Trump signs executive order ordering companies to share AI models with federal government before full disclosure | Today’s news
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday (local time) signed an executive order asking companies to provide artificial intelligence (AI) models to the federal government to assess their capabilities before full release.
CNBC reported that tech companies will comply with the order voluntarily. The executive order asks them to participate in an evaluation process to assess AI models’ cybersecurity capabilities, and allows the government to help select “trusted partners” who will get early access to the models.
The order stated, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental license, prior permit, or permit requirement.”
The executive order was signed in private by the US president and came weeks after he postponed a signing ceremony with top tech executives because he “didn’t like some aspects of it,” he told reporters at the time. The order released Tuesday is vague on specifics, CNBC added.
What is included in the order?
A report on the White House website said that within 60 days of the order, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War through the Director of NSA, and the Secretary of Homeland Security through the Director of CISA, in consultation with the White House Chief of Staff, through the National Cyber Director, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), and the Secretary of Commerce and coordination with other agencies for standards and technology, through the Director of the National Institute and Coordination as appropriate, must: “develop and maintain a classified benchmarking process to assess the advanced cyber capabilities of artificial intelligence models and determine a threshold at which an artificial intelligence model should be designated as a ‘covered boundary model’ for this engagement, sharing these assessments with AI developers and researchers as appropriate.”
She further noted that such a decision would be made by the Director of NSA in consultation with the National Cyber Director, APST, Director of CISA, and other War Department representatives.
They will also propose a voluntary framework with AI developers through which developers could partner with the federal government to determine whether the models being developed meet the “covered boundary model” designation and provide the federal government with access to the covered boundary models, subject to appropriate confidentiality.
AI development in the US
The order, which is thin on specific details, comes at a crucial time for AI in Washington, according to CNBC. On Monday, developer Claude Anthropic announced that it had filed confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an IPO, and rival OpenAI is also preparing for a potential offering this year. Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which also owns AI lab xAI, is poised to beat both AI companies to the public market, with a debut expected as early as next week, a move that could value the company well over $1 trillion.
The US tech industry, whose fortunes have skyrocketed during the AI boom, has played a major role in the White House’s stance on AI. Venture capitalist David Sacks, a longtime Musk ally, served as the first crypto and AI czar before that role ended earlier this year. But Sacks, along with Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, contacted the Trump administration last month to oppose an earlier AI executive order the president had considered signing.
