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On paper, the Future of AI Innovation Act establishes artificial intelligence standards, metrics, and evaluation tools. But in practice, it formally codifies what the Biden administration was already doing with his executive order and the AI Risk Management Framework. I’ve written before about my concerns with its approach but I like how tech policy guru Adam Thierer described this catch-22,

While there is nothing wrong with federal agencies being encouraged through the EO to use NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework to help guide sensible AI governance standards, it is crucial to recall that the framework is voluntary and meant to be highly flexible and iterative—not an open-ended mandate for widespread algorithmic regulation. The Biden EO appears to empower agencies to gradually convert that voluntary guidance and other amorphous guidelines into a sort of back-door regulatory regime (a process made easier by the lack of congressional action on AI issues).