A team of lawyers, engineers, and national security specialists are leading the Commerce Department’s push to craft guardrails for training and deploying artificial intelligence in a broad swath of industries.
President Joe Biden tasked the team last October with developing techniques to identify AI-generated images, determining what data should be used to train algorithms, and preventing China from accessing the building blocks of the technology. They’re also working with foreign governments and Congress to coordinate their approaches to AI.
The results of their work are meant to serve as a model for US companies, state and local governments, and federal agencies as they deploy AI to speed up customer interactions, hire employees, and screen applicants for government benefits, among other tasks.
Here are five key players carrying out Biden’s executive order on AI:
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Laurie E. Locascio
Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Locascio sets the scientific priorities for NIST, the federal laboratory that develops, tests, and endorses standards for a broad array of technologies.
Locascio asked a House panel in May for an additional $50 million to finish the responsibilities assigned to the institute in Biden’s AI executive order. She holds 12 patents related to bioengineering. -
Alan Estevez
Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security. Estevez is responsible for blocking America’s adversaries from obtaining the semiconductor technology necessary to train AI systems. His team has imposed restrictions on the sale to China of advanced computer chips. Estevez spent 36 years at the Department of Defense, including overseeing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
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Elizabeth Kelly
Director of the AI Safety Institute. Kelly heads the team at NIST tasked with developing the AI tests, definitions, and voluntary standards ordered by Biden. More than 200 companies, civil society groups, and researchers have agreed to share data and technology with Kelly’s team. She represented the US at an AI summit in South Korea where 10 countries plus the European Union agreed to share information about AI models.
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Elham Tabassi
Chief Technology Officer of the AI Safety Institute. Trained in electrical engineering, Tabassi is the top scientist at the AI Safety Institute. She has helped write NIST’s voluntary guidelines for companies to identify risks posed by AI, leading a team to test and analyze AI models.
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Saif M. Khan
Senior Adviser to the Secretary for Critical and Emerging Technologies. Khan helps coordinate AI policy activities across the Commerce Department, including scientific standards development and export controls. He has been a key liaison between the department and Congress on AI actions.
For more insights on the officials leading Biden’s AI initiative, you can read the detailed article here.