Katalina Hernandez

Karma: 1,164

Lawyer by education, researcher by vocation.

Stress-Testing Reality Limited | Katalina Hernández | Substack

→Ask me about: Advice on how to make technical research legible by lawyers and regulators, frameworks for AI liability (EU or UK Law), general compliance questions (GDPR, EU AI Act, DSA/DMA, Product Liability Directive).

→Book a free slot: https://www.aisafety.com/advisors

I produce independent legal research for AI Safety and AI Governance projects. I work to inform enforceable legal mechanisms with alignment, interpretability, and control research- and avoid technical safety being brought to the conversation too late.

How I work: I read frontier safety papers and reproduce core claims; map them to concrete obligations (EU AI Act, PLD, NIST/ISO); and propose implementation plans.

Current projects

Law-Following AI (LFAI): released a preprint (in prep for submission to the Cambridge Journal for Computational Legal Studies) on whether legal standards can serve as alignment anchors and how law-alignment relates to value alignment. Building on the original framework proposed by Cullen O’Keefe and the Institute of Law and AI.
Regulating downstream modifiers: writing “Regulating Downstream Modifiers in the EU: Federated Compliance and the Causality–Liability Gap” for IASEAI, stress-testing Hacker & Holweg’s proposal against causation/liability and frontier-risk realities.
Open problems in regulatory AI governance: co-developing with ENAIS members a tractable list where AI Safety work can close governance gaps (deceptive alignment, oversight loss, evaluations).
AI-safety literacy for tech lawyers: building a syllabus used by serious institutions; focuses on translating alignment/interpretability/control into audits, documentation, and enforcement-ready duties.

Katalina Hernandez 29 Nov 2025 16:33 UTC
7 points
2
on: Epistemology of Romance, Part 1
This was a great read! I swear I’ve watched The Notebook at least twice over the years and, for the life of me, I can’t remember that scene.
I would be very curious to hear your take on 500 Days of Summer. Do you think it portrays a better or more realistic picture on how these sort of unreciprocated pursuits tend to go? I really enjoyed that in the end the person that kept saying that she just doesn’t believe in marriage married somebody else. I think that was one of my favorite details of the movie.

Katalina Hernandez 24 Nov 2025 10:21 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Linda Linsefors’s comment on: Stop Applying And Get To Work
Agreed! Thank you, Linda. For readers: this also goes for students who do not have support from family members or whose families have a quite precarious situation- quitting your degree may leave you with thousands in debt that you’ll still have to repay.

Katalina Hernandez 24 Nov 2025 8:16 UTC
23 points
22
on: Stop Applying And Get To Work
Thank you for adding that last part, “Have a sufficient financial safety net”.
Not everyone can afford to leave paid work and just do AI Safety work for free / in favour of unstable short fellowships.
It’s harsh but it’s the reality. If you have dependants (children, or other family members) or have massive student loans to pay every month, and have zero financial support from anyone else…
I’d say: still dedicate as much time as possible to your research. Like OP says- more time to actually doing the work than on applications.
But I’ve seen people get pressured into quitting their work or studies and made feel like they’re not committed enough if they don’t. When it turns out they’d be putting their entire family in financial duress if they did so.
And to those who can afford not to work for a salary: please remember to be kind and prudent. Some of us also have short timelines, but we’d like our families to have food on their plate too.
P.S.: in case it isn’t obvious, I do support the message on this post.

Katalina Hernandez 21 Nov 2025 0:13 UTC
10 points
0
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
I just wanted to say thank you for this. I have a low tolerance for annoyance that’s counterproductive for me, so this helped me reflect on that. Plus, great explainer of what LW interactions are supposed to result in.

Katalina Hernandez 21 Nov 2025 0:06 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Aaron_Scher’s comment on: Considerations for setting the FLOP thresholds in our example international AI agreement
By the way, has this been posted anywhere else apart from LW and arXiv? I’d circulate on LinkedIn too (yes, I’m serious, unfortunately) and tag key people in policy and AI Governance like Kevin Fumai or Luiza Jarowski (large following) or Kai Zenner / folks at the AI Office (I know some). Let me know if I can repost this elsewhere :).

Katalina Hernandez 20 Nov 2025 23:31 UTC
12 points
0
on: Considerations for setting the FLOP thresholds in our example international AI agreement
For context on how your proposed 10^24 FLOPs threshold compares to existing regulation:
EU AI Act: Defines high systemic risk GPAI at 10^25 FLOPs
California SB 53: Defined “frontier model” at 10^26 FLOPs (including fine-tuning/RLHF)
Your proposal is way lower than what current regulations consider “frontier” or ” systemic risk.”
So, you may receive pushback in the form of “Current regulations don’t even consider this frontier—this is outside the policy Overton window”
Nevertheless, we’re also seeing some regulatory backtracking (EU Omnibus simplification, Trump’s EO undermining SB 53), and I genuinely think that this may lead to the opposite effect—for people to think “regulators don’t know what they’re doing. We need a stricter halt while they figure it out, not maintaining thresholds they’re already second-guessing.”
I think these thresholds were set by political feasibility rather than safety analysis, and I’d love to see this proposal succeed. Of course, this requires making the case that the risk is imminent enough to justify going well below where any regulator has dared to set a line.

Katalina Hernandez 14 Nov 2025 13:28 UTC
14 points
4
in reply to: eggsyntax’s comment on: eggsyntax’s Shortform
[Disclaimer: very personal views, not quite technically accurate but sadly probably relatable, just aimed at appreciating OP’s post].
God, this is awesome. I know it’s humour but I think you’ve captured a very real feeling! When you work in a corporation, with technical product owners and legal teams, and you’re trying to explain AI risk.
“Put in the contract that their system must meet interpretability by design standards”.
Deep sight
“That’s not possible, and this model, like most frontier, is the opposite from Interpretable by default. That’s why it’s called The Black box problem”.
“But can’t they just open the black box? They programmed the models, they have the source code”.
More sights
“Let me tell you about the fascinating world of mechanistic Interpretability”...
Half an hour later
“Okay so… it’s not only that we’re deploying a powerful technology that we can’t audit, but nobody really knows how it works internally, even the people who “developed ” it (who now try to reverse engineer their own creations), and our hope that, at some point, we can actually control internal behaviours is that they got Claude obsessed with the Golden Gate at some point?...”
“Basically yes”.

Katalina Hernandez 19 Oct 2025 11:36 UTC
4 points
0
on: AI Safety Law-a-thon: We need more technical AI Safety researchers to join!
𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝘄-𝗮-𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻 (𝗢𝗰𝘁 𝟮𝟱-𝟮𝟲)!
Our participants will receive feedback on their work from four exceptional experts bridging AI safety research, legal practice, and governance:

Charbel-Raphaël Segerie—Executive Director of the French Center for AI Safety (Centre pour la Sécurité de l’IA—CeSIA), OECD AI expert, and propulsor of the AI Red Lines initiative. His technical research spans RLHF theory, interpretability, and safe-by-design approaches. He has supervised multiple research groups across ML4Good bootcamps, ARENA, and AI safety hackathons, bridging cutting-edge technical AI safety research with practical risk evaluation and governance frameworks.

Chiara Gallese, Ph.D.- Researcher at Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) and an active member of four EU AI Office working groups. Dr. Gallese has co-authored papers with computer scientists on ML fairness and trustworthy AI, conducted testbed experiments addressing bias with NXP Semiconductors, and has managed a portfolio of approximately 200 high-profile cases, many valued in the millions of euros.

Yelena Ambartsumian—Founder of AMBART LAW PLLC, a New York City law firm focused on AI governance, data privacy, and intellectual property. Her firm specializes in evaluating AI vendor agreements and helping companies navigate downstream liability risks. Yelena has published in the Harvard International Law Journal on AI and copyright issues, and is a co-chair of IAPP’s New York KnowledgeNet chapter. She is a graduate of Fordham University School of Law with executive education from Harvard and MIT.

James Kavanagh—Founder and CEO of AI Career Pro, where he trains professionals in AI governance and safety engineering. Previously, he led AWS’s Responsible AI Assurance function and was the Head of Microsoft Azure Government Cloud Engineering for defense and national security sectors. At AWS, James’s team was the first to achieve ISO 42001 certification of any global cloud provider.
Ze Shen Chin- Co-lead of the AI Standards Lab and Research Affiliate with the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative. He has contributed to the EU GPAI Code of Practice and analysed various regulatory and governance frameworks. His research currently focuses on AI risk management. Previously, he spent over a decade in the oil and gas industry.

These advisors will review the legal strategies and technical risk assessments our teams produce, providing feedback on practical applicability to AI policy, litigation, and engineering decisions.
As you can see, these are people representing the exact key areas of change that we are tackling with the AI Safety Law-a-thon:
- Industry Governance Engineering practices
- BigLaw Litigation
- Policy and legal research that informs Regulators
- International cooperation on AI Governance (Charbel initiated the Global Call for AI Red Lines—Signed by Nobel Laureates, Former Heads of State, and 200+ Prominent Figures).
Can’t wait to see the results of this legal hackathon. See you there!

Katalina Hernandez 19 Oct 2025 11:23 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Katalina Hernandez’s comment on: AI Safety Law-a-thon: Turning Alignment Risks into Legal Strategy
Closing our Advisory panel with one last amazing addition!
Ze Shen Chin
Co-lead of the AI Standards Lab and Research Affiliate with the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative. He has contributed to the EU GPAI Code of Practice and analysed various regulatory and governance frameworks. His research currently focuses on AI risk management. Previously, he spent over a decade in the oil and gas industry.

Katalina Hernandez 13 Oct 2025 7:36 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Katalina Hernandez’s Shortform
Thank you! You’ve managed to explain exactly what I thought when I saw this link. And re the LinkedIn comment—I’m actually surprised that people are surprised. I know people who post very high quality articles there, but mostly it’s become slop land. The pattern I’m noticing is: LinkedIn writers who value quality slowly transitioning to Substack, and those in their audiences that want to think moving with them.

Katalina Hernandez 13 Oct 2025 7:30 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: O O’s comment on: Katalina Hernandez’s Shortform
It’s not a conference, it’s an online course and it’s one of the most popular among privacy professionals. The most popular being those offered by IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals). She’s legitimately that well regarded. I’d love to know where the disconnect is for you?
Although ironically, I was talking to my boyfriend about how people in law or compliance would have the same reaction (“what? This guy is important?”) if I said so about Zvi and just linked his Substack XD. I guess different impressions in different communities.

Katalina Hernandez 12 Oct 2025 17:38 UTC
30 points
2
in reply to: Warty’s comment on: Katalina Hernandez’s Shortform
This is what she says:
Why read:
Although, in general, I disagree with catastrophic framings of AI risk (which have been exploited by AI CEOs to increase interest in their products, as I recently wrote in my newsletter), the AI safety debate is an important one, and it concerns all of us.
There are differing opinions on the current path of AI development and its possible futures. There are also various gray zones and unanswered questions on possible ways to mitigate risk and avoid harm.
Yudkowsky has been researching AI alignment for over 20 years, and together with Soares, he has built a strong argument for why AI safety concerns are urgent and why action is needed now. Whether you agree with their tone or not, their book is worth reading.

Katalina Hernandez 12 Oct 2025 16:53 UTC
6 points
2
in reply to: O O’s comment on: Katalina Hernandez’s Shortform
Perhaps this is a better reference point: https://academy.aitechprivacy.com/ai-governance-training

Her academy is very, very popular among Tech DPOs and lawyers (data protection officers). I am not saying she isn’t a typical Linkedin influencer.

But her posting about something, in the data protection and corp AI Governance ^[1]world (in terms of influence), is akin to us seeing Zvi Mowshowitz post about something. Does this make sense?
1. ^
  DPOs are mostly also doing AI Governance in the tech and tech adjacent industry now. I should do a post about this because it may be part of the problem soon.

Katalina Hernandez 12 Oct 2025 14:17 UTC
69 points
11
on: Katalina Hernandez’s Shortform
Luiza Jarovsky just endorsed IABIED. This is actually significant.
Luiza Jarovsky is one of the most influential people in the corporate AI Governance space right now: her newsletter has 80,000+ subscribers (mostly lawyers in the Data and Tech space) and has trained 1,300+ professionals from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and the likes.

Her audience are basically compliance lawyers who think AI safety means “don’t be racist” not “don’t kill everyone.” For her to recommend IABIED to that network is a non-trivial update on Overton window movement. These people literally sit in deployment decision meetings at Fortune 500s.
Corporate governance crowd is normally immune to longtermist args, but IABIED is cracking that.

Katalina Hernandez 10 Oct 2025 10:22 UTC
13 points
5
on: AI Safety Law-a-thon: Turning Alignment Risks into Legal Strategy
𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝘄-𝗮-𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻 (𝗢𝗰𝘁 𝟮𝟱-𝟮𝟲)!
Our participants will receive feedback on their work from four exceptional experts bridging AI safety research, legal practice, and governance:

Charbel-Raphaël Segerie—Executive Director of the French Center for AI Safety (Centre pour la Sécurité de l’IA—CeSIA), OECD AI expert, and propulsor of the AI Red Lines initiative. His technical research spans RLHF theory, interpretability, and safe-by-design approaches. He has supervised multiple research groups across ML4Good bootcamps, ARENA, and AI safety hackathons, bridging cutting-edge technical AI safety research with practical risk evaluation and governance frameworks.

Chiara Gallese, Ph.D.- Researcher at Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) and an active member of four EU AI Office working groups. Dr. Gallese has co-authored papers with computer scientists on ML fairness and trustworthy AI, conducted testbed experiments addressing bias with NXP Semiconductors, and has managed a portfolio of approximately 200 high-profile cases, many valued in the millions of euros.

Yelena Ambartsumian—Founder of AMBART LAW PLLC, a New York City law firm focused on AI governance, data privacy, and intellectual property. Her firm specializes in evaluating AI vendor agreements and helping companies navigate downstream liability risks. Yelena has published in the Harvard International Law Journal on AI and copyright issues, and is a co-chair of IAPP’s New York KnowledgeNet chapter. She is a graduate of Fordham University School of Law with executive education from Harvard and MIT.

James Kavanagh—Founder and CEO of AI Career Pro, where he trains professionals in AI governance and safety engineering. Previously, he led AWS’s Responsible AI Assurance function and was the Head of Microsoft Azure Government Cloud Engineering for defense and national security sectors. At AWS, James’s team was the first to achieve ISO 42001 certification of any global cloud provider.

These advisors will review the legal strategies and technical risk assessments our teams produce, providing feedback on practical applicability to AI policy, litigation, and engineering decisions.
As you can see, these are people representing the exact key areas of change that we are tackling with the AI Safety Law-a-thon:
- Industry Governance Engineering practices
- BigLaw Litigation
- Policy and legal research that informs Regulators
- International cooperation on AI Governance (Charbel initiated the Global Call for AI Red Lines—Signed by Nobel Laureates, Former Heads of State, and 200+ Prominent Figures).
Can’t wait to see the results of this legal hackathon. See you there!

Katalina Hernandez 8 Oct 2025 9:11 UTC
8 points
7
in reply to: 3willows’s comment on: AI Safety Law-a-thon: Turning Alignment Risks into Legal Strategy
Hi! Thank you for your comment.
I am an experienced industry professional, and most of the legal participants are coming directly from my network, or found out about the event via the CAIDP channel / Women in AI Governance / Kevin Fumai’s update.
It is the first time I cooperate with AI Plans but Kabir has successfully conducted Hackathons in the past, more focused on AI Evaluations. In fact, AI Plan’s December 2023 had quite reputable judges such as Nate Soares, Ramana Kumar, and Charbel Raphael.

We provide preparatory materials to confirmed participants.
Best,
Katalina.

Katalina Hernandez 7 Oct 2025 14:51 UTC
12 points
0
on: Gradual Disempowerment Monthly Roundup
Another shocking development for me was seeing Accenture, one of the largest Tech consultancies in the world,fire 11 000 employees because they “cannot be upskilled to embrace AI”.

Katalina Hernandez 6 Oct 2025 21:54 UTC
15 points
0
in reply to: Raymond Douglas’s comment on: Gradual Disempowerment Monthly Roundup
Substack is very valuable for reach, and visibility to a broader audience.
Coincidentally, my boss is Albanian (Lead Counsel for a big entity). I saw those news, sent her your paper, messaged “The authors would say this is the start of gradual disempowerment”.
She read the paper.
This is how I was able to introduce AI Safety in our regular conversations 🙏🏼.

Katalina Hernandez 5 Oct 2025 14:46 UTC
1 point
0
on: AI Safety Law-a-thon: We need more technical AI Safety researchers to join!
Good news!
For those of you who want to join in person, the venue will be LISA!
London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA): 25 Holywell Row, London EC2A 4XE, United Kingdom

See you there on 25th and 26th October! But please, do register via this link first (you can apply for the subsidized ticket if you’re a technical researcher): https://luma.com/8hv5n7t0

Katalina Hernandez 30 Sep 2025 9:10 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Buck’s comment on: Buck’s Shortform
Agreed! I’d be curious to know if the natsec experts that you’ve engaged with would recommend other international law instruments that do not require ratification.
This presentation by UNECE actually does a decent job at providing straight-forward explanations for what a Treaty is, differences with Conventions, Charters, declarations… (In case anyone following this thread finds it useful).
Personally, I am more concerned about avoiding agreement terms or definitions that are too easy to game- specially if the chosen legal instrument requires transposition into national law (e.g.: to make it binding in the EU, having to pass a regulation).

Katalina Hernandez

𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝘄-𝗮-𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻 (𝗢𝗰𝘁 𝟮𝟱-𝟮𝟲)!

​Ze Shen Chin

𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝘄-𝗮-𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻 (𝗢𝗰𝘁 𝟮𝟱-𝟮𝟲)!

Ze Shen Chin