In August 2024, CSET Research Fellow Colin Shea-Blymyer attended DEF CON, the world’s largest hacking convention to break powerful artificial intelligence systems. He participated in the AI red-teaming challenge, and won. This blog post details his experiences with the challenge, what it took to win the grand prize, and what he learned about the state of AI testing.

View this session of our Security and Emerging Technology Seminar Series on August 1 at 12 p.m. ET. This session featured a discussion on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Report on Strategy for Cyber-Physical Resilience.

In their op-ed featured in MIT Technology Review, Josh A. Goldstein and Renée DiResta provide their expert analysis on OpenAI's first report on the misuse of its generative AI.

In February 2024, CSET introduced its new cybersecurity jobs dataset, a novel resource comprising ~1.4 million LinkedIn profiles of current U.S. cybersecurity workers. This data snapshot uses the dataset to identify top-producing institutions of cybersecurity talent.

In an article published by NPR which the discusses the surge in AI-generated spam on Facebook and other social media platforms, CSET's Josh A. Goldstein provided his expert insights.

President Biden's October 2023 executive order prioritizes the governance of artificial intelligence in the federal government, prompting the urgent creation of AI risk management standards and procurement guidelines. Soon after the order's signing, the Office of Management and Budget issued guidance for federal departments and agencies, including minimum risk standards for AI in federal contracts. Similar to cybersecurity, procurement rules will be used to enforce AI development best practices for federal suppliers. This report offers recommendations for implementing AI risk management procurement rules.

The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot provides federal infrastructure, including computational resources, to U.S. AI researchers. This blog post estimates the compute provided through the pilot’s initial six resources. We find that the total compute capacity of the initial resources is roughly 3.77 exaFLOPS, the equivalent of approximately 5,000 H100 GPUs (using the tensor cores optimal for AI). Factoring in the amount of time these resources are available for use, we find that the overall compute allocated is roughly 3.26 yottaFLOPs. The pilot is a significant first step in providing compute to under-resourced organizations, although it is a fraction of what is available to industry.

In her op-ed featured in War on the Rocks, CSET's Jenny Jun discussed the nuanced relationship between AI and cyber operations, highlighting both the optimism and caution within the U.S. government regarding AI's impact on cyber defense and offense.

On April 29, CSET hosted DHS Assistant Secretary Iranga Kahangama and AI Policy Specialist Noah Ringler for a discussion on the Department's AI efforts.

Over the past year, artificial intelligence has quickly become a focal point in K-12 education. This blog post describes new and existing K-12 AI education efforts so that U.S. policymakers and other decision-makers may better understand what’s happening in practice.