NIST

NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a US agency that defines the measurements and standards a lot of technology quietly relies on, including much of modern cryptography. When the world agrees on how strong an encryption scheme is, NIST is often the body that ran the process.

In AI it has taken on a second role: publishing frameworks for testing and managing the risks of AI systems. Its guidance is voluntary, but it tends to become the shared reference that companies and regulators point to.