Chris Fall resigns as director of Commerce Department AI testing agency CAISI after three months
Chris Fall, director of the Commerce Department's AI testing agency CAISI, resigned after three months, Axios reported. NIST's Arvind Raman is acting director. It's CAISI's second leadership exit this year, after Collin Burns was fired within four days amid tensions with Anthropi
Chris Fall, director of the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation, resigned after just three months on the job, Axios first reported and a Commerce Department spokesperson confirmed. Dr. Arvind Raman, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which houses CAISI, will serve as acting director. The departure marks the second leadership exit at the agency this year. A previous candidate for the role, former Anthropic researcher Collin Burns, was fired after only four days amid broader tensions between the White House and Anthropic. CAISI was originally created under the Biden administration as the U.S. AI Safety Institute to oversee AI model evaluation and testing. The Trump administration renamed and downsized the office as part of broader cuts to NIST. The vacancy comes as the White House works to implement an executive order that would require AI labs to submit their models to the government for review before public release, a framework CAISI would likely help administer. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recently proposed a separate, industry-run body to handle model evaluation instead, underscoring the uncertainty around who ultimately sets the rules for testing frontier AI systems.