Helen Toner never expected a board vote to make her a household name in tech policy. But when OpenAI’s leadership crisis spilled into public view in 2023, her role as a director—and as one of the AI safety community’s prominent voices—put her at the heart of Silicon Valley’s most consequential fight over the future of artificial intelligence.

That experience vaulted her into a rare position: someone trusted in both Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley to speak plainly about the risks of AI. Now, as the new director of Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), the D.C. think tank she cofounded earlier in her decade-long policy career, she’s channeling that hard-earned credibility into shaping how the U.S. confronts the technology’s national security stakes

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