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AI progress is creating a growing range of risks and opportunities, but it is often unclear how they should be navigated. In many cases, the barriers and uncertainties faced are at least partly technical. Technical AI governance, referring to technical analysis and tools for supporting the effective governance of AI, seeks to address such challenges. It can help to (a) identify areas where intervention is needed, (b) identify and assess the efficacy of potential governance actions, and (c) enhance governance options by designing mechanisms for enforcement, incentivization, or compliance. In this paper, we explain what technical AI governance is, why it is important, and present a taxonomy and incomplete catalog of its open problems. This paper is intended as a resource for technical researchers or research funders looking to contribute to AI governance., Comment: Ben Bucknall and Anka Reuel contributed equally and share the first author position

The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) brings about transformative potential across sectors, but its dual-use nature also amplifies risks. Governments globally are grappling with the challenge of regulating GenAI, balancing innovation against safety. China, the United States (US), and the European Union (EU) are at the forefront with initiatives like the Management of Algorithmic Recommendations, the Executive Order, and the AI Act, respectively. However, the rapid evolution of GenAI capabilities often outpaces the development of comprehensive safety measures, creating a gap between regulatory needs and technical advancements. A workshop co-organized by Google, University of Wisconsin, Madison (UW-Madison), and Stanford University aimed to bridge this gap between GenAI policy and technology. The diverse stakeholders of the GenAI space -- from the public and governments to academia and industry -- make any safety measures under consideration more complex, as both technical feasibility and regulatory guidance must be realized. This paper summarizes the discussions during the workshop which addressed questions, such as: How regulation can be designed without hindering technological progress? How technology can evolve to meet regulatory standards? The interplay between legislation and technology is a very vast topic, and we don't claim that this paper is a comprehensive treatment on this topic. This paper is meant to capture findings based on the workshop, and hopefully, can guide discussion on this topic.

A concern about cutting-edge or "frontier" AI foundation models is that an adversary may use the models for preparing chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, (CBRN), cyber, or other attacks. At least two methods can identify foundation models with potential dual-use capability; each has advantages and disadvantages: A. Open benchmarks (based on openly available questions and answers), which are low-cost but accuracy-limited by the need to omit security-sensitive details; and B. Closed red team evaluations (based on private evaluation by CBRN and cyber experts), which are higher-cost but can achieve higher accuracy by incorporating sensitive details. We propose a research and risk-management approach using a combination of methods including both open benchmarks and closed red team evaluations, in a way that leverages advantages of both methods. We recommend that one or more groups of researchers with sufficient resources and access to a range of near-frontier and frontier foundation models run a set of foundation models through dual-use capability evaluation benchmarks and red team evaluations, then analyze the resulting sets of models' scores on benchmark and red team evaluations to see how correlated those are. If, as we expect, there is substantial correlation between the dual-use potential benchmark scores and the red team evaluation scores, then implications include the following: The open benchmarks should be used frequently during foundation model development as a quick, low-cost measure of a model's dual-use potential; and if a particular model gets a high score on the dual-use potential benchmark, then more in-depth red team assessments of that model's dual-use capability should be performed. We also discuss limitations and mitigations for our approach, e.g., if model developers try to game benchmarks by including a version of benchmark test data in a model's training data., Comment: 62 pages

Generative AI systems across modalities, ranging from text (including code), image, audio, and video, have broad social impacts, but there is no official standard for means of evaluating those impacts or for which impacts should be evaluated. In this paper, we present a guide that moves toward a standard approach in evaluating a base generative AI system for any modality in two overarching categories: what can be evaluated in a base system independent of context and what can be evaluated in a societal context. Importantly, this refers to base systems that have no predetermined application or deployment context, including a model itself, as well as system components, such as training data. Our framework for a base system defines seven categories of social impact: bias, stereotypes, and representational harms; cultural values and sensitive content; disparate performance; privacy and data protection; financial costs; environmental costs; and data and content moderation labor costs. Suggested methods for evaluation apply to listed generative modalities and analyses of the limitations of existing evaluations serve as a starting point for necessary investment in future evaluations. We offer five overarching categories for what can be evaluated in a broader societal context, each with its own subcategories: trustworthiness and autonomy; inequality, marginalization, and violence; concentration of authority; labor and creativity; and ecosystem and environment. Each subcategory includes recommendations for mitigating harm., Comment: Forthcoming in Hacker, Engel, Hammer, Mittelstadt (eds), Oxford Handbook on the Foundations and Regulation of Generative AI. Oxford University Press

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems can provide many beneficial capabilities but also risks of adverse events. Some AI systems could present risks of events with very high or catastrophic consequences at societal scale. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been developing the NIST Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) as voluntary guidance on AI risk assessment and management for AI developers and others. For addressing risks of events with catastrophic consequences, NIST indicated a need to translate from high level principles to actionable risk management guidance. In this document, we provide detailed actionable-guidance recommendations focused on identifying and managing risks of events with very high or catastrophic consequences, intended as a risk management practices resource for NIST for AI RMF version 1.0 (released in January 2023), or for AI RMF users, or for other AI risk management guidance and standards as appropriate. We also provide our methodology for our recommendations. We provide actionable-guidance recommendations for AI RMF 1.0 on: identifying risks from potential unintended uses and misuses of AI systems; including catastrophic-risk factors within the scope of risk assessments and impact assessments; identifying and mitigating human rights harms; and reporting information on AI risk factors including catastrophic-risk factors. In addition, we provide recommendations on additional issues for a roadmap for later versions of the AI RMF or supplementary publications. These include: providing an AI RMF Profile with supplementary guidance for cutting-edge increasingly multi-purpose or general-purpose AI. We aim for this work to be a concrete risk-management practices contribution, and to stimulate constructive dialogue on how to address catastrophic risks and associated issues in AI standards., Comment: 56 pages; updated throughout for general consistency with NIST AI RMF 1.0