The Department of Commerce’s artificial intelligence safety group director, Chris Fall, has departed after holding the position for just a few months, an agency spokesperson confirmed to Nextgov/FCW.
Fall was initially appointed to lead the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, housed within Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, in April of this year. He has been working as a senior advisor to the deputy secretary at Commerce since December 2025, per his LinkedIn.
NIST Director Arvind Raman will oversee CAISI and will serve as acting director, the spokesperson said.
Following a rebrand in June 2025 to focus on the innovation aspects of AI research, CAISI has been the nerve center of several partnerships with leading AI developers. In early May, CAISI struck deals with Google Deepmind, Microsoft and xAI to evaluate their most powerful AI models for safety. The evaluations, part of President Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan, were set to focus on national security-specific risks and capabilities of the models.
In March, the General Services Administration and CAISI teamed up to develop a unifying methodology to assess AI models’ effectiveness prior to deployment within government agencies.
Before his appointment as director of CAISI, Fall worked at the Department of Energy, MITRE and the Office of Naval Research, with a focus on scientific research in each role.
Fall also served in former President Barack Obama’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as the assistant director for defense programs and lead for national security from 2014 to 2017.
