AI Startups Partner with U.S. Government

(Reuters) – AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic have signed deals with the United States government for research, testing, and evaluation of their artificial intelligence models, announced the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute on Thursday.

These first-of-their-kind agreements come amid regulatory scrutiny regarding the safe and ethical use of AI technologies.

California legislators are gearing up to vote on a bill this week aimed at broadly regulating AI development and deployment in the state.

“Safe, trustworthy AI is crucial for the technology’s positive impact. Our collaboration with the U.S. AI Safety Institute leverages their extensive expertise to rigorously test our models before widespread deployment,” stated Jack Clark, Co-Founder and Head of Policy at Anthropic, a company backed by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL).

Under the terms of the agreements, the U.S. AI Safety Institute will access new models from both OpenAI and Anthropic before and after their public release.

The agreements facilitate collaborative research to evaluate capabilities and risks associated with the AI models.

“We believe the institute has a critical role to play in defining U.S. leadership in responsibly developing artificial intelligence, and we hope our work together offers a framework for the world to build on,” said Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

“These agreements represent just the beginning but are a significant milestone as we strive to responsibly steward the future of AI,” said Elizabeth Kelly, director of the U.S. AI Safety Institute.

The institute, part of the U.S. commerce department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will also collaborate with the U.K. AI Safety Institute and provide companies with feedback on potential safety improvements.

The U.S. AI Safety Institute was launched last year following an executive order by President Joe Biden’s administration to evaluate known and emerging risks of artificial intelligence models.