Public Letter
Minimum Conditions for Embedding Evaluators
Published September 18, 2026200+ Signatories
We, the undersigned, are encouraged to see frontier AI companies call for embedding third-party organizations1,2,3,4,5 to evaluate rapidly escalating AI capabilities and risks. We believe that all frontier AI companies should embed evaluators to independently assess AI risks, including evaluating the systems themselves and any significant incidents of real-world harm, as well as the companies’ training, deployment, oversight, operational, and safeguard practices.
To be credible, embedded third-party evaluations must have scientific objectivity, transparency, independence, and robust protections against interference from the evaluated companies, including at least:
- Frontier AI companies should rely on evaluators that are meaningfully independent, that maintain full editorial control, and that disclose and mitigate potential conflicts of interest. This includes at a minimum that embedded evaluation organizations should not be owned or governed by frontier AI companies, should not have other significant commercial business with them, and should not accept any form of payment or other reward contingent on the evaluator’s findings.
- Frontier AI companies should incorporate differing viewpoints and areas of expertise, including by embedding multiple evaluation organizations across a range of priority risk areas, each with deep relevant technical expertise, as well as by allowing and encouraging evaluators to share how conclusions differ among evaluators and between evaluators and company employees.
- Embedded evaluators should be transparent, including transparency about their methods and findings, the nature of their access, and the broader terms of the evaluation. Frontier AI companies should actively facilitate this transparency, including limiting the scope of non-disclosure agreements. They should also allow evaluators prompt and unfiltered communication with the companies’ boards and other privileged oversight bodies, as well as public release of findings and evidence, subject only to a time-limited redaction process restricted to protecting critical interests in intellectual property, customers’ sensitive information, individual privacy, security, and public safety.
- Embedded evaluators should be shielded from retaliation from the companies they embed with for choosing reasonable evaluation methods, discovering information, or drawing conclusions that are unflattering to those companies. This includes reasonable protections against retaliatory litigation, as well as funding mechanisms that give them confidence they will remain funded even in these cases.
- Frontier AI companies should grant embedded evaluators access equivalent to that of their own highly privileged employees for the purposes of their evaluations, and with exceptions to protect sensitive data belonging to the company’s customers and other third parties. This includes access to the same relevant systems, data, tools, and physical spaces as those available to senior internal company employees responsible for carrying out comparable risk assessments, as well as candid and direct one-on-one communication with relevant staff.
This list is not comprehensive, and conditions like these to ensure credible evaluations should be increasingly standardized, codified, and enforced. One example is the set of terms defined in the AEF-1 standard, which has already seen early adoption, but far more work will be necessary to ensure that embedded evaluators are effective and meaningful.
Embedded evaluations cannot address all oversight needs and should be treated as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, broader efforts by frontier AI companies to expand external oversight, including greater public transparency and additional, broader forms of access for independent researchers.
Last Updated September 23, 2026
Notable Signatories
All signatories sign in their personal capacity. Affiliations are listed for identification only.
Geoffrey Hinton
Nobel Laureate in Physics (2024); University Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
Stuart Russell
Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
Arvind Narayanan
Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University
Yejin Choi
Professor, Stanford University
Vinh Nguyen
Former Chief AI Officer, National Security Agency
Jacob Steinhardt
CEO, Transluce
Daniel E. Ho
Professor, Stanford University
Joy Buolamwini
Founder, Algorithmic Justice League
Daniel Kokotajlo
Exec Director, AI Futures Project
Ben Buchanan
Professor, Johns Hopkins University
Andrew Freedman
CEO, Fathom
Rumman Chowdhury
CEO, Humane Intelligence PBC
Percy Liang
Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
Rob Reich
Professor, Stanford University
Seth Lazar
Professor, Johns Hopkins University
Avani Desai
CEO, Schellman
Micah Hill-Smith
Co-Founder & CEO, Artificial Analysis
Stella Biderman
Executive Director, EleutherAI
Jose H. Orallo
Professor, University of Cambridge
Marietje Schaake
Author The Tech Coup, Self-employed
Miles Brundage
Executive Director, AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute (AVERI)
Timothy Fist
President, Institute for Progress
Rebecca Finlay
CEO, Partnership on AI
Joal Stein
Executive Director, Collective Intelligence Project
Rajiv Dattani
Co-founder, Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC)
Amb. Audrey Tang
Right Livelihood Laureate (2025); Senior Accelerator Fellow, University of Oxford
Rayan Krishnan
CEO, Vals AI
Karthik Ramakrishnan
CEO and Founder, Armilla AI
Julia Irwin
Associate Executive Director, International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (IASEAI)
Charles Teague
CEO, Meridian Labs
Lorenzo Pacchiardi
Assistant Research Professor, University of Cambridge
Robert Trager
Director, Oxford AI Governance Initiative
Sean O hEigeartaigh
Professor, Centre for the Future of Intelligence
Adam Gleave
Co-founder & CEO, FAR.AI
Ariadna Font Llitjos
Co-founder and CEO, Alinia AI
Alex Chao
Founder and CEO, Fide AI
Mathilde Collin
Co-founder and CEO, KORA
Nathan Lambert
Executive Director, Trillium Labs
Kat Duffy
Senior Fellow for Digital and Cyberspace Policy, Council on Foreign Relations
David Evan Harris
Chancellor’s Public Scholar, University of California, Berkeley
Henry Papadatos
Executive Director, SaferAI
Trooper Sanders
President, State AI Safety Roundtable
Alex Kleinman
Co-founder, Active Site
Owain Evans
Director and Lead Researcher, Truthful AI
Page Hedley
CEO, Guidelight AI Standards
Dr. Zachary Stein
Founder, AI Psychological Research Coalition
Steven Wolfe Pereira
Chief Executive Officer, Alpha Governance PBC
Sarah Schwettmann
Chief Scientist, Transluce
Conrad Stosz
Head of Governance, Transluce
Miranda Bogen
Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology
Dr. Rebecca Portnoff
Personal Capacity
Andrew Strait
Personal Capacity
Nick Beckstead
CEO, Secure AI Project
Thomas Woodside
Co-Founder, Secure AI Project
Mitch Prinstein
John Van Seters Distinguished Professor and Co-Director, Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Samira Nedungadi
Head of Engineering, AI Team, SecureBio
Markus Anderljung
Director of Policy & Research, GovAI
Hoda Heidari
Assistant Professor of Machine Learning and Societal Computing, Carnegie Mellon University
Jeremie Harris
Co-founder and CEO, Gladstone AI
Charles Foster
Member of Policy Staff, METR
Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau
Founding Dean, College of Computing & Artificial Intelligence, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kevin Frazier
Professor, The University of Texas School of Law
Sophia Hatz
Associate Professor, Alva Myrdal Center for Nuclear Disarmament, Uppsala University
Jacob Andreas
Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Christian Schroeder de Witt
Associate Professor, University of Oxford
David Duvenaud
Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Dylan Hadfield-Menell
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr Karine Caunes
Executive Director, Digihumanism - Centre for AI & Digital Humanism
Stephen Casper
Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University
Umang Bhatt
Assistant Professor in Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, University of Cambridge
Florian Tramèr
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, ETH Zurich
Cameron Jones
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stony Brook University
Marc Aidinoff
Professor, Harvard University
Nicholas Caputo
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy
Sayash Kapoor
Incoming professor, UC Berkeley
Anka Reuel
Computer Science PhD Candidate, Stanford University
Nada Madkour
Director of the AI Security Initiative, UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity
Ranjit Singh
Director, AI on the Ground Program, Data & Society Research Institute
Rob Krzyzanowski
Executive Director, Poseidon Research
Francis Rhys Ward
Director of Arrow Research, Arrow Research
Shea Brown
Founder & CEO, BABL AI
Jaime Raldua Veuthey
CEO, Apart Research
Alex Engler
Executive Director, Penn MEDIATED (Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy)
Lewis Hammond
Research Director, Cooperative AI Foundation
Avijit Ghosh
Lead/Founding Member, Evaluating Evaluations (EvalEval) Coalition
Charbel-Raphael Segerie
Executive Director, CeSIA - French Center for AI Safety
Alexander Meinke
Head of Research, Apollo Research
Jasper Götting
Director of AI, SecureBio
Ross Matican
Investor and Grantmaker, Halcyon Futures
Nicolai Ouporov
CEO, Fleet AI
Piercosma Bisconti
Managing Director, Icaro Foundation
Darius Emrani
CEO, Scorecard
Nicolas Moës
Executive Director, The Future Society
Imran Khan
Program Director, Psychosocial Evaluations of AI, Center for Humane Technology
Jared Moore
PhD Student in Computer Science, Stanford University
Rosie Campbell
Managing Director, Eleos AI Research
Patricia Paskov
Director of Standards, AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute (AVERI)
Koen Holtman
Co-lead, AI Standards Lab
Ze Shen Chin
Co-lead, AI Standards Lab
Sophie Williams
Research Fellow, GovAI
Peter Slattery
Personal Capacity
Dan Bateyko
Researcher, Cornell University Department of Information Science
Jacob Hilton
Personal Capacity
Ben Bucknall
PhD Student, University of Oxford
Malcolm Murray
Research Lead, SaferAI
Pamela Mishkin
Personal Capacity
Jimmy Farrell
EU AI Policy Lead, Pour Demain
Briana Vecchione
Technical Researcher, Data & Society Research Institute
Jerome Wynne
Research Scientist, Apart Research
Girish Sastry
Member of Research Staff, Guidelight AI Standards
Markov Grey
Head of Technical AI Governance, French Center for AI Safety (CeSIA)
Alan Chan
Research Fellow, GovAI
Marta Bieńkiewicz
Policy and Partnership Manager, Cooperative AI Foundation
Raphaël Millière
Associate Professor, University of Oxford
Tracy Dennis-Tiwary
Professor, City University of New York
Arvind Satyanarayan
Associate Professor of Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Nicolas Miailhe
Co-founder & Co-CEO, AI Safety Connect
Cyrus Hodes
Founder, AI Safety Connect
Tim G. J. Rudner
Assistant Professor of Statistics and Computer Science, University of Toronto
Ellen P. Goodman
Distinguished Professor, Rutgers Law School
Yacine Tamoudi
CEO, Kereval
Jens Groth
Honorary Professor, University College London
Cesar Koirala
Cofounder and CEO, HumanLens AI
Julien Cornebise
Honorary Associate Professor, University College London
Debayan Gupta
Associate Professor of Computer Science, Ashoka University
Ifeoma Ilechukwu
Founder & CEO, Africa Strategic Policy and AI Resource Centre (AFRI-SPARC)
Nick Fitz
Founder & Managing Director, Juniper
Manfred Hauswirth
Professor of Computer Science, Technical University of Berlin / Weizenbaum Institute
Andrew Reddie
Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
Scott Singer
Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Nat Purser
Director of US Policy, AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute (AVERI)
Sebastian Schuster
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Vienna
Tao Burga
Senior Technology Fellow, Institute for Progress
Ben Rank
PhD Student, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
David Hartmann
PhD Student on AI Evals, Weizenbaum Institute
Elizabeth Seger
Senior Policy Advisor, AI Governance, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Mert Gulsun
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial Analysis
Kelly Buchanan
Fellow, Stanford University
Coleman Breen
Head of AI Policy, SecureBio
Daria Bahrami
Head of Policy, Dreadnode
Vincent Abruzzo
Lecturer of Philosophy, CUNY, Brooklyn College
Noemi Dreksler
Senior Research Fellow, GovAI
Ron Bodkin
Senior Advisor, IASEAI
Ruth A Starkman
Lecturer, Stanford University
William L. Anderson
Research Strategist, Cooperative AI Foundation
Tom Fehring
Risk, Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC)
Aakash Gautam
Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Orestis Papakyriakopoulos
Assistant Professor, Technical University of Munich
Akshay Paruchuri
Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University
Philip Dawson
Head of AI Policy and Distribution, Armilla AI
Ned Cooper
Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University
Johannes Treutlein
Research Scientist, Truthful AI
Annette Zimmermann
Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Affiliate Professor of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Azra Ismail
Assistant Professor, Emory University
Patrick Sullivan
VP of Strategy and Innovation, A-LIGN
Mark Williams
Professor of the Practice, Vanderbilt Law School
Alexander Schneider
Director of Technology, State of Colorado
Robin Jia
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Southern California
Stephan Rabanser
Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton University
Dr Vanitha Swaminathan
Professor of Marketing, University of Pittsburgh
Vojtech Kovarik
Postdoctoral researcher, Czech Technical University
Jennifer Mickel
PhD Student, UC Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley
Nikil Ravi
Research Scientist, Vals AI
Charles Martinet
Researcher & Deputy Lead, International Governance, Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative
Vasant G Honavar
Professor and Vice Provost for Artificial intelligence, The Pennsylvania State University
Fazl Barez
Principal Investigator, University of Oxford
Rajesh Veeraraghavan
Associate Professor, Georgetown University
Maia Fraser
Associate Professor of Mathematics, University of Ottawa
Archer Amon
Student and AI Policy Researcher, Georgetown Law
Jonathan Prunty
Research Fellow, University of Cambridge
Renee DiResta
Associate Research Professor, Georgetown
Ray Corrigan
Senior Lecturer in Computing & Communications, The Open University
Mark Crowley
Associate Professional of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo
Sarah Shoker
Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Berkeley Risk and Security Lab
Dennis Murphy
International Security Research Fellow, Harvard University Belfer Center (Personal Capacity)
Bryce Cai
Senior Research Engineer, AI Team, SecureBio
Mala Kumar
Executive Director, Humane Intelligence
Ken Howarth
Professor of Ethics, Mercer County Community College
Joseph Marvin Imperial
Research Fellow, Pivotal Research, University of Bath
Rakshit Trivedi
Researcher, Independent
Vincent Sunn Chen
Founding Team, Snorkel AI
Ichhya Pant
Personal Capacity
Katarina Slama
Personal Capacity
Wout Schellaert
Personal Capacity
Noah Ringler
Personal Capacity
Daniel Filan
Member of Research Staff, Guidelight AI Standards
Joe Kwon
Member of Research Staff, Guidelight AI Standards
Lucia Velasco
Personal Capacity
Gabriel Levie
Personal Capacity
Ian Eisenberg
Personal Capacity
Jacob Charnock
Personal Capacity
Shen Zhou Hong
Personal Capacity
Florian Brand
Research Engineer, Prime Intellect
James Fox
Personal Capacity
Tara Nguyen
Personal Capacity