OpenAI’s Ann O’Leary on AI guardrails, geopolitics and global governance

On 14 September, ASPI hosted its Sydney Dialogue Artificial Intelligence Masterclass in Canberra. We’re bringing some of the sessions to Stop the World listeners in the coming weeks.  

In this episode, David Wroe speaks with Ann O’Leary, Vice President of Global Policy at OpenAI. They discuss AI safety, the impact of the Hugging Face hack and the role of third-party evaluators. They also discuss Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for a slowdown and the significance of his statement on the need to pace the frontier. 

The conversation explored the need for the US and China to come together to discuss AI safety and guardrails and the expectations being placed on last week’s summit between President Trump and Xi. It also focused on the role middle powers can and should play in policy conversations, and what Australia can do to both influence global conversations on AI and attract AI investment.

Note: This conversation was recorded at the AI Masterclass in Canberra on 14 September.