Trump Administration Rebrands US AI Safety Institute, Shifts Focus from Safety to Innovation

US removes 'safety' from AI Safety Institute

Adi Robertson is a senior tech and policy editor focused on VR, online platforms, and free expression. Adi has covered video games, biohacking, and more for The Verge since 2011. The US Department of Commerce has renamed its AI Safety Institute to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), shifting its focus from overall safety to combating national security risks and preventing "burdensome and unnecessary regulation" abroad. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced the change on June 3rd, calling the agency's overhaul a way to "evaluate and enhance US innovation" and "ensure US dominance of international AI standards." The AI Safety Institute was announced in 2023 under former President Joe Biden, part of a global effort to create best practices for governments mitigating AI system risk. It signed memorandums of understanding with major US AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, to get access to new models and suggest improvements before release. Near the end of Biden's term in early 2025, it released draft guidelines for managing AI risks that included using systems to create biological weapons or other clear threats to national security, but also more common categories of harmful content like child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Lutnick's statement says that the new institute will "focus on demonstrable risks, such as cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical weapons" in its evaluations. It will also investigate "malign foreign influence arising from use of adversaries' AI systems," a category that likely includes DeepSeek, a Chinese large language model that shook up the American AI industry earlier this year. The move is part of a larger Trump administration effort to accelerate the expansion of American AI companies. On his first day in office Trump rescinded a Biden executive order that ordered new safety standards for large AI systems and a report evaluating the potential risks for US consumers and the labor market. His own executive orders have encouraged increasing generative AI adoption in fields like education and promoting coal as a source of power for energy-hungry AI data centers. And the current Republican budget bill includes a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations -- a provision even some in Trump's party have come to oppose.

Trump admin takes 'safety' out of U.S. AI Safety Institute

President Donald Trump's directive to rebrand the U.S AI Safety Institute will eliminate "safety" from its name. Instead, the AISI, which worked with private tech companies to asses the safety risks of AI, will be renamed the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). According to Axios, which broke the news on May 29, the new CAISI will retain much of the same function, with an added focus on international coordination. Launched in 2023 by President Joe Biden, AISI was housed under the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology. Its original mandate was to assess the risks posed by systems like ChatGPT and Claude. Then, after Trump came back into office, and Elon Musk's "DOGE" team added to the mix, insiders expected the institute to be dissolved entirely. In February, AISI was excluded from the Paris AI Summit hosted by Trump's team. By March, researchers were told to prioritize audits that reduced "ideological bias" in the systems they reviewed. What exactly CAISI will do now remains unclear. Per Axios, the former AISI's responsibilities won't deviate that much, but judging from its new name and comments from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the focus appears to be tilting toward acceleration, not caution. "For far too long, censorship and regulations have been used under the guise of national security," Lutnick said in a statement. "Innovators will no longer be limited by these standards. CAISI will evaluate and enhance U.S. innovation of these rapidly developing commercial AI systems while ensuring they remain secure to our national security standards."

Trump administration cuts 'Safety' from AI Safety Institute

Donald Trump in West Mifflin, Penn., May 30, 2025. Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images The Trump administration says it's reforming a Biden-era artificial intelligence safety institute, renaming and reformulating one of the only federal government departments dedicated to oversight of the burgeoning technology. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a news release Tuesday that the Trump administration would transform the former U.S. AI Safety Institute -- which former President Joe Biden established in November 2023 -- into the Center for AI Standards and Innovation. The reframing away from "safety" is in line with the Trump administration's statements and actions signaling its belief that oversight efforts for AI companies could unnecessarily dull the United States' competitive edge in the space. "For far too long, censorship and regulations have been used under the guise of national security. Innovators will no longer be limited by these standards," Lutnick said in the release. "CAISI will evaluate and enhance U.S. innovation of these rapidly developing commercial AI systems while ensuring they remain secure to our national security standards." The U.S. AI Safety Institute was created to evaluate and test AI models and create standards for safety and security. It also formed a consortium on AI safety, which was made up of over 200 members, including OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic. Although it's unclear whether the transformation will mean any major changes to the institute's operations, the move appears to reflect the Trump administration's "pro-innovation" approach to deregulating AI technology. Unlike Biden's executive order on AI and the former institute, the reformed center is set to focus on additional aspects like evaluating "potential security vulnerabilities and malign foreign influence arising from use of adversaries' AI systems, including the possibility of backdoors and other covert, malicious behavior," as well as "guard against burdensome and unnecessary regulation of American technologies by foreign governments." In January, the Chinese-created AI app DeepSeek heightened national security concerns around AI with its latest release, which made waves with its advancements. President Donald Trump said the app "should be a wake-up call" about the prospect of international competition for American tech companies. Lawmakers introduced a bill to ban DeepSeek from government devices, and the Navy advised its members not to use it "in any capacity." The move to reform the institute appears to have been in development for a while. Reuters reported this year that no one from the U.S. AI Safety Institute's staff would attend an AI summit in Paris in February alongside Vice President JD Vance. The institute's inaugural director, Elizabeth Kelly, also announced she would step down that month. In his speech at the summit, Vance echoed Lutnick's sentiments, saying, "We need international regulatory regimes that fosters the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it." He also spoke about how he believes AI should be free from "ideological bias." Since he returned to office, Trump has made it clear that his administration wants to embrace the expansion of AI. Within his first week, Trump announced the creation of the $500 billion Stargate initiative in collaboration with OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, which aims to make the United States a world leader in AI. Trump also signed an executive order on AI in his first week in office that focuses on easing regulations on AI technology and revoking "existing AI policies and directives that act as barriers to American AI innovation." Biden's executive order on AI, which focused on safety and privacy standards for the technology, has been scrapped from the White House's website.