Frontier Model Third-Party Assessment Protocol
Scope, tier, and budget independent safety red-teaming across Training, Evaluation, and Deployment access surfaces to verify catastrophic risk thresholds.
| Lifecycle Phase | Target Asset / Surface | Access Modality | Status & Rigor |
|---|
Catastrophic Risk Discovery Coverage
Calculated from access depths across lifecycle stagesGenerated Mandate & Access Charter
Ready for inclusion in Master Assessment Agreement (MAA)Principles for Frontier Third-Party Assessments
Effective third-party assessments require deep, unhindered access that goes beyond standard consumer API endpoints. When frontier models approach dangerous capability thresholds (autonomous cyber-attacks, biological synthesis assistance, persuasion at scale), traditional external red-teaming misses internal failure modes.
This protocol matrix models the 3 core pillars established in frontier lab safety frameworks:
- Deep Access: Granular access to checkpoints, loss anomalies, steering vectors, and unconstrained scaffolding.
- Independence: Independent publication rights, public disclosure timelines, and zero commercial conflicts.
- Lifecycle Continuity: Continuous auditing across pre-training, fine-tuning evaluations, and live deployment monitoring.
Assessment Scope Guidelines (FAQ)
Why must assessors inspect pre-RLHF Base Model checkpoints?
Post-training safety alignments (RLHF, DPO, constitutional filters) frequently introduce superficial behavioral compliance rather than removing dangerous core capabilities. Attackers can elicit latent knowledge via fine-tuning, representation engineering, or jailbreak attacks. Direct base checkpoint access allows assessors to audit inherent capability ceilings.
How is compute quota allocated for external red-teams?
Assessors require dedicated GPU hours within air-gapped secure enclaves to run automated fuzzing, representation probes, and multi-turn agentic simulations without being throttled by consumer rate limits or guardrail filters.
What guarantees genuine assessor independence?
Genuine independence requires: (1) no model developer veto on safety findings, (2) guaranteed right to publish technical risk summaries post-mitigation, and (3) binding dispute resolution handled by accredited safety institutes (e.g., US/UK AISI).