President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that would allow artificial intelligence companies to voluntarily collaborate with the federal government, which would get early access to new models.
The order released by the White House specifies that the federal government would be given access to “covered frontier models” up to 30 days before the AI models are released more broadly, pending the federal review.
Recommended Stories
Within the next 60 days, the document directs the Treasury Department, the National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and White House officials to “develop and maintain a classified benchmarking process to assess advanced cyber capabilities of AI models” and decide at what point a model should be treated as a “covered frontier model.”
The purpose of the move is to strengthen the Trump administration’s cybersecurity efforts. War Secretary Pete Hegseth was among the administration officials directed to take action following the order.
Several Big Tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, already agreed to provide the federal government access to their AI models for national security purposes last month.
The system created under the executive order is voluntary, not mandatory.
“Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models,” the order reads.
Trump signed the executive order in private, nearly two weeks after he postponed the signing ceremony for an earlier order with executives in the technology industry. At the time, the president said he “didn’t like certain aspects of it.”
BIG TECH COMPANIES AGREE TO SHARE AI MODELS WITH US GOVERNMENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY REASONS
Former White House AI czar David Sacks, who co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and National Economic Council deputy director Ryan Baasch reportedly played influential roles in the new executive order that prohibited the creation of mandatory government licensing.
The previous version of the order also included the cybersecurity component, but it would have asked AI companies to provide the federal government access to their models for a review of up to 90 days before a wider release.
