The Frontier Model Forum was launched on 26 July 2023 by Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI - the four companies building the most capable AI systems at the time. It was created as an industry body dedicated to the safe and responsible development of frontier models, which the Forum defines as “large-scale machine-learning models that exceed the capabilities currently present in the most advanced existing models, and can perform a wide variety of tasks.”
The Forum set out to draw on the technical and operational expertise of its members to benefit the wider AI ecosystem. Its stated objectives are advancing AI safety research, identifying best practices for responsible development and deployment, sharing knowledge about safety risks with policymakers, academics, and civil society, and supporting AI applications that address large societal challenges such as climate change and disease.
In October 2023 the Forum named Chris Meserole as its first executive director and, with philanthropic partners including the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Eric Schmidt, and Jaan Tallinn, committed more than $10 million to a new AI Safety Fund for independent research into testing and evaluating the most capable models.
Why business readers should care: the Frontier Model Forum is the main self-governance vehicle for the companies at the AI frontier, and its technical work on evaluations and safety benchmarks shapes the standards that regulators and customers increasingly expect.