Trump's AI safety head leaves role after three months

Chris Fall has resigned as the director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation after about three months in the job. 

The Commerce Department confirmed his departure on Monday. Now the federal government’s main AI-testing body is left without a permanent chief. 

Why did Chris Fall leave CAISI?

Axios was the first outlet to report Chris Fall’s departure from his role as the director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) after the news was confirmed by the Commerce Department. 

The department did not give a reason for Fall’s exit, and a Commerce official told Axios that the appointment had always been meant as a stopgap.

He was appointed in late April and had served at the Department of Energy during Trump’s first term, where he directed the Office of Science. The administration had initially intended for Collin Burns, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, to fill that role, but they later swapped in Fall while Burns was still being onboarded.

During Fall’s 3-month tenure, Commerce placed export controls on Anthropic’s newest models over concerns about offensive cyber capabilities. Fall took part in talks with Anthropic executives about restoring access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 systems. 

The controls lasted roughly two weeks before Anthropic announced that CAISI researchers had tested their previous and upgraded safeguards and “agree that they are extraordinarily strong.”

Arvind Raman, a former engineering dean at Purdue University who currently runs the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will take over CAISI on an acting basis while the search for a replacement continues. 

When will CAISI get a new director? 

Raman is leading the search for the new director of CAISI. Commerce expects that a new director will be appointed within the coming weeks. 

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has reportedly expressed a preference for a candidate with deep AI expertise, but until a suitable candidate is found, the office stays under acting leadership, and Commerce says its testing work and ongoing evaluations will keep running.

Meanwhile, there’s an ongoing open dispute inside Trump’s circle over AI rules. Cryptopolitan reported that Former White House AI czar David Sacks has publicly argued that U.S. regulation is slowing American labs. He cited a Kimi K3, a Chinese model from the startup Moonshot AI, that recently topped a coding benchmark as evidence of the country’s falling behind. 

The model hit the number one spot on a widely watched AI coding ranking called Arena, marking the first time a Chinese model claimed the top position. 

Sacks wrote on social platform X that “America is tying itself in knots” with all its new agencies and regulations. 

“This is how you lose the AI race,” he warned.

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