In a world where large machine learning models have advanced beyond current capabilities, there is a pressing need for regulations and responsible development to ensure public safety. Acknowledging this critical concern, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic have joined forces to establish the Frontier Model Forum. This collaborative initiative aims to regulate the development of “frontier AI models” and promote AI safety research to minimize potential risks.
Objectives of the Frontier Model Forum
The Frontier Model Forum sets forth several clear objectives that form the foundation of its mission:
- Advancing AI Safety Research: The primary goal is to encourage responsible development by promoting AI safety research. This involves minimizing risks and fostering independent, standardized evaluations of capabilities and safety measures for frontier models.
- Identifying Best Practices: The Forum seeks to identify and disseminate best practices for the development and deployment of frontier AI models. By doing so, it aims to enhance public understanding of the technology’s nature, capabilities, limitations, and impact.
- Collaborating with Stakeholders: Collaboration is crucial in addressing AI safety concerns effectively. The Forum strives to work with policymakers, academics, civil society, and companies to share knowledge about trust and safety risks associated with frontier models.
- Supporting Societal Challenges: Frontier AI models hold the potential to address some of society’s most significant challenges, such as climate change mitigation, early cancer detection, and combating cyber threats. The Forum supports efforts to develop applications that can tackle these pressing issues responsibly.
Membership Criteria
Membership in the Frontier Model Forum is open to organizations that meet specific criteria:
- Frontier Model Development and Deployment: Organizations must actively engage in the development and deployment of frontier models, as defined by the Forum.
- Commitment to Safety: A strong commitment to ensuring frontier model safety through both technical and institutional approaches is essential for membership.
- Contribution to the Forum’s Efforts: Member organizations must be willing to actively participate in joint initiatives and support the development and functioning of the Frontier Model Forum.
The Three Key Focus Areas of the Frontier Model Forum
Over the next year, the Frontier Model Forum will concentrate its efforts on three crucial areas to promote the safe and responsible development of frontier AI models:
- Identifying Best Practices: One of the core objectives of the Forum is to facilitate knowledge sharing among industry players, governments, civil society, and academia. This will center on safety standards and practices, aiming to mitigate a wide range of potential risks.
- Advancing AI Safety Research: To strengthen the AI safety ecosystem, the Forum will identify the most significant open research questions concerning AI safety. These include adversarial robustness, mechanistic interpretability, scalable oversight, independent research access, emergent behaviors, and anomaly detection. An initial emphasis will be on developing and sharing a public library of technical evaluations and benchmarks for frontier AI models.
- Facilitating Information Sharing: Establishing trusted and secure mechanisms for information sharing among companies, governments, and relevant stakeholders is vital for addressing AI safety and risks. The Forum will draw from best practices in responsible disclosure from areas such as cybersecurity.