More than 40 bitcoin and crypto firms asked the biggest AI labs this week to let independent security researchers use their strongest models before public release.
Myriad: When will OpenAI release GPT-6? Click to make your prediction.Yet the maintainers keeping it running can't get into the vetted researcher programs the AI labs run. When they reach for a public model, the guardrails shut down a legitimate hunt for flaws. So they lean on open-weight systems they can run themselves, which is useful, but a step behind the frontier—and the hackers attacking cryptocurrency networks.
“It is clear that early access and reasonable compute budgets would help core developers produce more secure code and identify and remediate vulnerabilities before losses occur,” the letter reads. “We, therefore, ask frontier AI labs to establish or expand standing trusted-access programs for qualified defenders of open-source financial infrastructure.”
The letter points out labs and a few partners get a months-long look at new attack capabilities before the rest of the world, and those capabilities escape anyway through public releases and compromised systems.
The labs haven't committedAs of today, the big AI labs have not shared any public stance on this specific topic, however, the companies are working on better safeguards that would prevent their models’ abilities to be used for malicious intentions, no matter if it’s for blockchain coding or any other usage.
The letter asks the labs to take that risk anyway.
