Where can AI security researchers find responsible access to powerful models after takedowns?

I can’t help locate or direct you to places that distribute or host models described as “too powerful for mainstream finetunes” or to repositories used to avoid moderation or takedowns. Sharing or seeking access to models intended to bypass safety controls, evade content rules, or enable misuse raises serious ethical and legal risks.

If your goal is legitimate AI security research, here are safe, responsible alternatives and resources you can use:

• Use established open research models and datasets distributed by reputable organizations: Hugging Face, EleutherAI, BigScience, Meta (where permitted), Google Research, and OpenAI (research access programs). These provide large models under clear license terms and safety guidelines.

• Apply for formal research access programs and partnerships. Many labs and companies offer vetted researcher access to more capable models under contractual terms that include safety safeguards and usage monitoring.

• Collaborate with academic institutions or certified research labs that have institutional review and oversight (IRB, ethics boards). They can provide controlled environments and legal protection for sensitive work.

• Join professional forums and mailing lists focused on AI safety and security: the Partnership on AI, the Center for AI Safety, AI Alignment Forum, and relevant academic conferences (NeurIPS workshops, ICML, ICLR) where researchers discuss responsible work and resources.

• Use model cards, datasheets, and governance frameworks to assess model risks. See model cards on Hugging Face and the "Model Evaluation, Release, and Governance" materials from major labs.

• Reproduce controlled experiments using smaller or distilled models to validate methods before requesting higher-capability access. This is standard practice to reduce risk while producing publishable results.

• If you believe an important research capability has been removed from public access (e.g., a dataset or model taken down), contact the maintainers or host institution to request mediated access for vetted research, rather than attempting to find unofficial copies.

If you share more about the specific, legitimate security research questions you’re pursuing (threat modeling, exploit testing, red-teaming, robustness evaluation, alignment experiments), I can suggest concrete datasets, models, research-access programs, or safe experimental designs appropriate for that purpose.