Dr. Steph Batalis and Vikram Venkatram offered the following comment in response to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's request for information on safety considerations for chemical and biological AI models.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools pose exciting possibilities to advance scientific, biomedical, and public health research. At the same time, these tools have raised concerns about their potential to contribute to biological threats, like those from pathogens and toxins. This report describes pathways that result in biological harm, with or without AI, and a range of governance tools and mitigation measures to address them.

Automation bias is a critical issue for artificial intelligence deployment. It can cause otherwise knowledgeable users to make crucial and even obvious errors. Organizational, technical, and educational leaders can mitigate these biases through training, design, and processes. This paper explores automation bias and ways to mitigate it through three case studies: Tesla’s autopilot incidents, aviation incidents at Boeing and Airbus, and Army and Navy air defense incidents.

Maintaining U.S. technological leadership in the years ahead will require policymakers to promote competition in the AI market and prevent industry leaders from wielding their power in harmful ways. This brief examines trends in U.S. mergers and acquisitions of artificial intelligence companies. The authors found that AI-related M&A deals have grown significantly over the last decade, with large U.S. tech companies being the most prolific acquirers of AI firms.

Artificial intelligence models have become increasingly adept at generating computer code. They are powerful and promising tools for software development across many industries, but they can also pose direct and indirect cybersecurity risks. This report identifies three broad categories of risk associated with AI code generation models and discusses their policy and cybersecurity implications.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences is among the most important S&T organizations in the world and plays a key role in advancing Beijing’s S&T objectives. This report provides an in-depth look into the organization and its various functions within China’s S&T ecosystem, including advancing S&T research, fostering the commercialization of critical and emerging technologies, and contributing to S&T policymaking.

Computer scientists have long sought to build systems that can actively and autonomously carry out complicated goals in the real world—commonly referred to as artificial intelligence "agents." Recently, significant progress in large language models has fueled new optimism about the prospect of building sophisticated AI agents. This CSET-led workshop report synthesizes findings from a May 2024 workshop on this topic, including what constitutes an AI agent, how the technology is improving, what risks agents exacerbate, and intervention points that could help.

As critical infrastructure operators and providers seek to harness the benefits of new artificial intelligence capabilities, they must also manage associated risks from both AI-enabled cyber threats and potential vulnerabilities in deployed AI systems. In June 2024, CSET led a workshop to assess these issues. This report synthesizes our findings, drawing on lessons from cybersecurity and insights from critical infrastructure sectors to identify challenges and potential risk mitigations associated with AI adoption.

The U.S. Army’s 18th Airborne Corps can now target artillery just as efficiently as the best unit in recent American history—and it can do so with two thousand fewer servicemembers. This report presents a case study of how the 18th Airborne partnered with tech companies to develop, prototype, and operationalize software and artificial intelligence for clear military advantage. The lessons learned form recommendations to the U.S. Department of Defense as it pushes to further develop and adopt AI and other new technologies.

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is the most important technology to have emerged out of the semiconductor industry in recent years. This report presents a case study of its development from the 1980s to the present. Using bibliometric data, this report details the evolution of the research community responsible for its development and the many scientific breakthroughs made on EUVs over a decades-long path to commercialization. The paper concludes with lessons learned for policymakers interested in protecting and promoting the next generation of emerging technologies.