Anthropic developing a new tool to detect concerning AI talk of nuclear weapons; Login.gov will start accepting passports for identity verification

As part of its ongoing work with the National Nuclear Security Administration, Anthropic is now working on a new tool designed to help detect when new AI systems output troubling discussions of nuclear weapons. Artificial intelligence systems have the potential to uncover all sorts of new chemical compounds. While many of those discoveries might be promising, and yield, for example, formulas to help propel nuclear energy sources, they might also risk outputting information that could make it easier to design a nuclear weapon. In a new blog post, the company said that along with the NNSA and the Energy Department’s national laboratories, it’s developed a classifier that’s able to automatically determine whether nuclear conversation with an AI chatbot is benign or concerning, with 96% accuracy. The system was developed based on an NNSA-curated list of nuclear risk indicators. Individuals will soon be able to verify their identities using their passports on the General Services Administration’s Login.gov platform, marking the agency’s latest efforts to boost user friendliness on the single-sign-on service. According to a GSA announcement published Wednesday, individuals will soon be able to submit a picture of their passport’s biographical page during Login.gov’s identity proofing process. Once Login.gov receives a passport photo, it will then check the photo against passport records managed by the State Department, the GSA said, noting State manages a “privacy-preserving” API for this. Login.gov gives the public the option to log into multiple federal, state and local government websites using just one account once a user’s identity is verified. Under its current format, users looking to create a Login.gov account are often required to take a picture of themselves and submit that with a photo of their state-issued ID or driver’s license for comparison. The move to accept passports is part of a new partnership between GSA’s Technology Transformation Services and the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, with the GSA describing it as a “first-of-its-kind partnership between federal agencies to use authoritative government records as a source for identity verification.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.