As a follow-up to President Biden’s Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence last year, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the establishment of American Artificial Intelligence Security Institute Consortium (AISIC).
AISIC will bring together over 200 AI creators and users, academics, government and industry researchers, and civil society organizations, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
According to NIST, AISIC is part of the US Artificial Intelligence Security Institute and its focus will be working on the actions outlined in the president’s executive order.
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“The US government has a significant role in setting the standards and developing the tools we need to mitigate the risks and harness the enormous potential of artificial intelligence. President Biden directed us to pull every lever to achieve two key goals: set safety standards and protect our innovation ecosystem. That’s exactly what the US AI Safety Institute consortium was founded to help us with,” said Raimondo.
NIST has identified six main areas on which the consortium will focus. This includes establishing a space for sharing knowledge about artificial intelligence, engaging in interdisciplinary research, prioritizing research and evaluation requests that will enable a better understanding of the impact of artificial intelligence on society, identifying approaches for joint technology development, devising mechanisms to rationalize agency input and enable assessments and evaluation of AI systems.
AISIC includes over 200 founding membersincluding Amazon, Apple, GitHub, Google, IBM, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Salesforce and more.
A number of universities are also involved, including Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Duke, NYU, Princeton and Purdue, to name a few. Several open source foundations are also members of the consortium, such as the Free Software Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and the Responsible AI Institute.
“AI is moving the world into a very new realm,” said Laurie E. Locascio, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director of NIST. “As with any new technology or any new application of technology, we need to know how to measure its capabilities, limitations, impacts. That’s why NIST brings together these incredible collaborations of representatives from industry, academia, civil society, and government, all coming together to tackle challenges of national importance.”