NTIA’s Report Rightly Recognizes Open Foundation Models’ Importance to America’s Economy and Society, Says OTI

In response to the NTIA’s publication today of its report on “Dual-Use Foundation Models with Widely Available Model Weights,” the Open Technology Institute (OTI), a New America program fostering equitable access to digital technology and its benefits, issued the following statement from Prem Trivedi, OTI’s policy director.

OTI welcomes the broad approach in the NTIA’s report, which recognizes how open AI models can significantly benefit public safety; U.S. geopolitical interests; and competition, innovation, and research. The report not only breaks down the benefits and risks of open models, but it rightly grounds the discussion of risks by accurately focusing on the marginal risks posed by such models.

Since the report finds that evidence of marginal risks are still uncertain, the NTIA calls for the government to “actively monitor” and “quickly respond” to risks and concludes that restrictions on open-weight models are not currently warranted.

The NTIA’s recognition of the varied benefits of open models and its call for rigorously collecting and evaluating empirical evidence are the right starting points for policymaking across the foundation model ecosystem. OTI looks forward to continued engagement with the NTIA and other federal agencies.