EPISODE · Jan 20, 2026 · 46 MIN
How Should AI Be Regulated? Use vs. Development
from AI + a16z · host Jai Ramaswamy, Martin Casado, Matt Perault
To Regulate AI Effectively, Focus on How It’s Used A conversation with Martin Casado on learning from past computing platform shifts, understanding marginal risk in AI, and why open source matters for US competitiveness. One of the core pillars of our roadmap for federal AI legislation makes clear AI should not excuse wrongdoing. When people or companies use AI to break the law, existing criminal, civil rights, consumer protection, and antitrust frameworks should still apply. Enforcement agencies should have the resources they need to enforce the law. If existing bodies of law fall short in accounting for certain AI use cases, any new laws should be evidence-based, clearly defining marginal risks and the optimal approach to target harms directly. In this conversation, we go deeper on what that principle means in practice with Martin Casado, general partner at a16z where he leads the firm’s infrastructure practice and invests in advanced AI systems and foundational compute. Martin has lived through multiple platform shifts–as a researcher where he worked on large-scale simulations for the Department of Defense before working with the intelligence community on networking and cybersecurity, a pioneer of software-defined networking at Stanford, and the cofounder and CTO of Nicira, which was acquired by VMware–giving him a rare perspective on how breakthrough technologies are governed as they develop and scale. Martin joins Jai Ramaswamy and Matt Perault to discuss how decades of technology policy can inform addressing harmful uses of AI, defining marginal risk in AI, the importance of open source for long-term competitiveness, and more. Follow Jai Ramaswamy on X: https://twitter.com/jai_ramaswamy Follow Matt Perault on X: https://twitter.com/MattPerault Follow Martin Casado on X: https://twitter.com/martin_casado Read the a16z AI Policy Brief here: https://a16zpolicy.substack.com/ Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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What this episode covers
In this episode, Chief Legal & Policy Officer Jai Ramaswamy, Matt Perault, and a16z General Partner Martin Casado take a first-principles look at AI regulation, arguing that policymakers should focus on regulating harmful uses rather than model development until AI’s marginal risks are better understood. Drawing on decades of software governance debates, from encryption to cybersecurity, they contend that development-level rules are hard to define, easy to loophole, and likely to become obsolete in a fast-moving field where even the definition of “AI” remains unstable. They also unpack how regulatory uncertainty already creates real-world consequences by chilling open-source releases, advantaging well-resourced incumbents over startups, and pushing the next generation of builders and researchers toward Chinese open models, making the case for evidence-based, technology-neutral policy that protects against bad behavior without stifling innovation.
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How Should AI Be Regulated? Use vs. Development
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