Breaking: Tech Giants Unite - OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepMind, and Microsoft Launch Frontier Model Forum for Safer AI Development

OpenAI, in collaboration with Anthropic, Google, DeepMind, and Microsoft, announced the formation of the Frontier Model Forum on July 26, 2023. This new industry body aims to ensure the safe and responsible development of future hyperscale AI models.

The Frontier Model Forum is a response to the shared understanding among governments and industry that, while AI holds tremendous promise for global benefit, it also necessitates appropriate safeguards to mitigate potential risks. This initiative builds upon the efforts already made by the US and UK governments, the European Union, the OECD, and the G7 through the Hiroshima AI process, among others.

The Forum will focus on three key areas over the coming year:

1. Identifying best practices: The Forum aims to promote knowledge sharing and best practices among industry, governments, civil society, and academia, particularly focusing on safety standards and practices to mitigate a wide range of potential AI risks.
2. Advancing AI safety research: The Forum will support the AI safety ecosystem by identifying crucial open research questions on AI safety. It will coordinate research to advance efforts in areas such as adversarial robustness, mechanistic interpretability, scalable oversight, independent research access, emergent behaviors, and anomaly detection. An initial focus will be on developing and sharing a public library of technical evaluations and benchmarks for frontier AI models.
3. Facilitating information sharing among companies and governments: The Forum plans to establish trusted, secure mechanisms for sharing information among companies, governments, and relevant stakeholders regarding AI safety and risks, following best practices in responsible disclosure from areas such as cybersecurity.

Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google & Alphabet, expressed his excitement about working together with other leading companies, sharing technical expertise to promote responsible AI innovation.

Brad Smith, Vice Chair & President at Microsoft, emphasized that companies creating AI technology have a responsibility to ensure that it is safe, secure, and remains under human control.

Anna Makanju, Vice President of Global Affairs at OpenAI, stressed the importance of oversight and governance in AI development.

Dario Amodei, CEO at Anthropic, highlighted the potential of AI to fundamentally change how the world works and the vital role of the Frontier Model Forum in coordinating best practices and sharing research on frontier AI safety.

The Frontier Model Forum represents a significant step in the tech sector's collective effort to advance AI responsibly, addressing challenges so that AI benefits all of humanity.