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He took over the position last week, succeeding his predecessor, Chris Vale. He resigned suddenly After spending weeks trying to convince Anthropic to add stronger safeguards to prevent jailbreaks for the most powerful Fable 5 model.
CAISI staff had been in meetings with Anthropic’s technical teams for weeks as both sides came up with new safeguards deemed strong enough to bring Fable 5 online again, WIRED I mentioned previously.
National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross
Illustration: Darrell Jackson; Getty Images
Sean Cairncross has taken a tougher approach to Chinese AI labs.
Cairncross plays a large role in potential attempts to regulate Chinese AI, and is authorized in the White House to develop policy to address potential national security risks of AI. He helped put together President Donald Trump’s June 2 plan Executive order Which developed a framework for evaluating the most powerful AI models.
A former political campaign lawyer and most recently a member of the Republican National Committee, Cairncross lacks any experience with technology or artificial intelligence.
But current and former employees credit him with trying to cope Difficult national security problems posed by artificial intelligence, allowing its employees to work without micromanaging each problem in the way a technical software engineer might.
In particular, Cairncross and his chief of staff, Lara Smith, focused on preventing Chinese laboratories from training their models on the backs of the best American models in a practice called distillation.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Elizabeth Houston said the administration’s deliberations on Chinese AI center around trying to boost American AI.
“The United States leads the world in AI innovation, and President Trump will keep it that way,” Houston says. “The Trump administration is doubling down on innovation to widen the gap between America and the rest of the world.”
Former AI czar David Sachs
Illustration: Darrell Jackson; Getty Images
Tech investor David Sachs has remained one of Trump’s most influential AI advisers, maintaining a direct line to the president even after leaving his post as AI czar in March.
