Trump's latest AI czar resigns after just three months
Chris Fall, who was appointed director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation only three months ago, has resigned. No reason was given for his departure.
Chris Fall, the director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), has resigned, the agency confirmed to multiple news outlets. Fall was appointed just three months ago, succeeding Collin Burns, who was reportedly “pushed out” of the job in April because he previously worked for Anthropic, a company at odds with the Trump administration. Before Burns, the agency was led by venture capitalist David Sacks, who stepped down in March.
CAISI, which operates under the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is the primary US body for developing technical standards and testing methods for AI models, as well as assessing cybersecurity risks. However, it was not the agency at the center of a recent model-risk controversy. In June, the Commerce Department invoked an obscure export control directive that forced Anthropic to pull its Mythos and Fable models from the market. The ban was lifted later that month after Secretary Howard Lutnick expressed satisfaction with Anthropic's safety plans.
Earlier this month, the White House signed an executive order creating a new AI safety oversight program called “Gold Eagle,” which establishes a clearinghouse for cybersecurity vulnerability coordination. Several federal organizations were named as part of the program, but CAISI was not among them, as CNBC noted. Meanwhile, after Anthropic's models were freed, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis called for an independent, industry-run standards body for frontier AI, similar to FINRA—the very mission CAISI was created to tackle.
Fall’s resignation follows weekend concerns over Chinese AI lab Moonshot’s new version of its open model Kimi, which performed competitively against flagship frontier models. The administration was reportedly weighing efforts to ban Chinese open models, sparking debate. Former AI czar David Sacks argued against using regulation as protectionism. While CAISI has released reports on Chinese open-weight models, it has not disclosed much about its testing processes.
