On October 30, 2023, the Biden administration released its long-awaited Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. CSET has broken down the EO, focusing on specific government deliverables. Our EO Provision and Timeline tracker lists which agencies are responsible for actioning EO provisions and their deadlines.

This blog post by CSET’s Executive Director Dewey Murdick explores two different metaphorical lenses for governing the frontier of AI. The "Space Exploration Approach" likens AI models to spacecrafts venturing into unexplored territories, requiring detailed planning and regular updates. The "Snake-Filled Garden Approach" views AI as a garden with both harmless and dangerous 'snakes,' necessitating rigorous testing and risk assessment. In the post, Dewey examines these metaphors and the different ways they can inform approaches to AI governance strategy that balances innovation with safety, all while emphasizing the importance of ongoing learning and adaptability.

The August 9 Executive Order aims to restrict certain U.S. investments in key technology areas. In a previous post, we proposed an end-user approach to crafting an AI investment prohibition. In this follow-on post, we rely on existing and hypothetical transactions to test scenarios where U.S. investments in China’s AI ecosystem would or would not be covered under the proposed program, and highlight outstanding challenges.

On September 8, 2023, Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) released their Bipartisan Framework on AI Legislation. The framework includes many ideas and recommendations that CSET research has highlighted over the past four years. This blog post highlights some of the most relevant reports and CSET’s perspective on the framework’s elements.

Recent announcements from both Pentagon and Congressional leaders offer significant opportunity for rapidly delivering autonomous systems technology at-scale for U.S. Warfighters well into the future. Dr. Jaret Riddick, CSET Senior Fellow and former Principal Director for Autonomy in USD(R&E) offers his perspective on DOD’s Replicator Initiative and recent legislative proposals about DOD autonomy.

On August 9, 2023 the Biden administration announced an executive order to restrict certain U.S. investments in China’s key technology sectors, including artificial intelligence. This blog post proposes implementing investment restrictions related to AI for national security using a list-based end-user approach that builds upon existing list-based tools.

Drawing from prior CSET research, this blog post describes different domestic and international initiatives the Chinese government and companies are pursuing to shore up investment in AI and meet China’s strategic objectives, as well as indicators to track their future trajectories.

How can we measure the reliability of machine learning systems? And do these measures really help us predict real world performance? A recent study by the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory, supported by CSET funding, provides new evidence that models may perform well on certain reliability metrics while still being unreliable in other ways. This blog post summarizes the study’s results, which suggest that policymakers and regulators should not think of “reliability” or “robustness” as a single, easy-to-measure property of an AI system. Instead, AI reliability requirements will need to consider which facets of reliability matter most for any given use case, and how those facets can be evaluated.

Existing U.S. government tools and approaches may help mitigate some of the issues worrying AI observers. This blog post describes long-standing “catch-all” controls, administered by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), and how they might be used to address some of these threats.

In the second of a series of publications, CSET and CNAS outline one avenue the U.S. government could pursue to cut off China’s access to cloud computing services in support of military, security, or intelligence services end use(r)s. The authors discuss pros, cons, and limitations.