Persistence of industry concentration among frontier AI developers

Ascertain whether frontier AI development will continue to be conducted by only a handful of well-resourced companies, given the current resource intensity and specialized expertise required, to evaluate the long-term applicability and cost profile of safety case–based regulation.

Background

The authors evaluate conditions under which safety cases are preferable to specific rules in regulation. One key condition is that only a few developers are covered, which currently holds due to the resource intensity and specialized expertise required for frontier AI. However, the authors note uncertainty about whether this concentration will persist, affecting regulatory design and enforcement costs.