National Priorities for Artificial Intelligence (Response to the OSTP Request for Information)

A response to the OSTP Request for Information on National Priorities for Artificial Intelligence by Jonas Schuett, Markus Anderljung, Lennart Heim, and Elizabeth Seger.

1. Risks from frontier AI models:

• Foundation models already cause significant harm.
• Further integrating foundation models into society might lead to systemic risks.
• As foundation models become more capable, more extreme risks might emerge.

2. Frontier AI regulation:

• We need specific regulation for frontier AI models.
• Defining the scope of frontier AI regulation is challenging.
• Regulators need more visibility into frontier AI development.
• Frontier AI developers should be required to:

• Conduct thorough risk assessments informed by evaluations of dangerous capabilities and controllability
• Engage external experts to scrutinize frontier AI models
• Follow shared guidelines for how frontier AI models should be deployed based on their assessed risk
• Monitor and respond to new information on model capabilities
• Comply with cybersecurity standards.

• In the future, the deployment and potentially even the development of frontier AI models may require a license.
• The US Government should support the creation of standards for the development and deployment of frontier AI models.

3. Compute governance:

• Compute is a particularly promising node to govern frontier AI models.
• The US Government should grant the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) a larger budget and empower it with the tools to effectively enforce the October 7th export controls.
• Frontier AI developers should be required to report training runs above a certain threshold.
• Compute providers should be required to have “Know Your Customer (KYC)” processes for compute purchases above some very large size.
• If companies want access to more compute, they should be subject to additional review requirements (“more compute, more responsibility”).

4. AI and democracy:

• AI might threaten democracy.
• “Democratizing AI” does not mean that frontier AI developers should open-source models.
• “Democratizing AI” is ultimately about ensuring benefits of AI are distributed widely and fairly.

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