President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to move three senior officials from the Commerce Department’s Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence (CAISSI) to the White House, Reuters reported on 12 October, citing The Information’s account of a White House official.
Key points
- The three officials are expected to report to White House officials Michael Kratsios and Sean Cairncross.
- CAISSI evaluates advanced AI models for safety and capabilities as part of the administration’s pre-deployment testing framework.
- A White House official cited difficulties coordinating with the Commerce Department as a reason for bringing CAISSI’s leadership closer to White House AI decisions.
Kratsios and Cairncross would manage the officials
The three CAISSI officials would report to Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Sean Cairncross, the National Cyber Director, according to the report. Their names have not been disclosed, Reuters reported.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick invited Kratsios and Cairncross to co-manage CAISSI about six months earlier, The Information reported, citing a senior Commerce Department official. The planned transfer would bring three of the unit’s senior staff into the White House alongside the officials already involved in its management.
A White House official told The Information that problems coordinating with Commerce had made a case for moving CAISSI’s leadership nearer to the White House’s AI decision-making. The official’s account concerned the placement of the unit’s leadership. CAISSI is a Commerce Department unit.
CAISSI tests models before deployment
CAISSI evaluates advanced AI models for their safety and capabilities. It has a role in the administration’s framework for testing frontier systems before they are deployed. The proposed move concerns officials working on those evaluations and who they would report to.
AI Affairs previously reported that the US dropped its request to keep pre-release AI models from UK testers. The planned CAISSI transfer concerns the management of US testing personnel.
Earlier in October, Trump named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton the administration’s AI czar, with a remit to coordinate federal efforts to maintain US leadership in the technology.
