The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) awarded a $6,000,000 Project Grant under the Measurement and Engineering Research and Standards (CFDA 11.609) program to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to establish the CMU/NIST AI Measurement Science & Engineering Cooperative Research Center (AIMSEC). The purpose of this center is to facilitate collaborative research and experimentation focused on advancing the nation's capability for test and evaluation of modern AI capabilities and tools. The key activities to be performed include:
Developing a practical taxonomy of threats against large language models (LLMs) and techniques to reduce memorization and protect confidential information.
Designing new measures of robustness for ML models that better reflect real-world attack scenarios.
Creating richer definitions of alignment, correctness, and intent to determine the suitability of generative AI systems.
Developing a state-of-the-art suite of attacks against LLMs for testing new models.
These efforts are expected to yield approaches to mitigate AI weaknesses and vulnerabilities, protect privacy, and develop new socio-technical definitions and metrics. The grant was awarded on Oct 1, 2024 with an ultimate completion date of Oct 1, 2026. There are no planned subawards under this project.