The White House Wants to Vet AI Models. It Won’t Solve the Safety Problem.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration is weighing an executive order to create a working group of industry executives and government officials to develop options to give the federal government initial access to new AI models to vet them before release. According to the Times, one option under discussion is “having the NSA, the White House Office of the National Cyber Director and the director of national intelligence oversee the model review,” though such review would not necessarily result in a model being blocked from public release.

This is a meaningful shift from an administration that spent its first year dismantling Biden-era AI safety frameworks, and it signals that public concern may have finally registered with government officials. It remains to be seen what the working group might produce. But merely reviewing a model without consequence does not equate with meaningful oversight, and a working group co-designed with the companies being reviewed does not meet necessary standards of independence to establish an ideal framework.