Sentdex: You Need Early Access and EA Ties to Do Real Alignment Work at Frontier Labs

max_paperclips · x · 2026-09-15

In a discussion on the alignment ecosystem, developer Sentdex argues that while you can eval released models, real alignment/safety work requires early access and often on-prem access plus compute — and "if you're not EA, you're not getting in the door at frontier labs." He adds that non-EA alignment labs exist "but they aren't doing well."

maxpaperclips floats an alternative path: neolabs serving open source models, plus evals and certification for private finetunes — e.g., for enterprises like the big law firm that recently bought a ton of compute.

Related event: Sentdex: Non-EA Researchers Struggle to Access Frontier Labs(2 posts)→

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