The Trump White House releases long awaited Executive Order on AI

The order sets up a voluntary sharing scheme of models meeting a yet to be determined threshold. (Picture: Shutterstock)
The order was initially planned for late May, but would put what the President thought were too onerous demands on the industry.

The new order, released on June 2, reduces the voluntary sharing window to 30 days, waxes poetic about unleashing innovation in the AI labs, and says they make the USA stronger. It also says that capabilities have evolved to a point where national security becomes an issue.

It goes on to establish various frameworks to take on defensive work for national security, Treasury and Defense, and directs the departments to expand and prioritize reviewing and sharing information on vulnerabilities.

30-day sharing window
More importantly, it says to develop a benchmarking model for a «covered frontier model»-designation from the NSA, which triggers a «voluntary framework» where models will be confidentially shared with the government for up to 30 days before intended release.

This sharing also extends to «select trusted partners» to «promote secure innovation» and «strengthen cybersecurity.»

In the original order, this period was set to 90 days, well within the competitive window to models from China.

The labs react
Sam Altman of OpenAI is happy with the new order, saying it gets the balance right, and will get the right tools into the hands of «trusted defenders:»

Anthropic calls it an important step, and promises to cooperate with the administration:

The government now has 60 days to come up with a benchmark for frontier models to be shared.

Read more: The order on whitehouse.gov, NPR, CNBC and Politico.