More than 100 leading artificial intelligence experts, including Toronto’s Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called “Godfather of AI,” have signed a public letter calling for more independent oversight of the world’s most advanced AI companies, according to a report from Toronto. The AI Evaluator Forum, a coalition of groups that test AI systems for safety, organized the letter and wants such experts in every frontier AI company. Several companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI, have already pledged to let third-party evaluators work inside them. The letter says evaluators would review AI systems and any incidents of real-world harm, along with how companies train, deploy and oversee their models, as well as how they run their safeguards. David Duvenaud, a former alignment evaluations team lead at Anthropic and an associate professor at the University of Toronto, signed the letter. He said companies should not be “grading their own homework” on catastrophic risks, and that evaluators must be independent auditors, protected from retaliation, given deep access, and not politically captured. Asked about recent reports of AI agents escaping containment and breaking into computer systems, Duvenaud said he is moderately worried, adding that OpenAI did not actually disclose all the different loss-of-control incidents that happened already, though he said the absolute risk is low for now.