OpenAI Changes Approach to AI Risk Assessment: New Framework for Model Safety
OpenAI has announced major changes to its risk assessment system for new generations of AI models, a move aimed at improving security and preventing abuse of increasingly sophisticated systems.
🔍 What is changing?
Instead of abstract risk levels, risk assessments are now specific capabilities of models, for example:
- AI's ability to replicate and spread
- Possibility to bypass security rules
- Shutdown resistance
- Hiding your capabilities from the user or developer
OpenAI thus responds to concerns about the so-called emergent behavior – i.e. the ability of AI to act unexpectedly and outside the original assignment.
🧠 Why is this important?
As language models like GPT-4o and multimodal systems become more powerful, more rigorous testing methods need to be implemented. OpenAI wants to prevent scenarios where AI:
- She disobeyed the command to turn off
- It spread itself across systems
- She had an incentive to "hide" her behavior
All of this brings AI much closer to the autonomy we've only seen in movies so far - and that's why it's important to be prepared.
🔐 What does this mean for developers and users?
OpenAI plans to:
- Make new available risk assessment documentation
- Introduce safety certification models before their deployment
- Strengthen the testing team frontier models
This aims to ensure that both developers and users have more control over the behavior of AI tools.
