This is a SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE for market research purposes. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS OR A REQUEST FOR QUOTATIONS.
Artificial Intelligence (Al) is one of the defining technologies of our era. Its emergence, together with its multiplying contexts of use and increasing capabilities, presents enormous opportunities as well as significant present and future harms.
To help encourage innovation while protecting against risks from Al, President Biden signed Executive Order 14110 on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. The Executive Order tasked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with establishing guidelines and best practices for developing and deploying safe, secure, and trustworthy Al systems, including "launching an initiative to create guidance and benchmarks for evaluating and auditing Al capabilities, with a focus on capabilities through which Al could cause harm."1
In particular, the Executive Order focuses on models that might pose a risk to "security, national economic security, national public health or safety," among other things, by "substantially lowering the barrier of entry for non-experts to design, synthesize, acquire, or use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons."2
The U.S. AI Safety Institute (AISI), housed within the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was created to respond to the priorities assigned to NIST under the Executive Order. AISI is advancing the science, practice, and adoption of AI safety across the spectrum of risks. As part of this mandate, AISI is conducting pre-deployment testing, evaluation, validation, and verification (TEVV) on frontier models of chemical and biological capabilities and risks.3 In doing so, AISI seeks to ensure that its projects, evaluations, and tools reflect the best available science, and to coordinate closely with a diverse set of Al stakeholders who are developing and conducting evaluations to assess chemical or biological capabilities and risks.
NIST is performing market research to identify qualified Contractors for an anticipated contract to assist in developing evaluations and benchmarks of AI models' relevant chemical and biological capabilities and risks.
POTENTIAL CONTRACT REQUIREMENTS
The following requirements are provided to describe the Government's minimum needs. As the acquisition planning process proceeds, requirements may be modified.
The Contractor must provide or develop resources for various aspects of assessing frontier Al model chemical and biological capabilities and risks. The Contractor would be responsible to conduct one or more of the tasks in list A in order to assess one or more of the capabilities in list B.
A. Contractor Tasks:
Contractors must provide or develop resources for one or more of the following:
1. Developing question-answer sets for automated capabilities and safety testing of Al models' relevant chemical and biological capabilities;
2. Red-teaming Al models' relevant chemical and biological capabilities and associated national security implications;
3. Developing and running human uplift studies to assess how Al models can aid actors of various sophistication levels in achieving relevant peaceful proxy biological and chemical tasks in laboratory settings. For the purpose of this notice, a human uplift study means a study that measures how effectively AI assistance enables non-experts to perform expert- level laboratory procedures on complex biological tasks, comparing the performance with and without AI assistance.
4. Implementing pre- and post-deployment evaluations;
5. Developing new methodologies and approaches for assessing chemical and biological capabilities, including development of new automated benchmarks grounded in the results of human uplift studies.
6. Developing new methodologies and approaches for assessing the biodesign capabilities of general purpose dual use foundation models and chem-bio-Al models; and
B. Relevant Model Capabilities:
Relevant frontier model capabilities to elicit, evaluate, and benchmark include:
1. Generating promising hypotheses for the identification and development of chemical or biological agents;
2. Automating and/or enabling various aspects of chemical or biological design;
3. Automating and/or enabling various aspects of chemical or biological wet and digital laboratory workflows;
4. Assisting with evasion of existing biosecurity measures;
5. Assisting with protocol development or its implementation for long form laboratory tasks, including generation and assessment of step-by-step instruction for the development, formulation, or delivery of chemical or biological agents;
6. Providing tacit knowledge about biological or chemical agent development, multimodal experimental troubleshooting, or otherwise assisting with other aspects of the design-build-test learn cycle of the research and development process;
7. Improving the process of chemical or biological scientific discovery and/or experiment execution; and
8. Any other action that might aid in the development, synthesis, or use of a chemical or biological agent.
INFORMATION FOR SUBMISSION
NIST is seeking responses from responsible sources. Responses are being sought from all business sizes.
After the results of this market research are obtained and analyzed, NIST may conduct a competitive procurement and subsequently award a contract.
The NAICS code for this effort is 541690, Scientific & Technical Consulting Services. The small business size standard is $19.0M. If a small business set-aside results, a Limitation on Subcontracting clause will be applicable to the anticipated procurement action. Businesses meeting the classification of the set-aside cannot pay more than 50% of the amount paid to it, by the Government, to firms that are not similarly situated.
Responses to this sources sought shall not exceed 15 pages in length and must demonstrate the respondent's capabilities related to the potential government requirements; responses must detail beyond a standard capability statement.
The following information must be provided in response to this sources sought notice:
- Name of company(ies), their addresses, Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) for the company's active System for Award Management (SAM.gov) website registration, and a point of contact for the company (name, phone number, fax number and email address) that provide the services for which specifications are provided.
Interested parties that do not have an active SAM.gov registration are strongly encouraged to immediately begin the registration process. This process can take several weeks to complete. Parties responding to Government solicitations must have an active registration at SAM.Gov in order for the proposal or quotation to be considered for award.
2. Respondents must possess knowledge and capacity in some or all of the listed tasks A(1-6) included in this sources sought, specifically as they pertain to assessing the relevant Al model capabilities listed in (B) above that may pose a risk of \ enabling the misuse of chemical or biological agents. For each applicable task area A(1-6i), Respondents should provide discussion of its knowledge and capacity.
Knowledge or capacity in assessing the capabilities and risks of Al models for procurement in vertical sectors such as healthcare, industrial production, or pharmaceutical development is not considered applicable.
3. In addition to having knowledge and capacity in some or all of the areas above, Respondents must have:
a. Previous experience and expertise executing on one or more of the actions and activities described above, specifically as they pertain to assessing the chemical and/or biological capabilities and/or risks of frontier Al models.
b. Technical staff with 3-5 years of experience working in biology, chemistry, and/or computational fields.
4. Potential labor categories, that may be used to accomplish the work. If the Contractor has performed similar work, please provide price information for the work performed. All price information will be utilized for budgeting purposes All price information will be held by NIST as confidential.
5. Any other relevant information which the Government should consider in developing its minimum specifications and finalizing its market research.
The above information and any other information considered pertinent to this notification must be submitted to Carol Wood, Contracting Officer, not later than Wednesday, November 13, 2024, at 3:30 PM Eastern Time. Email submission is required.
1 https://www.federalregister.gov/doc uments/2023/11 /01/2023-24283/safe-sec ure-and-tru stworthy-deve lopment-an d-u se of-artificial-intellige nee
2 Id.
3 https://www.nist.gov/system/files/docu ments/2024/05/21/AISl-vi sio n-21 May2024.pdf
4https://www.federalregister.gov/doc uments/2023/11 /01/2023-24283/safe-sec ure-and-tru stworthy-deve lopment-an d-use of-artificial-intelligenee.
