Every day, someone has to decide what "safe" looks like for the technology billions of people use. At Google, that person is Laurie Richardson. As Vice President of Trust and Safety, she leads the global team that writes and enforces the policies covering Search, Ads, Play, Cloud and Google's generative AI products. Her work spans fraud and scams, child safety and the new harms that AI agents bring with them.
In this episode of Made to DO, Florian Hoffmann sits down with Laurie in San Francisco's Presidio. Her path started a long way from Silicon Valley: she was a lawyer, then chief of staff at the US Treasury, where she worked through the aftermath of the financial crisis and Brexit. Later she helped write Google's original AI principles. That mix gives her an unusual view of how good decisions get made when there's no perfect option on the table.
The conversation covers a lot of ground: staged product launches, regulation, demo slams, entrepreneurship and the redwoods. Through all of it, Laurie keeps coming back to one belief. However much AI changes the world, she bets on people's ability to adapt.
0:00 — Opening
0:25 — Meet Laurie Richardson
1:45 — What Government Teaches Silicon Valley
4:50 — What Silicon Valley Teaches Government
7:00 — Deciding Without Perfect Information
9:10 — Regulation, the DSA and the AI Act
11:55 — Preparing Teams for an Unpredictable Future
14:05 — How AI Is Changing Trust and Safety
16:00 — The Human in the Loop
17:55 — Lifting Teams Up: Metrics and Demo Slams
22:10 — Overhyped or Underestimated?
25:15 — Skills, Opportunity and Entrepreneurship
28:10 — Questions Every Leader Should Ask
30:30 — Staying Grounded in Turbulent Times
31:40 — Closing
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Laurie Richardson is Vice President of Trust & Safety at Google, where she leads the global team responsible for developing and enforcing policies that protect users and platforms from abuse. Previously, she served as a senior adviser to Google’s CEO and as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. She began her career as a lawyer.
