The establishment of the AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), which has a long list of members from every sector of the tech industry, was announced by the US Department of Commerce on February 8.The consortium seeks to “unite AI creators and users, academics, government and industry researchers, and civil society organizations” in order to promote an atmosphere that produces artificial intelligence (AI) that is reliable and safe, according to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
“The U.S. government has a significant role to play in setting the standards and developing the tools we need to mitigate the risks and harness the immense potential of AI. President Biden directed us to pull every lever to accomplish two key goals: set safety standards and protect our innovation ecosystem.”
AISIC will be in charge of creating policies related to risk management, watermarking synthetic content, red-teaming, assessing AI capabilities, safety and security, and other areas. The last is particularly important.
The largest names in the business, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, OpenAI, Anthropic, Adobe, Nvidia, GitHub, the Frontier Model Forum, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IMB, and many more, make up the consortium’s more than 200 members.The official statement states that this is “the largest collection of test and evaluation teams established to date” that includes non-profits, state and local governments, and groups from “like-minded nations” that will collaborate on industry standards.
This comes after President Biden’s executive order on AI safety, which was issued in late October 2023, founded the United States’ AI Safety Institute (USAISI).According to Raimondo, Biden’s executive order will “ensure” that the United States continues to lead the world in the creation and application of ethical and safe artificial intelligence.Keeping up with AI, according to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed, entails
“…we have to move fast and make sure everyone – from the government to the private sector to academia – is rowing in the same direction.”
On January 30, Reed called a meeting of the White House AI Council to get updates on how the executive order’s measures were being carried out.The United States “met or exceeded the many requirements that were slated for the first three months in the executive order,” according to an updated fact sheet that was produced as a result.