Artificial intelligence

NIST promotes innovation and cultivates trust in the design, development, use and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and systems in ways that enhance economic security, competitiveness, and quality of life.

NIST advances a risk-based approach to maximize the benefits of AI while minimizing its potential negative consequences. NIST efforts focus on fundamental research to improve AI measurement science, standards, and related tools — including benchmarks and evaluations. NIST has a nonregulatory measurement science mission that encourages engagement with industry and others who voluntarily adopt its guidance. 

What NIST Does

• Conducts fundamental research, emphasizing measurements and risk management: NIST’s AI portfolio includes fundamental research to build the scientific foundation for AI measurements, evaluations, standards, and guidelines — including software, hardware, human interaction and teaming, and all relevant intersections and interfaces.
• Enables effective use of AI across government agencies: NIST develops guidelines, tools, and benchmarks that support responsible use of AI. This includes operationalizing the AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) and advancing use-inspired AI that bolsters innovations across NIST's research portfolio.
• Lays the foundation for risk-based AI governance that enables innovation: NIST's AI work is anchored in the AI RMF, a guide to managing AI-associated risks to individuals, organizations and society. A suite of guidelines is hosted by the NIST AI Resource Center.
• Creates reliable, interoperable, and widely accepted methods to measure and evaluate AI: NIST develops tests for and runs AI-related evaluations, like those carried out by NIST GenAI.
• Promotes development of AI technical standards: NIST leads and participates in the development of technical standards, including international standards, that promote innovation and public trust in systems that use AI. In addition, NIST serves as the federal government's AI standards coordinator.
• Contributes to national and international discussions on AI governance: NIST lends its scientific and technical expertise as a neutral convener of organizations with disparate views about AI matters, and participates actively in national and global discussions about AI.

Why NIST?

• Experience: 120+ years of experience in research, development and standards. That includes widely recognized work advancing measurements, tools, standards and test beds that underlie trustworthy AI technologies. 
• Expertise: NIST draws upon a highly specialized workforce across many scientific and technical domains.
• Collaborative approach: NIST works closely with organizations across the U.S. and globally through proactive engagements from start to finish. Partnerships are key.

NIST’s work is driven by Congressional mandates, Presidential Executive Orders and federal policies, and the input and needs expressed by U.S. industry, the global research community, other federal agencies, and the broader AI community — as well as by NIST’s experience and its own capabilities.  

The agency's efforts are carried out across the NIST laboratories and programs, working closely with the broader AI community.