Sweeping dismissal architated by the Trump administration and the so-called efficiency of the Department of Government may be able to be at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory agency as responsible for the the Establishment of benchmarks that are all from beauty products to establish quantum computers are safe and reliable.
According to several current and former employees at Nist, the agency has cut since President Donald Trump held office last month and ordered billionaire Elon Musk and Doge to reduce spending in the federal government. The fears were raised last week when some NIST workers saw a handful of people who are believed to be associated with Doge Inside Building 225, which houses the Nist Information Technology Laboratory on the agency’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, according to several people, according to several people which was informed about the observations. The Doge staff sought access to Nist’s IT systems, one of the people said.
Shortly after the alleged visit, Nist leadership told employees that staff members were not currently on campus, but according to the same people, office space and technology are provided for them.
Axios and Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Nist had begun to inform some employees that they could be fired soon. About 500 recent leases that are still in probationary period and can abandon easier were reportedly affected. Three sources told Wired that the cuts probably praised technical experts in leadership positions, including three laboratory directors promoted over the past year. One person familiar with the agency says Wired says that the official dismissal notices can come on Friday.
The White House and a spokesman for Nist, which is part of the Department of Trade, have not yet made requests for comment.
The US AI Safety Institute (Aisi), created after the former President Joe Biden’s deleting executive order was issued on AI, is one of the NIST team that is afraid of cuts. Office last month, which describes it as a ‘obstacle to American leadership in artificial intelligence’.
The AI Safety Institute and its about two dozen staff members work closely with AI businesses, including competitors to Musk’s start Xai like Openai and Anthropic, to understand and test the capabilities of their most powerful models. Musk was an early investor in Openai and is currently making its decision to switch from a non-profit organization to a profitable corporation.
Aisi’s first director, Elizabeth Kelly, has announced that she is leaving her role earlier this month. Several other high-profile-Nist leaders who worked on AI have also departed over the past few weeks, including Reva Schwartz, who led Nist’s review risks and consequences of the AI program, and Elham Tabassi, Nist’s chief AI adviser. Kelly and Schwartz declined to comment. Tabassi did not respond to a request for comment.
US Vice President JD Vance recently indicated the intention of the new administration to deprioritize AI security on the AI Action Summit, a major international meeting held last week in Paris that Aisi and other government staff were not invited to it do not attend, according to three familiar with the matter. “I’m not here this morning to talk about AI safety,” Vvce said in his first major speech as VP. “I’m here to talk about AI event.”