The AI Drop

The AI Drop #19: From Mycelia to Machines: Rethinking Intelligence in an Age of AI with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury

Intelligence isn't a fixed quantity we can measure — it's a construct, and the moment we insist on measuring machines against ourselves, we could miss what they can do and misjudge what they can't. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury — founder and CEO of Humane Intelligence and the first U.S. Science Envoy for AI — joins host Anna Gressel to unpack the ideas behind Thinking About Thinking, her podcast and the book she's now writing. Drawing on everything from mycelial networks to a recent Oxford debate on legal personhood, Rumman and Anna also explore reasoning, anthropomorphizing, and the human skills — discernment, curiosity, imagination — that AI can't automate. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Rumman Chowdhury | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #18: What's a Robot Worth? Valuation, Data & the Power of Physical AI with Shenwei Zhu and Lauren Schwartz

Is physical AI ready for primetime? Recorded live at Citi's Robotics and Physical AI Conference, this episode captures a market at an inflection point, maturing in "dog years" as it accelerates from demo to deployment at breakneck speed. Host Anna Gressel is joined by Shenwei Zhu, a Citigroup managing director covering industrial technology and robotics, and Lauren Schwartz, CISO and General Counsel of Centific, a global data and AI solutions company. Together they explore why data has become both the bottleneck and the moat in physical AI, how investors evaluate robotics companies on unit economics and customer value, and why the winning proposition is to sell measurable outcomes. Shenwei and Lauren also weigh liability gaps and offer founders hard-won advice on capital and data strategy. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Lauren Schwartz | LinkedIn ☑️ Shenwei Zhu | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #17: Delegate the Decision, Not the Liability — How the SEC Views Agentic AI with Melissa Hodgman

In this episode, host Anna Gressel is joined by Freshfields Partner Melissa Hodgman, a former SEC enforcement official, who traces that arc from the SEC’s interest in pattern-spotting tools built after the 2008 crisis to today's "AI washing" disclosure cases and other areas of SEC enforcement interest. As Melissa puts it, “you can delegate decision-making to a machine, but you can't delegate liability.” For years, enforcement turned on what a single person knew — knowledge firms could contain with walls, locked doors, and policies. Melissa explains why a learning system that moves information across an organization makes that a far harder question: what did the system know? From there she unpacks how investor protection shapes the agency's interest in agentic AI, and what belongs on a general counsel's hit list. Her closing advice — engage regulators early, and treat securities law as principle-based. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Melissa Hodgman | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #16: The AI Race: China's Open-Source Play for Global AI Adoption with Beth George

In this episode of The AI Drop, Anna Gressel sits down with Beth George (Freshfields Partner, Head of US Litigation and Global Co-Head of Strategic Risk Management) to discuss the geopolitical implications of China's latest AI advances, including Kimi K3, and what they signal for the global AI race. Rather than focusing solely on who builds the most powerful model, they explore why the real competition may be over AI infrastructure, trust, and global adoption. The conversation examines China's open-source AI strategy, the limits of export controls and bans as policy tools, and why accessibility, reliability, and safety may become the defining differentiators in the next era of AI. They also discuss the growing role of robotics, AI agents, and cybersecurity risks as AI systems become more deeply embedded in everyday life.

The AI Drop #15: Designing the Future: How Kohler Is Building an AI-Enabled Enterprise with Eric Tabor and Megan Belcher

Kohler's approach to enterprise AI starts with a simple bet: teach every employee to build and manage their own agents rather than bring in consultants. Eric Tabor, Kohler's chief digital officer, and Megan Belcher, the company's chief legal officer, join host Anna Gressel to explain how that philosophy has shaped both the 153-year-old design company's technology roadmap and its governance model. Eric details Kohler's "two-in-a-box" model, pairing associates with technical partners, and the recent rollout of 3,000 AI agents across the company. Megan explains how legal meets clients' risk tolerance while moving with speed, and how she keeps the board abreast of a rapidly evolving competitive landscape. Their advice for teams starting out with AI: "hold hands...and be willing to jump." Connect and Learn More ☑️ Megan Belcher ☑️ Eric Tabor | LinkedIn ☑️ Kohler ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #14: Privilege, Meet Prompt: A Practical Guide to AI in the Legal World with Rob McCallum

When privileged prompts pass through an AI tool, whether they stay privileged is a key question coming before courts globally today — and those courts are digging into the facts and terms to decide. Rob McCallum, a Freshfields tech litigator, tells host Anna Gressel that privilege questions come up in his practice pretty much every day, and that the conversation has shifted from whether to use AI at all to how to use it responsibly when privileged communications are in the mix. He and Anna also cover AI note-takers as discoverable records, cross-border differences in privilege law, and where governance over privileged communications and documents actually starts. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Rob McCallum | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #13: Who Watches the Agents? Governing Work in the Era of Agentic AI with Jason Stanley

As AI agents become more autonomous, who is responsible for overseeing their work? In this episode of The AI Drop, host Anna Gressel is joined by Jason Stanley, Head of Applied AI Research at ServiceNow, for a deep dive into the emerging world of agentic AI governance. Together, they explore why traditional AI governance frameworks may not be enough for autonomous systems, the importance of deployment-specific evaluation, and how organizations can build trust, accountability, and effective human-AI collaboration. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Jason Stanley | LinkedIn | Substack ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #12: The Honest Oracle: Smart Contracts, AI Agents, and the View from Abu Dhabi, with Magdalena Konig

What happens when agentic AI's agility meets blockchain rigidity? Magdalena Konig, GC of Sirius International Holding — IHC's technology subsidiary — argues the result is paradoxically powerful: a more agile, rigid structure where use cases multiply exponentially. Host Anna Gressel sits down with Magdalena in Abu Dhabi to explore how smart contracts and agents are natural partners, from logistics pipelines that auto-execute payment on delivery to new financial access for the world's unbanked. The conversation also covers governance, liability, and human oversight in increasingly autonomous systems, alongside a look at the UAE's rapid emergence as a global hub for AI, blockchain, and digital infrastructure innovation. The conversation also covers governance, liability, and human oversight in increasingly autonomous systems, alongside a look at the UAE's rapid emergence as a global hub for AI, blockchain, and digital infrastructure innovation. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Magdalena Konig | LinkedIn ☑️ Sirius International Holding | LinkedIn | Instagram ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #11: Concrete and Capital: Building the Backbone of the AI Era, with Jessamy Gallagher and Harry Evans

Data centers are dominating headlines — and the pressures behind them are only growing. In this episode, host Anna Gressel welcomes Jessamy Gallagher, Freshfields partner and global head of the firm's Energy and Real assets group, and Harry Evans, a Freshfields partner in Singapore focused on tech, telecom, and financial services. They map the data center boom from two angles: global capital markets and Asia's build landscape. They break down why AI has nearly doubled sector growth rates, how asset-backed securitization is unlocking new capital pools, and why power is the fundamental long-term constraint. The conversation covers off-grid power solutions, community pushback from Tokyo to Ireland, and what keeps investors awake: geopolitics, cooling constraints, and whether quantum chips could eventually upend today's infrastructure stack. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Harry Evans | LinkedIn ☑️ Jessamy Gallagher | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #10: Before the Briefing: A GC's Guide to AI in the Boardroom, with Elizabeth Bieber

Most boards today have no clear owner for AI oversight and according to Freshfields Partner Elizabeth Bieber. That may not be fatal, but it is a problem that needs a plan. Anna Gressel and Leza, who leads Freshfields' shareholder engagement and activism defense practice, dig into the practical challenges General Counsels face when preparing board briefings on AI. They explore the tension between presenting a polished, "bow on top" strategy and the reality that AI moves faster than quarterly board meetings. Leza argues that effective governance isn't about having the policy — it's about making the policy drive the right behavior. The conversation also covers how AI should reshape committee charters across audit, compensation, and nominating governance — and whether directors themselves should have guardrails around their own use of AI tools. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Elizabeth "Leza" Bieber | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #9: Trust in the Balance: Navigating Reality in the AI Age with Claire Leibowicz

As the line between real and synthetic blurs, trust is becoming one of the defining challenges of the AI era. In this episode, Anna Gressel and Claire Leibowicz (Director of AI, Trust, and Society at the Partnership on AI (PAI)) explore how synthetic media is reshaping authenticity - well beyond deepfakes - raising complex questions about misrepresentation, context, and evidence. They discuss emerging transparency tools, from watermarking to provenance standards, and the challenge of making disclosures meaningful across legal and everyday settings. The conversation also examines how algorithms and distribution systems shape perception at scale. Looking ahead, they turn to AI agents and the next frontier of trust where questions of identity, accountability, and verification take center stage. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Claire Leibowicz | LinkedIn | Personal Website ☑️ The Partnership on AI (PAI) | LinkedIn | Facebook ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #8: Hello, Operator – How AI Agents Recruit Humans to Reach the Offline World with Umang Bhatt

Most debates about AI focus on the people using it. Umang Bhatt is asking us to pay attention to what happens at the edges of that interaction — including the people who never touch AI but increasingly bear its consequences, and the human labor that AI agents subtly pull into their workflows. Umang is an Assistant Professor in Trustworthy AI at the University of Cambridge, and he joins host Anna Gressel for part one of a two-part conversation. Drawing on his recent Noema article, “AI Agents Are Recruiting Humans to Observe the Offline World,” Umang explains what it means for humans to be “on call” for AI agents — the novel scenario in which agents may reach out directly to people to supply a piece of information the agent can't access on its own. As agent capabilities surpass human skills in some domains, Umang argues, the question becomes how to orchestrate humans and agents on the same team — profiling what each is good at, deciding who handles which subtask, and designing the handoffs between them. The conversation turns to “secondhand AI” — Umang's term for the second-order effects of someone else's AI use on the people around them — and what responsible deployment looks like when the line between tool and teammate keeps shifting. Resources From This Episode ☑️ Bhatt, “AI Agents Are Recruiting Humans To Observe The Offline World,” Noema Magazine, March 5, 2026. ☑️ Jorgensen et al., “Documenting Deployment with Fabric: A Repository of Real-World AI Governance,” AIES 2025, arXiv:2508.14119. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Umang Bhatt | LinkedIn | X | Github ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #7: From Pixels to Physics – How Robots Learn (and Why It's So Hard) with Roozbeh Mottaghi

Between scripted demos, the simulation-to-reality gap, and the absence of any shared benchmark, the robotics field is full of progress that's easy to overstate and hard to measure. "I hate to say this, but most of them are fake," says Roozbeh Mottaghi, a leading robotics and embodied AI researcher, of the viral humanoid robot videos. He joins host Anna Gressel to discuss how robots learn and what that means for the future of the field. Roozbeh and Anna unpack a core hurdle in robotics — building general-purpose robots that generalize across environments and objects — plus the gap between simulation and reality, and why safety becomes the top concern once robots work alongside people. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Roozbeh Mottaghi | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #6: Training Day – AI and EU Copyright Trends with Lutz Riede

The EU is front and center in the discussion about copyright issues and technology, so host Anna Gressel invites colleague Dr. Lutz Riede to unpack the state of play for businesses operating that space. A Vienna-based partner who specializes in intellectual property and technology law, Lutz describes the biggest misconceptions that companies have about EU copyright law, high-impact litigation pending in Germany, and the key difference in legal philosophy between the EU and US. The conversation closes out with Lutz’ practical pointers for companies out of the AI space that are tuning models or using third-party models. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Dr. Lutz Riede | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #5: Looking East – How Asia Is Writing Its Own AI Rules with Rohit Bhat

When it comes to technology, Asian regulators have seemed to follow the lead of their EU and US counterparts. No longer. “With AI, it is transformational, and jurisdictions in Asia are taking note and wanting to ensure that this technology is used for the greater good of their respective society,” says Rohit Bhat. In this globe-trotting conversation with host Anna Gressel, he touches down in India, Singapore, and South Korea. Tune in for his insights about India, with its Information Technology Act that regulates synthetically generated information; Singapore, with its recent influential conference on agentic AI; and South Korea, with its risk-based AI Basic Act that regulates high-impact AI. At the end of the day, Rohit observes, AI is transforming the industry wherever you are on the global stage. Connect and Learn More ☑️ Rohit Bhat | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #4: Pulling Back the Curtain on Agentic AI, with Geoff Schaefer

Geoff Schaefer, vice president of AI Strategy and Governance at Leidos, returns to “The AI Drop” to unpack agentic AI strategy, the subject of his newest book. Host Anna Gressel leads off the conversation with a lightning round of questions such as the biggest surprises he’s seen, the number one skill that employees in an agentic workplace must have, and the value that AI agents are actually providing in the workplace. Tune in as he explains why Leidos’ hybrid org chart places human FTEs alongside agent FAEs (full-time agent equivalents), why it’s no longer wrong to anthropomorphize AI, and why a colleague at Leidos is building a “zero trust” architecture for AI – similar to zero trust principles in cybersecurity and organizational security. Connect and Learn More: ☑️ Geoff Schaefer | LinkedIn ☑️ Leidos ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields ☑️ Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The AI Drop #3: Check Engine Light – What Every Board Needs to Know About AI Oversight with Doru Gavril

Freshfields partner Doru Gavril remembers listening to the iconic radio show “Car Talk,” where the host would diagnose callers’ car problems. Host Anna Gressel takes the calls, and Doru diagnoses the caller’s AI ailment. Doru peeks under the hood to talk the callers through fixing their issues. Tune in to hear why – just like in “Car Talk” – the answer is often the "carburetor." And why companies and boards should think about diagnosing key AI considerations now. “You have time, but you also cannot wait,” he says. “You need to start thinking about it now, both strategically and operationally.” Connect and Learn More ☑️ Doru Gavril | LinkedIn ☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn ☑️ Freshfields

The AI Drop #2: Planning in Quicksand: Strategy Under Radical Uncertainty with Geoffrey Schaefer

"A good AI strategy is analogous to rebar and concrete," says Geoff Schaefer, making the case that AI should strengthen a company's existing differentiation — not replace the strategy itself. Geoff is the vice president of AI Strategy and Governance at Leidos, one of the largest companies operating at the intersection of defense, national security, and commercial technology. The conversation with host Anna Gressel opens with a lightning round where Geoff predicts that a small majority of companies will double in size with agents within two years and argues that waiting to see how AI develops puts companies in a structurally reactive — and disadvantaged — position. Anna and Geoff explore why AI disruption is categorically different from the Industrial Revolution, the danger of a "pilot mindset,” and why AI strategy must be co-designed across technical and non-technical parts of the organization. ...

The AI Drop #1: Of Bubbles and Busts - A Conversation on the Future of AI with Boris Feldman

Anna Gressel is joined by Boris Feldman to examine whether today’s AI boom represents a lasting transformation or a bubble, drawing key distinctions from the dot‑com era. They look ahead to what’s next for AI and explore what lessons history can teach us about the potential future of AI — and what is fundamentally new and different about the moment we are in now.

Introducing The AI Drop

Join host Anna Gressel to unlock the future of artificial intelligence with The AI Drop, a podcast dedicated to delivering cutting-edge insights on how AI is transforming industries worldwide. Each episode features expert interviews and actionable strategies to help you harness AI, drive business value, and navigate evolving legal challenges. Fresh drops every week so you never miss a beat. Stay tuned for Episode #1 - dropping Tuesday, April 21st

• Chapters