The NIST's new directive to AI Safety Institute partners scrubs mentions of “AI safety” and “AI fairness” and prioritizes “reducing ideological bias” in models
Later coverage of plans to reorganize the US institute indicates that this is part of a broader contest over what government AI evaluation should prioritize, not merely an editorial change to partner guidance.
First-order effects
AI Safety Institute partners must revise guidance and related work to remove safety and fairness terminology, while giving greater weight to assessments of ideological bias.
NIST’s AI-evaluation agenda is refocused in its stated priorities, affecting the criteria partners emphasize when engaging with the institute.
Second-order effects
Model developers and evaluators working with the institute may adapt documentation and testing claims to the revised emphasis, potentially displacing attention from fairness-oriented work in those engagements.
The change creates a sharper distinction between the US institute’s framing and AI-governance programs that continue to organize evaluations around broader safety or fairness concepts.
Third-order effects
If sustained through organizational changes, US public AI assurance could move from a risk-and-fairness vocabulary toward a more politically defined model-neutrality mandate, reshaping which harms receive institutional measurement.
The episode shows how standards bodies’ guidance can become a durable lever of AI industrial policy: changing evaluation terms influences the evidence vendors prepare and the capabilities governments reward.
The trend: AI governance institutions are being recast from broad safety and fairness oversight toward mandates aligned with national policy priorities and narrower definitions of model risk.
Previously that agreement encouraged researchers to contribute technical work that could help identify & fix discriminatory model behavior related to gender/race/age/wealth inequality. Such biases can directly affect end users,harm minorities, econ disadvantaged groups — www.w…
🚨 The Trump administration has removed safety, fairness, misinformation, and responsibility as things it values for AI. — Reckless. Add Vance to tbe mix: “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety” — Reckless. — www.wired.com/story/ai-saf...
«‹The Trump administration has removed safety, fairness, misinformation, and responsibility as things it values for AI, which I think speaks for itself,› says one researcher ...» — There's no AI without bias. What they want is unsafety, unfairness, misinformation & irresponsib…
We are witnessing a new trend in AI: — Safety, fairness, misinformation & responsibility are removed — Safety is being deliberately deprioritized because those who hold the monopoly on AI view it as an obstacle to their dominance. We cannot fail to challenge this! — www.wi…
Under Trump, AI Scientists Are Told to Remove ‘Ideological Bias’ From Powerful Models — A directive from the National Institute of Standards and Technology eliminates mention of “AI safety” and “AI fairness.” — https://www.wired.com/story/ai-safety- institute-new-directive-am…
“Human flourishing” has long been on my list of bullshit terms wrt AI - some memed Aristotle and it became the bullshit term of AI ethics - but now it's a right wing dog whistle. — Keep an eye on how the AISI will be weaponized as the Trump/Musk AI Act is written. 1/ — www.w…
“'The Trump administration has removed safety, fairness, misinformation, and responsibility as things it values for AI, which I think speaks for itself,' says one researcher at an organization working with the AI Safety Institute, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.”
Stripping ‘AI safety’ from requirements while demanding economic competitiveness is like suggesting we can sell more cars by removing seatbelts. Hallucinating AIs don't create value—they create lies. Real competitiveness requires responsible accuracy, not ideological blindspots…
I guess that confirms there's an overlap in the Venn diagram of “people mad their ERP chat bot told them to stop being bigoted” and “people now running previously serious, professional federal agencies.” [embedded post]
So much for the safety vs ethics debate because it's all canceled — Looking forward to the underground Responsible Technofeudalism meetings [embedded post]
Under Trump, AI Scientists are directed to eliminate mentions of AI fairness, responsibility and safety — “Unless you're a tech billionaire, this is going to lead to a worse future for you and the people you care about. Expect AI to be unfair, discriminatory, unsafe, and deplo…