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TheFrontier Model Forum , an manufacture consistency centre on study “ frontier ” AI model along the lines ofGPT-4andChatGPT , today harbinger that it ’ll pledge $ 10 million toward a new investment firm to advance research on tools for “ testing and assess the most open AI models . ”
The fund , say the Frontier Model Forum — whose member include Anthropic , Google , Microsoft and OpenAI — will patronise researchers affiliated with pedantic institutions , research institutions and startup , with initial backing to come in from both the Frontier Model Forum and its philanthropic married person , the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation , the David and Lucile Packard Foundation , former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn .
The fund will be lot by the Meridian Institute , a nonprofit organization ground in Washington , D.C. , which will put out a call for an unspecified telephone number of proposals “ within the next few months , ” the Frontier Model Forum say . The Institute ’s work will be stick out by an consultatory citizens committee of outside expert , experts from AI company and “ individuals with experience in grantmaking , ” added the Frontier Model Forum — without specifying who exactly those experts and individuals are or the size of it of the advisory committee in question .
“ We ’re expecting additional contributions from other partners , ” read a printing press liberation put out by the Frontier Model Forum on anumberofofficial blog . “ The primary focus of the fund will be supporting the development of Modern framework evaluation and techniques … to help develop and test rating technique for potentially dangerous capabilities of frontier organization . ”
Indeed , $ 10 million is n’t chump change . ( More accurately , it ’s $ 10 million inpledges — The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has n’t formally dedicate financial support yet . ) But in the context of AI guard inquiry , it seems rather , well , button-down — at least compared to what members of The Frontier Model Forum have spent on their commercial-grade endeavour .
This class alone , Anthropicraisedbillions of dollars from Amazon to develop a next - gen AI assistant , followinga $ 300 investment from Google . Microsoftpledged$10 billion toward OpenAI , and OpenAI — whose annualrevenueis well over $ 1 billion — isreportedlyin talk to deal shares in a move that would encourage its evaluation to as high as $ 90 billion .
The fund ’s also small in compare to other AI condom grants .
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Open Philanthropy , the grant - making and research foundation co - establish by Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz , has donated about $ 307 million on AI safety , according to ananalysison the blog Less Wrong . The public welfare corporation The Survival and Flourishing Fund — furnished in the main by Tallinn — has given around $ 30 million to AI rubber projects . And the U.S. National Science Foundation has said that it ’ll pass $ 20 million on AI rubber enquiry over the next two years , supported in part by Open Philanthropy grant .
AI safety investigator wo n’t inevitably be training GPT-4 - level models from scratch . But even smaller , less capable models that they might wish to examine would be expensive to develop with today ’s hardware , ranging in cost fromhundreds of thousands of dollars to millions . That ’s not factoring in other overhead , like the salaries to give the researchers . ( Data scientistsdon’t come cheap . )
The Frontier Model Forum alludes to a larger fund down the line . If that come to fruition , itmight justhave a chance at moving the acerate leaf on AI refuge research — if we ’re to trust the fund ’s decidedly for - lucre backers to forbear from exercising undue influence over the research . But no matter how you slit it , the initial tranche seems far too limited to accomplish much .
