America's Big AI Safety Plan Faces a Budget Crunch

US president Joe Biden's plan for containing the dangers of artificial intelligence already risks being derailed by congressional bean counters. A White House executive order on AI announced in October calls on the US to develop new standards for stress-testing AI systems to uncover their biases, hidden threats, and rogue tendencies. But the agency tasked with setting these standards, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), lacks the budget needed to complete that work independently by the July 26, 2024, deadline, according to several people with knowledge of the work. Speaking at the NeurIPS AI conference in New Orleans last week, Elham Tabassi, associate director for emerging technologies at NIST, described this as "an almost impossible deadline" for the agency. Some members of Congress have grown concerned that NIST will be forced to rely heavily on AI expertise from private companies that, due to their own AI projects, have a vested interest in shaping standards.