You’re totally right to point this out, thank you! I found the FMF quite late on while writing, and my research was mostly limited to their own writing (e.g. the announcement of their facilitated agreement with frontier labs). I probably shouldn’t have gone as far as advocating support for a specific organisation without more independent verification of effectiveness at addressing the issues in this post, especially since the full agreement isn’t public, meaning I couldn’t dig into any specifics (e.g. how it will be enforced, if at all).
That said, I think bodies like the FMF could play an important coordination role between frontier labs if effective, and I’m glad they exist; for example, it seems possible they’re well-positioned to facilitate private inter-lab comms channels where sharing of safety research can occur without requiring full publication, which could lower the commercial-risk barrier for sharing sensitive research. I imagine decision-makers at labs (e.g. legal/comms) might be more willing to sign off on x-risk research being shared with other labs but not the wider public[1], since there’s less of a potential PR concern.
Perhaps a better call-to-action would have been “engage with the FMF and similar bodies, and push for them to be a success”—thanks for making this point!
You’re totally right to point this out, thank you! I found the FMF quite late on while writing, and my research was mostly limited to their own writing (e.g. the announcement of their facilitated agreement with frontier labs). I probably shouldn’t have gone as far as advocating support for a specific organisation without more independent verification of effectiveness at addressing the issues in this post, especially since the full agreement isn’t public, meaning I couldn’t dig into any specifics (e.g. how it will be enforced, if at all).
That said, I think bodies like the FMF could play an important coordination role between frontier labs if effective, and I’m glad they exist; for example, it seems possible they’re well-positioned to facilitate private inter-lab comms channels where sharing of safety research can occur without requiring full publication, which could lower the commercial-risk barrier for sharing sensitive research. I imagine decision-makers at labs (e.g. legal/comms) might be more willing to sign off on x-risk research being shared with other labs but not the wider public[1], since there’s less of a potential PR concern.
Perhaps a better call-to-action would have been “engage with the FMF and similar bodies, and push for them to be a success”—thanks for making this point!
Not that I’m endorsing this kind of work being kept from the public...