S. government division charged with assessing the safety of new AI offerings lacks a permanent leader and has stopped publishing its research. Officials with the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, or CAISSI, an independent division of the Commerce Department, recently were asked to informally report to an office of the White House. That’s according to two former government officials with knowledge of the ongoing conversations who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions for current staffers. The new arrangement concerns some critics, who worry that the executive branch might be politicizing decisions that could affect everything from cybersecurity to bioweapons and that the center’s findings could be altered or muted in deference to the tech industry, which has been largely entrusted to police itself . “These are really powerful institutions that can drastically improve our lives, or the alternative. And the hope is that you can put in nonpartisan or bipartisan technocratic experts to enact policy in a way that best serves the American public,” said Caroline Siegel Singh, an AI and emerging technology program manager for the Federation of American Scientists. Others argue that bringing AI safety officials closer to the orbit of President Donald Trump, who has taken an outwardly hands-off approach to the issue, could give the division more prominence — and perhaps more funding. S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation, is allocated $10 million per year. That’s about one-eighth the annual budget of its counterpart in the United Kingdom, which is far less celebrated for its frontier technologies.