Leading AI Companies Collaborate to Establish the Frontier Model Forum for Responsible AI Development and Societal Impact

Four leading artificial intelligence companies, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, have joined forces to establish the Frontier Model Forum on Wednesday, the aim of this new forum is to define best safety practices and promote the use of technology in addressing significant societal challenges.

The group emphasizes the need for the industry to continue self-monitoring until policymakers establish new regulations, Google outlined four primary objectives in a blog post about the forum.

The first goal is to advance safety research in artificial intelligence to enhance responsible development of frontier models, reduce risks, and enable independent and standardized assessments of capabilities and safety.

The second objective is to identify best practices for responsible development and deployment of frontier models, the forum aims to help the public understand the nature, capabilities, limitations, and impact of the technology.

The third goal involves collaborating with policymakers, academics, civil society, and companies to exchange knowledge on trust and safety risks.

Lastly, the forum aims to support efforts in developing applications that can address significant societal challenges, such as mitigating climate change, early detection and prevention of cancer, and combating cyber threats.

The founding companies of the Frontier Model Forum invite organizations that meet several criteria to join the group, this includes developing or deploying frontier models, which are wide-ranging AI models that go beyond the capabilities of current state-of-the-art models and can perform various tasks.

Furthermore, companies must demonstrate their commitment to safety through both technical and institutional methods.

In the coming months, the forum plans to establish an advisory board with diverse backgrounds to guide its priorities, the founding companies will consult civil society organizations when designing the governance and funding mechanisms.

This effort comes at a time when policymakers are working to determine how technology can be shaped without impeding innovation and compromising the government’s position in the AI race, the interest in responsible AI was heightened last year when OpenAI launched the chatbot GPT-3.