Unpacking the White House executive order on frontier AI, cybersecurity

Source Domain: iapp.org

After scrapping an initial order anticipated last month, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a much-anticipated executive order addressing cybersecurity concerns related to frontier artificial intelligence development 2 June.

The signed executive order virtually mirrors the initially anticipated order, with one significant exception. It reduces the timeframe for AI developers to voluntarily submit their models for government review from 90 days in the unsigned prior draft order, down to 30 days.

White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told The New York Times the executive order represented a “common-sense approach of collaborating with industry to balance innovation and security, cementing America’s continued global dominance in AI and cybersecurity.”

The order directs key government agencies, including the Department of Treasury, Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, to “develop and maintain a classified benchmarking process to assess the advanced cyber capabilities of AI models and determine the threshold at which an AI model should be designated a ‘covered frontier model.'”

Under the order, AI developers would participate in a voluntary framework established by the agencies and would engage with the government to “determine whether model(s) under development meet the designation of ‘covered frontier model,'” while providing agencies “access to covered frontier models, subject to appropriate confidentiality, cybersecurity, insider-risk, and intellectual-property protection, use, and nondisclosure requirements, for a period of up to 30 days before they plan to release such models to other trusted partners.”

The order also seeks to alleviate industry concerns that it could be used as a mandatory government model-vetting process and states that it should not be “construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models,…

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