Abstract
Executive Summary
Private companies can and should play a greater role in international cooperation on frontier AI safety. We specifically examine options to facilitate private sector cooperation on frontier AI safety based on expert interviews and case studies of international private sector cooperation in other sectors. While we think states have an important role to play in coordination on frontier AI safety, significant expertise on and leverage over this fast-developing technology is housed at a small number of private firms. The capabilities, safety research, and operational control over frontier systems are concentrated in a handful of developers, and any workable cooperation will have to run partly through them.
Firms in biotechnology, telecommunications, semiconductors, and aerospace already cooperate on sensitive technologies. Institutionalized private sector cooperation is well established in fields with national security implications, including between American and Chinese firms. Cooperation on frontier AI safety would not be a deviation from this norm.
Cooperation takes a variety of different forms across sensitive technology sectors, from light-touch coordination to high-touch collaboration. We identify ten different forms of private sector cooperation. Cooperation in these sensitive technology areas ranges from light-touch coordination activities like information sharing to high-touch collaboration activities such as joint research and development projects. There are a variety of precedents for international private sector cooperation on frontier AI safety.
Shared reputational exposure and pooled expertise can drive private sector cooperation on AI, though securitization and race dynamics pose particular challenges. Many of the drivers that motivate cooperation between companies in other domains are present for frontier AI safety. However, the increasingly securitized and overtly politicized nature of frontier AI development also creates unique challenges, which any institutionalized form of cooperation will have to address.
A range of institutional models for private sector cooperation are feasible given these challenges and constraints. Even within existing institutional structures, there are a range of pathways towards formal cooperation. The models we consider are a new working group in an existing consortium, an alliance of alliances, an open source foundation, and a coordination forum.
The right model depends on the form of cooperation. Light-touch coordination, such as information and best-practice sharing, is suitable for a coordination forum or alliance of alliances. Technical collaboration on evaluations, tooling, and protocols is suitable for an existing consortium or an open source foundation.