The US Department of Commerce has renamed its AI Safety Institute to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), shifting its focus from general security to combating nationwide safety dangers and stopping “burdensome and pointless regulation” overseas. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick introduced the change on June third, calling the company’s overhaul a method to “consider and improve US innovation” and “guarantee US dominance of worldwide AI requirements.”
The AI Safety Institute was introduced in 2023 beneath former President Joe Biden, a part of a worldwide effort to create greatest practices for governments mitigating AI system danger. It signed memorandums of understanding with main US AI corporations, together with OpenAI and Anthropic, to get entry to new fashions and recommend enhancements earlier than launch. Near the tip of Biden’s time period in early 2025, it launched draft tips for managing AI dangers that included utilizing methods to create organic weapons or different clear threats to nationwide safety, but additionally extra frequent classes of dangerous content material like youngster sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
Lutnick’s assertion says that the brand new institute will “give attention to demonstrable dangers, comparable to cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical weapons” in its evaluations. It will even examine “malign international affect arising from use of adversaries’ AI methods,” a class that possible consists of DeepSeek, a Chinese massive language mannequin that shook up the American AI trade earlier this yr.
