“We think that for large data centers, you could increase the cost by about 20 to 30 percent and get to SL5. … I think the productivity costs are what really scare them the most.”
The AI Policy Podcast · Geopolitics & World Affairs · November 2026
Context
Aalok Mehta relayed that people at AI companies cite cost as the main obstacle to the top security level. Sella Nevo says the dollar cost is modest by his team's estimate; what labs fear is the hit to researcher productivity.
Transcript
…constraints you have. So SL5 really is a standard or a set of framework for protecting AI systems while you're able to do training, inference, things like that. And I think that we don't have yet, just because it is industry that is driving First AI systems, and so that's not yet been done.
…an estimate that probably hundreds, if not thousands, of employees at these companies might have access to model weights. Is that a concern? Is there a concern that by being more secure, you're harming your ability to do research? And is that something you think companies are thinking about?
…thinking, you know, it depends how broadly you define cost. The price of building these things is actually not trivial, but it's not crazy. We think that for large data centers, you could increase the cost by about 20 to 30 percent and get to SL5, something like that. So, and when we talk to the labs about it, you know, they don't find that to be too concerning. But just like you were saying, I think the productivity costs are what really scare them the most. It is true that the more people who have access, the more they have convenient access, remote access, things like that, the harder it is to secure. I think the important answer here is the following. I think it is unlikely that AI companies are going to go up to SL5 across all of their systems anytime soon. I think that's just, it doesn't seem to be where they're headed. One of the things…
So, one thing I'm wondering, we've seen rapid increases in Agent capabilities, and so now a lot of the work being done inside AI companies is done by labs. Does the SL framework sort of contemplate, anticipate, or can it address this really, really ubiquitous use of agents and sub-agents?
Yeah, I think the original report explicitly said these are, we've received estimates for, or we've produced estimates for which actors would be able to do which forms of attack before we've seen a lot of this AI uplift, and it did not try to model that AI uplift. We did ask some of the experts at…
Another thing I'm wondering about is all the recent sort of containment breaches and autonomous sort of AI agent activity, that is stuff getting outside the lab, not sort of outside actors getting into the labs. Does the SL framework sort of anticipate this issue? Does it address this issue of data…
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