That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks

PodcastsClosePodcastsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PodcastsTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechDecoderCloseDecoderPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All DecoderThat UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looksUL CEO Jennifer Scanlon on why safety still matters in the AI eraby Nilay PatelCloseNilay PatelEditor-in-ChiefPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Nilay PatelApr 27, 2026, 2:00 PM UTCLinkShareNilay PatelCloseNilay PatelPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Nilay Patel is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the Decoder podcast, and co-host of The Vergecast.Today, I’m talking with Jennifer Scanlon, who is the CEO of UL Solutions. That’s Underwriters Laboratories – you know, the UL logo listed on all your electronics? That symbol means it’s been tested and found safe in a variety of ways. UL’s been around for 100 years. It started as a way for insurance companies to do fire and safety testing on electrical products just as electricity was coming into homes.But now it’s everywhere, and it’s one of those companies we really like to poke at here on Decoder that’s basically hidden in plain sight — that logo is on everything. But scratch the surface and the business of UL is pretty complicated. There are a ton of cheap electronics on Amazon, and maybe people just care about price and not certifications. The company is also now trying to do safety testing for AI systems; it just rolled out a new standard called UL 3115, “a structured framework to evaluate AI-based products before and during deployment.” That kind of standard requires a lot of companies and regulators to buy in — and for there to be a way to even reliably safety test AI at all. And then there’s the structure of UL, which — well, you’ll see. It’s complicated.Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here.But sure, structure and whatever, we’ll get there, but first, I had to ask Jennifer if she got to watch stuff explode in the testing labs. Because to me that seems like the best part of working for an organization that sets safety standards. A lot of stuff blows up in the labs, and you’ll hear Jennifer say her office often rattles because of it.But there are other complications: Right at the tail end of the Biden administration, UL got tapped to be the lead administrator for a new Cyber Safety program that was supposed to set a standard for connected devices — the whole Internet of Things. But then the Trump administration came to power, and good old Brendan Carr has been coming up with reasons — which of course never actually get articulated to anyone — why any company related to China is somehow now a threat. That, apparently, includes UL, which of course has safety labs in China, since that’s where the electronics are made. So UL lost out on that deal. I asked Jennifer about it pretty directly, since that’s really a microcosm of pretty much everything going on with safety, tech, and China right now.There’s a lot going on in this one; I love when we get to bring hidden systems to…

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