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.
Continue reading “The Trump White House releases long awaited Executive Order on AI”
Donald Trump declared that «I don’t like certain aspects of it,» and said that the USA is «leading China, we’re leading on everybody» and that he doesn’t want to get in the way of that.
The draft order was designed to appease «doomers» within the Trump coalition who were worried about the advanced capabilities of some models that might pose serious cybersecurity risks.
One of the provisions was to have AI labs «voluntarily» submit their models to the government for review 90 days in advance, and also give access to «critical infrastructure providers,» Reuters reported.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis reckoned in January that China is «just months» behind the US in capabilities, and many advocates said the provision could hurt this competitiveness.
The order is now indefinitely postponed, but The White House has other AI security initiatives in the works, Axios reports.
Read more: Axios, Reuters, Washington Post (paywalled), and The NYT (paywalled).
These models have both been limited for their ability in cybersecurity, and point to a not-so-distant future where such capabilities might be widely available.
To that end, the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director held all of two meetings last week, with tech and cyber companies on the one hand and with trade groups in tech on the other, according to Axios.
The ONCD has also been discussing safety testing for federal AI deployments, by assessing the security exposure of AI models before rolling out to the public sector.
The NYT reported on this first, and is saying that there might be a safety review for new models, while giving the Pentagon the first shot at eventual «useful» cyber capabilities, but would not block their release.
Any discussion on «potential executive orders is speculation,» a White House official told Axios.
Read more: Axios and the New York Times.
They are now partnering with the giant government contractor/consultancy Leidos, according to a release, to «integrate Open AI-powered generative and agentic AI into the core workflows of customers in strategic markets.»
This starts by deploying OpenAI’s technology internally for the company, and then by «harnessing the transformative power of AI to help improve how federal agencies operate.»
OpenAI says they want to move «beyond experimentation and into real-world deployment that improves efficiency, resilience and public service.»
Read more: Leidos press release, Gizmodo.
Potentially all of government civilian employees are covered by the deal, reaching some 2—3 million in the current federal workforce. That would be a boon for OpenAI, but more in the sense of prestige than in usage, as ChatGPT currently has around 700 million weekly users.
The agreement could likely cement a full year of entrenched habits, history and preferred use if successful — basically locking in OpenAI as the preferred AI provider across federal agencies.
Continue reading “OpenAI giveaway: All of government to get ChatGPT for a year for $1 per agency”