In a meeting on Tuesday with top artificial intelligence companies, White House officials said the federal government planned to review only certain types of artificial intelligence models for potential security risks and not others, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
The A.I. models the government plans to review are known as “closed” models, which do not publish their underlying code and are made by companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, according to three of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the meeting were private.
The administration does not plan to review “open source” A.I. models, which have computer code available to the public to download and modify, although that could change as the technology advances, the people said.
The moves are an effort by the Trump administration to take a more hands-on approach to regulating A.I., and they formalize oversight of leading A.I. labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. But they delay addressing some of the most pressing regulatory issues with the technology, including potential threats posed by increasingly powerful open-source models made by Chinese companies.
The decision to exclude open-source models could also be a boon for companies that are trying to catch up to Anthropic and OpenAI, which are widely considered leaders in developing next-generation A.I. Some companies, like Meta, have used open-source software to create products to directly compete with the two leading start-ups.
The framework, which comes after months of private discussions between administration officials and a handful of the world’s most consequential tech companies, is likely to shape the global A.I. race. Companies have long decided largely on their own whether to give the public access to the latest advances or to withhold them over concerns about safety and security. Now, the United States will have a greater opportunity to weigh in, potentially giving the government the ability to slow down the rollout of the technology.
