GAITHERSBURG, Md. — The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is calling for participants in a new consortium supporting development of innovative methods for evaluating artificial intelligence (AI) systems to improve the rapidly growing technology’s safety and trustworthiness. This consortium is a core element of the new NIST-led U.S. AI Safety Institute announced yesterday at the U.K.’s AI Safety Summit 2023, in which U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo participated.
The institute and its consortium are part of NIST’s response to the recently released Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI. The EO tasks NIST with a number of responsibilities, including development of a companion resource to the AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) focused on generative AI, guidance on authenticating content created by humans and watermarking AI-generated content, a new initiative to create guidance and benchmarks for evaluating and auditing AI capabilities, and creation of test environments for AI systems. NIST will rely heavily on engagement with industry and relevant stakeholders in carrying out these assignments. The new institute and consortium are central to those efforts.