(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump signed a long-awaited executive order directing US agencies to work with artificial intelligence companies to protect networks from AI-enabled cyber attacks.
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The order, released by the White House on Tuesday, would grant the US access on a voluntary basis to so-called “frontier models,” cutting-edge AI tools, before their release. It would also establish a “cybersecurity clearinghouse” to coordinate and deconflict software vulnerabilities that pose threats to national security. Agencies will also create classified benchmarks to assess the cyber capabilities of AI models and whether systems should qualify under the executive directive.
The highly anticipated policy had been a source of debate within the administration as officials weighed how much of a role the US government should play in testing new AI models before they are released to the public. The order emphasizes voluntary participation by developers despite earlier deliberations about mandating government approval of new AI systems.
The directive comes after Anthropic PBC revealed that its breakthrough Mythos model was extraordinarily adept at finding network vulnerabilities and could pose a major cybersecurity risk. The company has limited Mythos access for now to a handful of large technology and Wall Street companies, amid broader global alarm about the new threats it could pose to critical systems.
Trump administration officials have been pushing to make Mythos more widely available to federal agencies to test their networks for security flaws. White House officials recently rejected Anthropic’s plans to distribute Mythos to several dozen additional companies and organizations, citing security concerns.
The Mythos breakthrough has prompted the administration to accelerate existing efforts to craft AI policy that would address a range of security questions, an undertaking led by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Wiles and other administration officials met on April 17 with Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei, where topics discussed included Mythos.
The US already runs a voluntary program to evaluate AI systems before their release, and the Commerce Department previously announced an expansion of the initiative.
