Despite the need for independent evaluation, conducting research related to these vulnerabilities is often legally prohibited by the terms of service for popular AI models, including those of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Inflection, Meta, and Midjourney.
While these terms are intended as a deterrent against malicious actors, they also inadvertently restrict AI safety and trustworthiness research; companies forbid the research and may enforce their policies with account suspensions (as an example, see Anthropic’s acceptable use policy). While companies enforce these restrictions to varying degrees, the terms can disincentivize good-faith research by granting developers the right to terminate researchers’ accounts or even take legal action against them. Often, there is limited transparency into the enforcement policy, and no formal mechanism for justification or appeal of account suspensions. Even aside from the legal deterrent, the risk of losing account access by itself may dissuade researchers who depend on these accounts for other critical types of AI research.
Washington Post has more coverage on the open letter about this that was circulated in industry about this earlier this year. The objective of the group seems to be adding extra exemptions into DMCA Section 1201 to help protect and encourage independent AI red team research, something which I happen to strongly support not only because of my own experiences in this area, but because more people actively testing your system makes your system safer. It’s just logic.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.