The budget cuts and poor conditions at NIST are raising concerns about the agency's ability to effectively regulate AI and other emerging technologies. The agency is also seen as vulnerable to industry influence, with tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft providing resources for the institute. The situation highlights the limitations of the administration's plan to regulate AI exclusively through the executive branch, as without an act of Congress, there is no new funding for initiatives like the AI Safety Institute.
Key takeaways:
- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a government lab tasked with developing tests for security flaws in AI models, is facing severe budget constraints, leading to inadequate facilities and a skeletal staff.
- Despite being at the heart of President Biden's plans for a new generation of AI models, NIST's overall budget is set to be cut by more than 10 percent, to $1.46 billion, which is significantly less than the investments made by tech giants and other countries in AI safety efforts.
- These financial struggles and the poor state of NIST's facilities are seen as a risk to the White House's ambitious plans to regulate AI and could potentially make the agency vulnerable to industry influence.
- Despite these constraints, NIST has built a reputation as a natural interrogator of swiftly advancing AI systems and is expected to complete a series of initiatives related to AI by this summer, a task that some within the agency have described as an 'almost impossible deadline'.