DC daily roundup: A new federal LLM testing program; Asian Americans see TikTok ban pitfalls; OpenAI, more face antitrust probes

NIST launches program to test AI

The federal agency’s new risk assessment initiative, called ARIA, will test LLM applications based on three pillars: model testing, red-teaming and field testing.

It’s a part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework, which aims to help organizations identify and understand risks with generative AI.

“ARIA serves as a forum to experiment with novel measurement methods and to provide insights into the functionality and trustworthiness of AI algorithms,” Elham Tabassi, NIST’s chief AI advisor, told me in an email. “To that end, ARIA aims to answer questions such as, do the systems perform as expected within their context of use?”

➡️ Read more about the new program in my latest report here.

TikTok ban: Asian Americans voice concerns

In April, Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a bill that would ban the social media app nationwide unless it’s sold to a non-Chinese parent company. It could potentially have a chilling effect on community and political engagement, particularly for Asian Americans, advocates told Technical.ly, as well as lead to a “dangerous precedent.”

“We should be investigating all social media companies about privacy issues and bad state actors abusing platforms,” said Cynthia Choi, the co-executive director of the advocacy group Chinese for Affirmative Action. “Not just TikTok.”

Choi joined other Asian American civic leaders and platform users, as well as parties in a lawsuit challenging the bill, in offering critiques of the ban that some believe echoes centuries of anti-Asian xenophobia.

➡️ Learn more about the implications of the possible ban.

News Incubator: What else to know today

• The upscale café/store Foxtrot, which abruptly closed all of its doors in April, is planning to reopen its locations in Chicago and Texas, but not the DMV. [Axios]

• The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are launching antitrust investigations into Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia. [New York Times]

• Ruby Corado, who founded the DC nonprofit Casa Ruby that served homeless LGBTQ youth, is expected to plead guilty to federal wire fraud. She allegedly diverted $150,000 of pandemic relief funds to personal accounts in El Salvador, and fled DC in 2022. [Washington Post]

• The DC nonprofit CivStart, which aims to connect startups and local governments, is launching an innovation hub to further connect business and government leaders through networking and other resources. [CivStart]

• The tech company Prolegis raised $2.6 million to further develop its legislative platform. [citybiz]

🗓️ On the Calendar