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NIST hosted a workshop on November 17, 2023, to engage in a conversation about artificial intelligence (AI) safety. The hybrid workshop attracted 145 in-person and over 780 online participants. View recording, agenda, and slides.
In support of efforts to create safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI), NIST is establishing the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (USAISI) and a related Consortium (“Consortium”). The Consortium will help equip and empower the collaborative establishment of a new measurement science that will enable the identification of proven, scalable, and interoperable techniques and metrics to promote development and responsible use of safe and trustworthy AI.
NIST is inviting organizations to provide letters of interest describing technical expertise, products, data, and/or models to support and demonstrate pathways to enable safe and trustworthy AI systems. Interested organizations should complete a Letter of Interest (LOI) by December 2, 2023.
Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium
Overview
Building upon its long track record of working with the private and public sectors and its history of reliable and practical measurement and standards-oriented solutions, NIST seeks research collaborators who can support this vital undertaking. Specifically, NIST looks to:
- Create a convening space for collaborators to have an informed dialogue and enable sharing of information and knowledge
- Engage in collaborative research and development through shared projects
- Enable assessment and evaluation of test systems and prototypes to inform future AI measurement efforts
To create a lasting approach for continued joint research and development, NIST will engage stakeholders via this consortium. The work of the consortium will be open and transparent and provide a hub for interested parties to work together in building and maturing a measurement science for trustworthy and responsible AI.
Consortium members will be expected to contribute technical expertise in one or more of the following areas:
- Data and data documentation
- AI Metrology
- AI Governance
- AI Safety
- Trustworthy AI
- Responsible AI
- AI system design and development
- AI system deployment
- AI Red Teaming
- Human-AI Teaming and Interaction
- Test, Evaluation, Validation and Verification methodologies
- Socio-technical methodologies
- AI Fairness
- AI Explainability and Interpretability
- Workforce skills
- Psychometrics
- Economic analysis
- Models, data and/or products to support and demonstrate pathways to enable safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) systems through the NIST AI Risk Management Framework
- Infrastructure support for consortium projects
- Facility space and hosting consortium researchers, webinars, workshops and conferences, and online meetings
Consortium members contributions should support one of the following areas:
- Develop new guidelines, tools, methods, protocols and best practices to facilitate the evolution of industry standards for developing or deploying AI in safe, secure, and trustworthy ways
- Develop guidance and benchmarks for identifying and evaluating AI capabilities, with a focus on capabilities that could potentially cause harm
- Develop approaches to incorporate secure-development practices for generative AI, including special considerations for dual-use foundation models, including
- Guidance related to assessing and managing the safety, security, and trustworthiness of models and related to privacy-preserving machine learning;
- Guidance to ensure the availability of testing environments
- Develop and ensure the availability of testing environments
- Develop guidance, methods, skills and practices for successful red-teaming and privacy-preserving machine learning
- Develop guidance and tools for authenticating digital content
- Develop guidance and criteria for AI workforce skills, including risk identification and management, test, evaluation, validation, and verification (TEVV), and domain-specific expertise
- Explore the complexities at the intersection of society and technology, including the science of how humans make sense of and engage with AI in different contexts
- Develop guidance for understanding and managing the interdependencies between and among AI actors along the lifecycle
How to Get Involved
NIST invites organizations to provide letters of interest describing technical expertise and products, data, and/or models to support and demonstrate pathways to enable safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) systems through the AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF). This is the initial step for NIST in collaborating with technology companies, other government agencies, and non-profit organizations to address challenges identified under the NIST AI RMF roadmap regarding evaluation of and approaches towards safer AI systems.
Participation in the consortium is open to all interested organizations that can contribute their expertise, products, data, and/or models to the activities of the consortium. Selected participants will be required to enter into a consortium Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with NIST.
Interested organizations with relevant technical capabilities should complete a Letter of Interest (LOI) by December 2, 2023.
Requirements for Letters of Interest (LOI):
Each responding organization’s letter of interest should include the address, point of contact, and following information:
- The role(s) the organization will play in the consortium efforts.
- The specific expertise will they intend to bring to the consortium.
- The products, services, data, or other technical capabilities will they use in consortium activities.
Letters of interest should not include proprietary information. NIST will not treat any information provided in response to this notice as proprietary information.
How to Submit a LOI
Completed letters of interest must be submitted via the letter of interest webform below, by email toUSAISI [at] nist.gov ( )USAISI [at] nist.gov (USAISI[at]nist[dot]gov), or via hardcopy to National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 8900, Gaithersburg, MD 20899. Organizations whose letters of interest are accepted in accordance with the process outlined in the Federal Register Notice will be asked to sign a consortium Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with NIST. A consortium CRADA template will be made available to qualifying applicants.
NIST will contact interested parties if there are questions regarding the responsiveness of the letters of interest to the project objective or requirements identified above. NIST will select participants who have submitted complete letters of interest on a first come, first served basis.
There may be continuing opportunity to participate even after initial activity commences for participants who were not selected initially or have submitted the letter of interest after the selection process. Selected participants will be required to enter into a consortium CRADA with NIST. At NIST’s discretion, entities which are not permitted to enter into CRADAs pursuant to law may be allowed to participate in the Consortium pursuant to separate non-CRADA agreement.
NIST cannot guarantee that all submissions will be utilized, or the products proposed by respondents will be used in consortium activities. Each prospective participant will be expected to work collaboratively with NIST staff and other project participants under the terms of the Consortium CRADA.
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