Milana McCullagh

Old School Tech Lawyer. Advisor/Investor. Formerly RDDT, COIN, GOOG, WSGR. Focus on AI/Content/Legal Hypergrowth. Not the m4 freeway!

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

I wrote this little piece about building legal teams at GOOG, COIN, and RDDT. Different companies, different chaos, same four-part playbook (spoiler: nobody ever has enough headcount!). Let me know what you think! https://t.co/PKJ3fwTNDp

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

I love this post. I have no solutions but I think it explains why task-based AI agents aren't resonating more. I've tried several recently but the friction of coming up with tasks makes me lose interest fast. Always on context would be amazing!

[Sonia Baschez @SoniaBaschez]

Silicon Valley keeps building me a husband when what I really want is a wife lol

I don't want an agent that only does one-off, random tasks that are nice but not life-changing: booking flights, making dinner reservations, or buying tickets

I want an AI wife who knows what’s on the family calendar, remembers there’s a birthday party Saturday and we haven’t bought a gift then sends me options, realizes we’re almost out of diapers and buys them, knows which bills are coming up, remembers someone needs a dentist appointment and books it, figures out what the hell we’re eating all week and what we need from the grocery store, and generally keeps track of the 47 things that need to happen before anyone else even realizes they need to happen.

So, who's building me an AI wife that carries the mental load instead of an AI husband that waits for me to give it a chore??

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

This was particularly acute during Covid times with all learning online and it's why my kids now go to schools that focus on classical learning & education. Minimal computer use allowed. They actually have to think, reason and learn by themselves.

[Ashley Gold @ashleyrgold]

incredible + sobering story in @WSJ https://t.co/Cz5TVEhMFh

[Ashley Gold @ashleyrgold]

incredible + sobering story in @WSJ https://t.co/Cz5TVEhMFh

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

Just finished reading the filing. It's actually a good read and well written. Gives a layman's overview of the recent OAI security incidents too. Recommend for lawyers playing in the AI space. https://t.co/EoUmkButcb

[Attorney General James Uthmeier @AGJamesUthmeier]

Four months ago, we filed the first state-led lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman. Today, we are asking the court for a temporary injunction.

Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it's human. Stop selling it to kids.

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

https://t.co/3SbrDq2pNV I've been getting these weird, emotional, AI slop responses recently too. Google Search has become unusable. Makes me sad as a long time Googler: "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" was always our north star.

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

100% agree

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.

You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.

I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.

But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.

Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.

Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.

So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.

If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

@adamkovac As someone who was deeply involved in this issue for RDDT, this is entirely not a surprise.

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

@brianrdowning This is a very important topic and looking forward to reading it, Brian!

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

@mollyisonchain more like the solution, not the problem!

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

Officially leaving private mode after ~10 years. Hello again.

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

If you haven’t tried Readwise yet to better organize & remember your online reading, now’s a good time with the new app! Congratulations, Tristan!

[Tristan @homsiT]

today is a huge day for the original readwise highlights app. we completely rebuilt it.

early testers have called this modernization "a quantum leap forward." and we hope you'll feel the same

(if you use readwise, please let me know what you think!)

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

This is the best explanation of the FTX situation that I've read.

[Jon Wu @jonwu_]

FTX was the world's 3rd largest crypto exchange.

Today it's said to be insolvent and in the midst of an acquisition by Binance.

Here's everything you need to know about Alameda Research and the collapse of FTX:

👇

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

@amac Same. It took me a long time to accept that being a generalist is a feature not a bug! (also recommend the book Range) As a legal manager, my goal is always to build out my team with people who are smarter than me.

[Paul Grewal @iampaulgrewal]

Yes! But don't sleep on the First, or especially the Fifth--at least for as long as due process still means something.

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

@christianism @Google @christianism I have fond memories of working with you on Gadget Ads!😁

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

So sad to hear this. Dan was a great guy. https://t.co/Xbvbrpv7ie

[Recode @Recode]

Google's @danfredinburg dies of head injury after #NepalEarthquake: http://t.co/8aIZ98FnAk

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

@kf is @train on yet?

[EFF @EFF]

BREAKING: FISA court rejects Justice Dept's catch-22 secrecy argument, @EFF's case will proceed https://t.co/5Kk36J9hRj

[Milana McCullagh @m4]

No backdoor to Google data. http://t.co/6vaCTahiP9