Abstract

What makes safety claims about general purpose AI systems such as large language models trustworthy? We show that rather than the capabilities of security tools such as alignment and red teaming procedures, it is security practices based on these tools that contributed to reconfiguring the image of AI safety and made the claims acceptable. After showing what causes the gap between the capabilities of security tools and the desired safety guarantees, we critically investigate how AI security practices attempt to fill the gap and identify several shortcomings in diversity and participation. We found that these security practices are part of securitization processes aiming to support (commercial) development of general purpose AI systems whose trustworthiness can only be imperfectly tested instead of guaranteed. We conclude by offering several improvements to the current AI security practices.