On March 28, 2024, the White House announced that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had published a Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies (the Memorandum) on mitigating the risks of artificial intelligence (AI).

In particular, the White House highlighted that the Memorandum follows the issuance of the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI (EO). More specifically, the Memorandum establishes new agency requirements and guidance for AI governance, innovation, and risk management, including risk management practices for uses of AI that impact the rights and safety of the public.

Addressing the risks of AI

In addressing the risks of AI, the Memorandum outlines that federal agencies are required to implement concrete safeguards when using AI by December 1, 2024. This includes:

• providing travelers with the ability to opt-out from the use of TSA facial recognition without delay or losing their place in line at airports;
• human oversight when AI is used in the federal healthcare system to support critical diagnostics decisions, to verify results and avoid disparities; and
• human oversight of impactful decisions in government services, and ensure that affected individuals have the opportunity to seek remedy for AI harms.

In addition, the Memorandum stipulates that within 60 days of the issuance of the Memorandum, agencies must designate a Chief AI Officer (CAIO) pursuant to the EO. CAIOs must have the necessary skills, knowledge, training, and expertise to perform their responsibilities. While at CFO Act agencies, a primary role of the CAIO must be the coordination, innovation, and risk management for their agency's use of AI specifically, not data or IT issues in general. The Memorandum elaborates on the expected qualifications and tasks of CAIOs.

Likewise, the Memorandum requires that agencies establish an AI Governance Board, convened on at least a semi-annual basis, with every CFO Act agency required to establish the AI Governance Board by May 27, 2024.

Transparency and AI

The Memorandum details that federal agencies must improve public transparency in their use of AI by requiring agencies to publicly:

• release expanded annual inventories of their AI use cases, including identifying use cases that impact rights and safety, and how these risks are being addressed;
• reporting metrics about the agency's AI use cases that are withheld from the public inventory;
• notify the public of any AI exempted by a waiver from complying with any element of the OMB Memorandum;
• release government-owned AI code, models, and data, where such releases don't pose a risk to the public or government agencies.

Next steps

The White House clarified that it will be issuing several other measures to promote the responsible use of AI in government, including:

• a request for information (RFI) on responsible procurement of AI in government; and
• expanding federal AI use case inventory reporting.

You can read the press release here and the Memorandum here.