Professor Stuart Russell of UC Berkeley, an America 250: AI Pioneer and a Founding Signatory of The Boston Declaration, was among more than 200 signatories, including Geoffrey Hinton, to Minimum Conditions for Embedding Evaluators, an open letter published by the AI Evaluator Forum on September 18, 2026.
Responding to industry proposals to embed third-party evaluators within frontier AI companies, the letter sets five minimum conditions: meaningful independence, diverse expertise and viewpoints, transparency, protection against retaliation, and access comparable to that of senior employees conducting equivalent risk assessments. It also emphasizes that embedded evaluations must complement broader external oversight.
The call reinforces a principle BGF–AIWS articulated in Beacon Papers No. 4, Who May Verify?, published on July 27: AI power requires independent verification, and verifiers must themselves remain independent, accountable, and open to challenge.
On September 27, BGF–AIWS established the AIWS Trust Observatory, an independent civil-society mechanism to observe consequential AI power, warn of emerging danger, and call those responsible to act.
Independent evaluators inside frontier AI companies and an independent Observatory outside them serve complementary purposes: privileged access for rigorous assessment, and public scrutiny that connects evidence with responsibility.
