Shared safety tools can help startups compete

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 29:47

   You know, I think that. Yeah, I think that leading by example is cool. I do think that when we were early, the few companies who said, hey, we're just we're going to do that. We're going to we're going to invest in this. We're going to put our own resources. We're going to share our own systems. We're going to maintain the commons. I think they started something that continues to grow, right? Now we have more and more contributions to ROOST. I want that sort of race to the top, right? I want people to look at the benefits that everybody gets by sharing this technology, the benefits that they get back in super talented engineering, the benefits that they get back in trust, right?

2. 30:34

   And of course, I want more people everywhere across the industry to say, hey, actually, I also want to share my tools and I can see that there's something that's slightly better than what I have. So I'm going to adopt that. The other thing is we're very focused on who else should be part of this conversation. I think Silicon Valley for the longest time has developed safeguards and safety systems a little bit in isolation.

3. 30:58

   And when we think about, for instance, youth mental health, which is a big topic for us, there's a lot of really important expertise that hasn't been at the table. Working in the open allows us to work hand in hand with clinicians, with sometimes victims and survivors, right? And to bring a lot more in different perspectives than to just do this in isolation in a building in Mountain View or Menlo Park or whatnot, right?

4. 31:23

   One of the things I think people easily understand or if they pay attention as to why a safety commons and open source is useful in a cost structure because something based off of in a quality structure because multiple people using it and fixing it is good. Say a little bit about how it might also help startups succeed better. Yeah. Right, because part of the thing is like having them grow with it and have it as part of it is actually, in fact, something that isn't just a, oh, I'm checking the box to make sure I'm not doing something bad, but it's also helping me succeed.

5. 31:55

   Yeah, I love this question. Let's take two different types of startups as a thought exercise. The first one is you're a small startup and you're going to build a social product and you want to focus on making that experience amazing. Maybe you're part of your social product is people can connect and maybe there's a chatbot, right? What I see from the younger builders, right, the younger generation that's building products every day, is they have seen firsthand the harms of what it looks like when it can go wrong.

6. 32:24

   They have sometimes personal experience and they want to build safety by design. They actually don't need to be convinced, right? And they think that safety can be an accelerant for them. So they think that, you know, if they can get this technology, then on top of it, they can build a better product. There's also markets in which this is going to be the cost of doing business, right? So, for instance, in certain regulations, you have to go and filter out child sexual abuse material from your platforms or your data set that are going to be used in AI, right?

7. 32:59

   And being able to access the technologies to do this in a way that you can trust, frankly, like, allows you to compete in the market, right? So it's a pro-competition thing generally, helps people build better products. What about safety startups? That's also really interesting because it's difficult to have a safety startup because, as we said, most of the companies that you're going to try to sell into or organization that you're going to try to sell into have to pick things up from scratch.

8. 33:25

   But if everybody has a shared foundation of tools, then it's much easier for your clients to plug into the amazing technology that you're building. So we see already at ROOST safety vendors engaging with our work. We have this amazing company called Zentropy who has been contributing fantastic open-weights safety models. You can bring your own policy and tune it. And then we have another amazing startup called Musubi who's actually selling a hosted version of Coop.

9. 33:58

   right um i'm laughing because in my head i think about this this project as musou coupe because in french means flying saucer i'm reminded that this is not official marketing for it but the point is you have startups who are like okay this is really cool we can build amazing services and technology on top of the shared safety commons right so if we do this right the the shared safety commons is not just a hippie idea it's also something that's an accelerant to good business startup and innovation everywhere. So clearly it's important for safety for us to get it right.