These AI Experts Want to Do High-Stakes Research Out in the Open

Nathan Lambert and Tom Zick, two industry scientists, believe the opposite. The pair founded a nonprofit, Trillium Labs, that will work on various areas of AI research—including potentially problematic areas like recursive self-improvement (RSI) and agents—in a more transparent way. In practice, this will mean publishing the details of experiments so that outside scientists can study and replicate them.

Lambert says the way frontier AI labs keep their work secret reduces the community’s ability to scrutinize ideas and contribute new approaches. He believes that letting outside experts see how models are built and tuned could be crucial to mitigating risks.

“Over the past few millennia, humanity has had the scientific method in our toolbox as a way to mitigate harms and build better futures,” Lambert tells WIRED. “The current closed trajectory of frontier AI development is taking us a step backwards.”