently in Israel. And I think it's only natural that the government is conscious about making sure this doesn't fall into the arms of our adversaries and other terrorist groups. So that's the framework that they've set out. And I think they're working with a number of private sector companies as well that could be utilized startups in Silicon Valley to thwart any adversaries that are trying to attack the United States. Or its citizens.

Last question Samesh, we have to ask you what makes you, the VC firms qualified to define what responsible AI development looks like? Give us the case for why the public should trust that the guardrails you commit to are the most effective ways to ensure public safety while also preserving companies ability to innovate.

It's our belief at IVP that this will be a multi decade journey and one that we couldn't be more excited by. But we also need to form partnerships and coalitions with like minded actors to ensure that we're going to actually see job creation, we're going to see technologies that can actually improve quality of life around the world and we can mitigate and thwart the threats that come from any new technology like artificial intelligence.

Same question Shaheen. What makes you, the VC firms qualified to define what responsible AI development looks like? Give us the case for why the public should trust that the guardrails you commit to are the most effective ways to ensure public safety while also preserving companies ability to innovate.

Obviously this is a collaboration. It's not just one firm or one group dictating what these guidelines are going to be. We expect to work closely with our fellow investors. We expect to work closely with our regulators. We expect to work closely with technologists. We expect to work closely with the executive executives that are running the company. And it's our expectation that by building this community that the output of the community will be regulation that not only ensures the safety of the technology but also promotes the advancement of the technology so that our rivals don't get ahead of us in its development and its deployment.

That was Shaheen Farshchi, general partner at Luxe Capital. Samesh Dash, general partner at IVP and Ganesh Bell, Managing Director at Insight Partners. It was such a pleasure speaking with each of you. We really appreciate you joining the show. Thanks so much.

It's a pleasure.

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks Jaxson.

Thanks for tuning in to Venture Daily. Today's show is produced by Josiah Simons and Jackson Fordyce. Our theme song was created by Benjamin Cook. If you liked today's episode, please give us an honest review. Wherever you get your podcasts, I'll see y' all tomorrow morning.

Sam.