National Institute of Standards and Technology Seeks Better Understanding of Status of Artificial Intelligence in U.S.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently released a Request for Information (RFI) to help the agency better understand the current state of the federal government’s involvement with standards related to artificial intelligence (AI). This includes the current state of the standards landscape for AI, challenges and opportunities for further development of technical standards and tools, and suggested priority areas for research. With this requested information, NIST plans to develop a roadmap that will direct federal engagement in the standards development process for systems that use AI technologies.

The creation of an AI standards development plan originates from President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) on Maintaining American Leadership in AI that was released in February of this year. Among the EO’s objectives, it aims to “Ensure that technical standards minimize vulnerability to attacks from malicious actors and reflect Federal priorities for innovation, public trust, and public confidence in systems that use AI technologies; and develop international standards to promote and protect those priorities.” The EO also directs NIST to create “a plan for Federal engagement in the development of technical standards and related tools in support of reliable, robust, and trustworthy systems that use AI technologies.”

Responses to the RFI can be submitted in electronic or mail form. When submitting a response, all submissions must be received by May 31, and cite “RFI: Developing a Federal AI Standards Engagement Plan” in all correspondence.

Electronic responses can be sent to ai_standards@nist.gov in HTML, ASCII, Word, RTF or PDF form.

Written submissions can be mailed to: AI-Standards, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 2000, Gaithersburg, MD 20899.

To view the full RFI in the Federal Register, click here:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/01/2019-08818/artificial-intelligence-standards

To view the February 2019 Executive Order Maintaining American Leadership in AI, click here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-maintaining-american-leadership-artificial-intelligence/