One of the core elements to being a venture investor and partner, as well as a core member of the Seattle and broader tech ecosystem, is bringing people together to share information and, as we say, build a bigger pie. For all the remote work talk, there is nothing like being in a room of intelligent, opinionated professionals working to make the world a better place.
When Joanna Black, Madrona’s GC, started at Madrona, she knew how important community connections are to legal professionals. She knew there was a need in the startup and tech legal community to create an entirely different type of event — one that connects in-house legal counsel in person to discuss top-of-mind topics. Legal counsel for startups and tech companies are true business partners with the executive suite and boardroom. They navigate complicated questions around product, customers, and myriad other issues that influence how companies grow.
Last month, Madrona hosted its second annual General Counsel Summit, attracting 275 curated attendees from GCs for venture capital firms to their legal partners in quickly growing companies from Seattle, California, and other tech hot spots. The conversation was lively, and, not surprisingly given that the speakers and audience were not open to the public, the feeling was one of connection. When asked at the end of the day to summarize the feeling of the day in one word — the words that dominated were human-centric connection, informative, community, inspiring, engaging, diverse, insightful, and awesome.
While the topics were wide-ranging, it shouldn’t be a surprise that GenAI was the GC Summit’s theme of the day. Many general counsels find themselves at the forefront of navigating various challenges of adopting generative AI, and they are tasked with understanding the technological implications and ensuring compliance with evolving legal standards and ethical considerations.
In particular, discussions during one panel titled “Managing Legal in the World of GenAI” had a reoccurring theme: Human oversight is indispensable as we face the inherent risks that GenAI poses.
The Imperative of Human Oversight
As AI technologies become more embedded in our daily operations, several panelists agreed that rigorous human oversight is key to ensuring that AI systems function within designed ethical and operational parameters, safeguarding against unintended consequences.
General Counsel Summit Speakers stressed:
- Continuous Monitoring: Each company is responsible for continuously monitoring and auditing AI outputs to ensure they adhere to ethical standards and do not propagate disinformation or harmful content.
- Robust Governance: The importance of robust governance structures around AI deployments to mitigate risks effectively is more crucial than ever.
- Transparency: Organizations and developers must prioritize transparency with stakeholders about the capabilities and limitations of AI technologies.
- Proactive Education: GCs and, really, everyone at a company should use GenAI tools their companies offer or are thinking about using. Knowledge is understanding.
Human oversight was also a particularly strong theme during a breakout session about citizen coders and security. The speakers discussed the transformative but risky landscape of software development, particularly when it comes to open source. They underscored that while GenAI could exponentially boost productivity and innovation, there are numerous potential vulnerabilities where AI tools could inadvertently introduce security gaps within the company that malicious actors could exploit.
The conversation highlighted the need for a paradigm shift in how organizations perceive and integrate AI tools, advocating for a responsible approach that includes comprehensive risk assessment, robust oversight mechanisms, and employee education.
“It comes down to education. It is really all we have to rely on right now. But instead of just educating engineering teams, we’ve really got to start to roll out the risks to the company, our customers, and every employee at the company,” one speaker suggested.