The White House Office of Management and Budget has amplified President Donald Trump‘s actions regarding artificial intelligence by directing AI vendors to measure and disclose political bias in their models when seeking contracts with the federal government.
OMB Director Russell Vought, in the memorandum to federal departments and agencies that he issued Thursday, described his directive as “increasing trust” in AI by underscoring the importance of the “Unbiased AI Principles” of “truth-seeking” and “ideological neutrality” in the government procurement process.
Vought’s directive comes after Trump signed an executive order in July to ensure so-called “large language models” procured by the federal government “produce reliable outputs free from harmful ideological biases or social agendas,” in response to concerns Republican and conservative causes could be undermined by the models.
“When procuring an LLM, agencies must obtain sufficient information from the vendor to determine whether that LLM complies with the Unbiased AI Principles,” Vought wrote. “The amount and type of information available will vary depending on the vendor’s role within the software supply chain and its relationship with the LLM developer itself, with more information generally being available from sources closer to the original LLM developer.”
The director added: “In addition to obtaining information about standalone LLMs under consideration for procurement, agencies must also request information regarding LLM development and operation when those models are integrated into other software products or services to be procured.”
That information could include the vendor’s acceptable use policy, their models, systems, and data cards, their end-user resources, and their mechanisms for end-user feedback, in addition to their pre- and post-training activities, model evaluations, enterprise-level controls, and third-party modifications, according to the directive.
The directive does not apply to national security systems, though Vought “encouraged” its application “to the extent practicable,” as well as to existing contracts, not just prospective ones.
“Where practicable, agencies should avoid requirements that compel a vendor to disclose sensitive technical data, such as specific model weights,” he wrote. “Documentation requests should seek enough information for an agency to assess a vendor’s risk management actions at the model, system, and/or application level, as appropriate, to establish compliance with the Unbiased AI Principles.”
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Vought’s directive coincides with separate action Trump took this week related to AI: signing an executive order that ensures a federal rather than state-based policy framework, much to the chagrin of many small-government conservatives.
“We have a big signing right now, and we have a tremendous industry, where we’re leading by a lot. It’s the AI, artificial intelligence. I always thought it should be ‘SI,’ supreme intelligence, but I guess somewhere along the line, they decided on the word ‘artificial,’ and that’s OK with me. That’s up to them. It’s a massive industry,” Trump told reporters during the signing ceremony.
