Sriaram Krishnan, who joined President Donald Trump’s administration at the start of the second term, plans to remain on as an adviser, according to a Saturday (June 6) Bloomberg News report.
That report cited a social media post from David Sacks, White House AI/crypto czar, who said Krishan was an important part in the administration’s push to foster “American AI dominance.”
“After a break, I’ll be working on helping tackle some of the large challenges facing America on AI (more on that later),” Krishnan said in his own post on the departure.
The Bloomberg report noted that Krishnan—former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz—was part of a team that helped Google, Microsoft and xAI agree to give the government early access to their AI models to assess the systems’ capabilities and strengthen their security before being released to the public.
“After leaving behind his immensely successful private sector career, Sriram has been a critical asset for the White House and President Trump’s push to cement American dominance in technology and innovation,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told the news outlet.
Krishnan’s departure came days after a new White House executive order seeking access to new AI models before their release.
The order asks companies to voluntarily take part in benchmarking to determine an AI model’s “advanced cyber capabilities” and explore whether it should be classified a “covered frontier model,” while also seeking access to those models for up to 30 days before release, allowing the government to choose “trusted partners that will have early access to covered frontier models to promote secure innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.”
The White House said the order should not be viewed as establishing “a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models.”
The order also called on the Justice Department to prioritize the enforcement of laws against anyone employing AI for cyberattacks or cybercrime.
Days later, OpenAI’s head of countries, George Osborne, said that company would allow the federal government to assess its models prior to release.
“It’s quite right that democratic governments have a big role to play in how this technology is used and deployed,” Osborne told CNBC.
