The initiative began in December when Gov. Lamont reached out to professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder of Yale’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute (CELI), according to a recent news release.
Last April, Connecticut legislators passed one of the first AI regulation bills in the country, but it was ultimately blocked by Gov. Lamont due to concerns that it was too sweeping and might hinder innovation in a burgeoning industry. Stephen Henriques, a senior research fellow at CELI who works closely with Sonnenfeld, said Gov. Lamont wanted policies that provided a better balance — protecting against things like AI deepfakes and voter misinformation while allowing the state to attract new industry opportunities.
He said Gov. Lamont, an alumnus of the Yale School of Management, saw the potential of academia to bring together diverse talent and perspectives, so he asked Sonnenfeld to get his students to look at current AI policies across the U.S. and come up with some recommendations.
“I think [Lamont] really recognizes that the students that are often there, they're eager and they're smart and they're willing to learn and work hard. I think he just has a good sense of that, and he knows [Sonnenfeld] is able to uniquely tap into those students,” Henriques said. “I think it's just a mix of all those things that created such a dynamic team.”
Sonnenfeld and Henriques had a tight deadline and the challenge of convincing students to work through their winter break, but they found plenty of excited students through groups like the AI Association and whittled it down to half a dozen participants through interviews, Henriques said.
Sonnenfeld and Henriques had already amassed research on the topic, but students were heavily involved in the continued work, researching and interviewing leaders across sectors. The students took on different roles. A February news release from Yale reported that graduate student Delia Reyes, who is pursuing a Master of Business Administration degree in management science, reviewed prior research and previous state bills to propose best practices, while graduate student Dan Kent, who is pursuing a Master of Public Policy degree with a focus on democracy and technology, evaluated AI policies passed in other states. Graduate student Ash Duong, an aspiring product manager, focused on AI use in small businesses.
“We kind of helped to facilitate the introductions and then some of the conversations, but many times they were helping prep for the meetings or identify who would be other great contacts to discuss the topic with, and sometimes they'd be helping lead the conversation,” Henriques said. “So they played a big role.”
It all culminated in the team sharing a 50-slide presentation with the governor and his Cabinet on Jan. 24.
The team’s research underscored the governor’s concerns about balance. While nearly 700 AI bills were introduced in the U.S. in 2024, only a small portion, 113, were adopted or enacted, and only two of those were sweeping, general AI bills, according to the team's presentation.
The CELI research team determined that AI isn’t a separate industry that needs to be regulated anew, but rather a technology that integrates into existing ones. They advised Lamont to maintain existing, broad regulations like the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act and apply it to AI, then take sector-specific approaches to AI policy in areas like health care, finance and small business.
The team also recommended creating a cross-sector AI task force of policymakers, industry leaders, academics and other stakeholders to continuously evaluate emerging risks and opportunities in AI, and creating an AI regulatory sandbox to help businesses test for compliance.
In addition to useful advice for Lamont, the findings also provided a unique, hands-on learning opportunity for the students, even those like Duong who aren’t interested in working in policy directly.
“From working on this project, I realized that if I want to be on the side of developing these technologies, I do also have to understand how governments are thinking about regulation and policy,” he said. “And also how different industries, like small business or very specific industries like manufacturing or health care, [contain] people who may not understand much about the technology but are still impacted by the decisions that the creators of these technologies are working on.”
But it wasn’t just an exercise — the governor listened. Shortly after the students’ presentation, Lamont proposed legislation adopting some of these suggestions. Henriques said he thinks the variety of students’ backgrounds, and their ability to step back and approach the topic apolitically and with an open mind, made the presentation especially impactful.
“We had students from the policy world, from engineering and computer science, from finance and venture capital to project management, and all kinds of backgrounds in terms of professors that we engaged, faculty we engaged and industry leaders, as well,” he said. “The diverse perspectives that we were able to draw on is what made it such a valuable output.”
