AI Governance Podcast

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Phil Laird, General Counsel of the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA).   Phil leads the CPPA's legal function through the agency's work on automated decision-making technology - the ADMT regulations, the Risk Assessment requirements, and the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) build that's now well underway. The CPPA has become arguably the most consequential US-side voice on AI governance, and Phil's role sits at the centre of how California is operationalising oversight in 2026 and 2027.   Phil joined Enzai's Matt McCallum to discuss: Meaningful human involvement and automation bias: What California's definition of human review explicitly closes the door on, and the most common implementation failure mode in early ADMT programmes - organisations believing they have addressed automation bias when they have not. The 2026/2027 implementation roadmap: The Risk Assessment timeline, what's in scope and when, and how California's regime overlaps with - and where it diverges from - EU AI Act and GDPR risk assessment work that businesses may already be doing. The DROP platform: Where California is in the build of its centralised Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, the architectural ambition behind it, and what operational readiness in 2026/2027 looks like for in-scope businesses. Frictionless as operating doctrine: Why the CPPA's "frictionless" framing is not consumer rhetoric but the operating principle shaping how the agency sequences regulatory work and what it expects from business. Where the field is going: Phil's read on enforcement priorities, the practitioner gaps the CPPA is watching, and the next twelve months of agency agenda from inside the team.

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Sunil Gregory and Dr. Anindya Sircar. Sunil is at Cognizant, where he works with Fortune 500 enterprises on AI governance strategy and operating-model design. Anindya is the IPR Chair at NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad, having previously run intellectual property at Biocon and Infosys. Together they are co-authors of the AI Governance Handbook (Springer, 2025) and are working on a follow-up that argues regulators are over-engineering the response to AI. Sunil and Anindya joined Enzai's Matt McCallum to discuss: The Structural Fix for Shadow AI: Sunil's three-layer model - consolidation, structured funded portfolio, and governance built into the development lifecycle - for CIOs whose AI budgets have already exhausted on pilots that haven't graduated. The IP Inventory Test: Anindya's "smoke detector in a building without a sprinkler system" framing for enterprise IP exposure programs - and the connected inventory question every governance team should be able to answer. Industrialised Inconsistency in Data: Why AI breaks what analytics didn't - when the human silently fixing the data is removed from the loop, every ambiguity surfaces as a wrong answer, a hallucination, or a critical legal exposure. India's Deliberate Choice: Why Western enterprise leaders most often misread India's DPDP Act as underdeveloped - and what they miss when they treat the principle-based framework as a strategic asset rather than a gap. Doctrine Over New Statute: A preview of Sunil and Anindya's follow-up book - and the case for extending existing legal doctrines (IP, privacy, accountability, sovereignty, human dignity) rather than inventing new AI-specific frameworks.

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Dr. Carl Öhman. Carl is an Associate Senior Lecturer at Uppsala University and the author of the 2024 book, The Afterlife of Data. He is one of the world's leading experts on the "digital afterlife industry" and the ethics of our informational remains. Carl joined Enzai's Matt McCallum to discuss: The "Informational Body": Why we need to treat our digital footprint as a persistent extension of ourselves that outlasts our physical lives. The Regulatory Gap: Why rights under frameworks like the GDPR "cease" at the moment of death, and the governance vacuum this creates for digital remains. Narrative Capture: The dangerous situation where a single individual or tech giant can own the entire historical narrative of movements like #MeToo through the purchase of platform data. Digital Colonialism: The economic incentives that could lead to the preservation of Western history while the digital records of the Global South are erased to save server space. Gods of Data: A preview of Carl's upcoming work on how LLMs collapse our collective ancestors into a singular "divine" presence, and the risks of outsourcing human decision-making to "perfect" machines.   About Enzai: Enzai is the enterprise AI governance platform that helps organizations maximize AI adoption while minimizing risk across global regulatory frameworks Learn more about Enzai: www.enz.ai Subscribe to our newsletter for more insights: www.enz.ai/contact/newsletter

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Bojana Bellamy. Bojana is the President of the Center for Information Policy Leadership (CIPL), a preeminent global think tank, and has spent over 25 years at the center of global data policy.   Bojana joined Enzai's Matt McCallum to discuss: The critical shift from "tick-box" compliance to organizational accountability as a business enabler. How boards should evaluate the "loss of opportunity" in AI deployment rather than just the risk of fines. The challenges of governing Agentic AI and moving toward delegated trust models. Reconciling the tension between data protection principles and the massive data requirements of representative AI models. The role of Privacy-Preserving Technologies (PPTs) in maintaining global data flows and building digital bridges.

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Sophie in 't Veld. Sophie is a defining figure in European digital rights, having served for 20 years as a Member of the European Parliament. She currently chairs the advisory council for the Centre for Democracy and Technology (CDT) in Europe. Sophie joined Enzai's Matt McCallum to discuss: • The transition from legislation to enforcement for the EU AI Act • Critical lessons from the GDPR and why enforcement has become a "political currency" • The dangers of the "National Security" exemption and its role in the proliferation of spyware • Challenges of Agentic AI and why the principle of human review must remain technology-neutral

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Boniface de Champris. Boniface is an expert on the EU AI Act, Senior Manager at CCIA Europe and a keen watcher of the debate around the GPAI Code of Practice. Boniface joined Enzai's Var Shankar to discuss: Why the forthcoming GPAI Code of Practice is so important How the EU AI Office interacts with Working Groups to draft the Code Major changes between the second and third drafts of the Code Expectations for the final draft of the Code How work by researchers, including at the OECD and G7, informs AI laws

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Dr. Umang Bhatt. Umang is an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Data Science at New York University, a Senior Research Associate at the Alan Turing Institute and a leading researcher in the fields of AI explainability and transparency. Umang joined Enzai's Var Shankar to discuss: How organizations might explain the workings of generative AI systems to end-users Practical approaches to restricting access to generative AI systems, their outputs, and what they can be used for Why it is important to close the loop on feedback from internal stakeholders How AI can have a positive impact globally by personalizing education How to promote responsible AI approaches from beyond North America, the EU and China

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features James Ong. James is the Founder of the Singapore-based AI International Institute, Co-Author of "AI for Humanity: Building A Sustainable AI for the Future," and has bridged the divides between scientists, policymakers and investors for over 35 years. James joined Enzai's Var Shankar to discuss: - The silver lining from the Paris AI Safety Summit - The need to develop fields of AI other than generative AI - How Asian countries can best contribute to global AI norms - How sustainable AI is built on the three pillars  governance, technology, and commercialization - How to navigate incentives between scientists, startups, and investors

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Kristina Podnar. Kristina is the author of The Power of Digital Policy, Senior Policy Director at the Data & Trust Alliance and a digital policy advisor to boards and executives of private, non-profit and public sector organizations. Kristina joined Enzai's Var Shankar to discuss: - outcomes to expect from Paris AI Action Summit - why publicly owned AI is essential - how to insulate publicly owned AI from politics - why policymakers should focus on specific issues, like using AI to fight climate change and combating nonconsensual deepfakes, in addition to more general AI risks - how organizations should adopt agentic and open-source systems amid regulatory uncertainty

This episode of the AI Governance Podcast features Cary Coglianese. Cary is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science and the founding Director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania, the author of seven books on administrative law and regulatory policy and a leading expert on regulatory models for AI. Cary joined Enzai's Var Shankar to discuss: - regulatory principles for AI, given the extreme heterogeneity of use cases - why leashes – not guardrails – are the better analogy for AI governance - what a management-based approach to AI regulation would look like - why the jury is still out on the European, American, and Chinese regulatory approaches - how future lawyers should think about legal education and practice.