OpenAI and Anthropic agree to let US AI Safety Institute test models

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the most valuable artificial intelligence startups, have agreed to let the U.S. AI Safety Institute test their new models before releasing them to the public, amid growing industry concerns about AI safety and ethics.

The institute, housed within the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), said in a press release that it would have “access to each company's major new designs before and after they are publicly released.”

The group was created after the Biden-Harris administration issued the U.S. government's first executive order on artificial intelligence in October 2023, requiring new security assessments, guidance on equity and civil rights, and research on AI's impact on the labor market.

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the American Institute for AI Safety to test our future models before they are released,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post on X. OpenAI also confirmed to CNBC on Thursday that over the past year, the company has doubled its number of weekly active users from the end of last year, to 200 million. Axios was first to report the figure.

The news comes a day after rumors surfaced that OpenAI is in talks to raise funding that would value the company at more than $100 billion. Thrive Capital is leading the round and will invest $1 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives and research staff, was recently valued at $18.4 billion. Anthropic counts Amazon among its major investors, while OpenAI is largely backed by Microsoft.

The agreements between the government, OpenAI and Anthropic “will enable collaborative research on how to assess security capabilities and risks, as well as methods to mitigate those risks,” according to Thursday’s statement.

Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, told CNBC in a statement: “We strongly support the mission of the U.S. AI Safety Institute and look forward to working together to inform best practices and safety standards for AI models.”

Jack Clark, Anthropic co-founder, said the company's “collaboration with the US AI Safety Institute leverages their deep expertise to rigorously test our models before large-scale deployment” and “strengthens our ability to identify and mitigate risks, advancing responsible AI development.”

Several AI developers and researchers have expressed concerns about safety and ethics in the increasingly lucrative AI industry. Current and former OpenAI employees published an open letter on June 4, outlining potential problems with rapid AI advances and a lack of oversight and whistleblower protections.

“AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe that tailored corporate governance structures are sufficient to change this,” they wrote. AI companies, they added, “currently have only weak obligations to share some of this information with governments, and none with civil society,” and cannot “be relied upon to share it voluntarily.”

Days after the letter was published, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNBC that the FTC and the Justice Department were preparing to open antitrust investigations into OpenAI, Microsoft, and Nvidia. FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan described her agency’s action as a “market investigation into investments and partnerships between AI developers and major cloud service providers.”

California lawmakers passed a hot-button AI safety bill Wednesday, sending it to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Newsom, a Democrat, will decide whether to veto the legislation or sign it into law by Sept. 30. The bill, which would require safety testing and other safeguards for AI models that cost or have a certain amount of computing power, has been opposed by some tech companies because of its potential to slow innovation.

VIDEO: Google, OpenAI, and others oppose California AI safety bill

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