AP: officials at the US government's AI testing center asked to report informally to the White House

Staff at the US government's main AI evaluation body have been asked to report informally to an office of the White House, according to two former government officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The body, a division of the Commerce Department, is now called the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence (CAISSI); until recently it was the Center for AI Standards and Innovation. AP did not name the White House office involved.

A center in flux

AP describes an organisation that has struggled to keep leaders. A director appointed in April was dismissed within days, and his successor resigned after a few months. Since then the head of the center's parent institute has served as acting director. The center has also stopped publishing its research, and in August members of Congress asked why it no longer released reports on how safely certain AI systems performed. Its annual budget is $10 million, which AP puts at about one-eighth of what its UK counterpart receives.

The AP report follows an October story from The Information, relayed by Reuters, that three unnamed senior CAISSI officials would move to the White House and report to Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross. A White House official said at the time that coordination problems with Commerce argued for placing the center's leadership closer to AI decision-making.

Independence concerns

Critics quoted by AP fear that closer political control could shape findings on sensitive areas such as cybersecurity and biological weapons, or soften them in the industry's favour. Amos Toh of the Brennan Center for Justice said decisions of this scale should be explained in public. Logan Koepke of the nonprofit Upturn questioned what role government testing would play if the largest companies rely on their own or hired evaluators. Supporters of the change argue that proximity to the president could raise the center's profile and possibly its funding.

The administration's response

The White House did not answer AP's specific questions about CAISSI. In a statement, it pointed instead to the president's newly established Super Intelligence Force, led by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, and to a risk report commissioned from his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. How the administration will monitor the voluntary safety commitments it requested from AI companies in September remains unexplained, AP notes.