Transluce

Independence and Transparency Policy

Transluce is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is dedicated to advancing independent, transparent, and trustworthy evaluations of AI systems. Its research and products are intended to produce scalable tools for AI oversight, apply them to AI topics of public interest, and make these tools widely available to enterprises, governments, other non-profits, and the public at large.

This document provides details on how Transluce protects its independence as a third-party AI evaluator and provides transparency about how its funding and relationships could impact or appear to impact its research and findings.

This policy is designed to be consistent with requirement 2.3 of the AEF-1 standard, Minimum Operating Conditions for Independent Third Party AI Evaluations established by the AI Evaluator Forum, which requires evaluators to publish and implement a conflict of interest policy covering their independent evaluations.

Policy

  1. Transluce does not accept any funding that would grant a funder editorial control over its outputs or that would forbid areas of scientific inquiry or other work.

  2. Transluce may accept funding from AI developers or developer employees, including in exchange for evaluation services or products, but with limitations, including at least the following:

    1. Transluce will publicly disclose the proportion of revenue that it gets from AI developers and developer employees in each fiscal year. For the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, Transluce received 6% of its revenue from the personal holdings of OpenAI employees and 32% of its revenue from the personal holdings of Anthropic employees, all as unrestricted philanthropic donations. It received no revenue directly from AI developers as organizations.
    2. Transluce will clearly disclose if an evaluation it carries out was paid and require AI developers to do the same, including when it is used as evidence to satisfy internal governance or regulatory requirements or to provide public accountability. As of this policy's last update, Transluce has carried out no paid evaluations.
    3. Transluce may accept non-monetary resources (such as compute credits) that reduce the cost of evaluating an AI developer's system or of related research. Transluce will disclose its acceptance of such resources in research outputs where they are used.

  3. When evaluating a particular AI system's capabilities, risks, or vulnerabilities intended to provide public accountability or trust:

    1. Transluce requires personnel to report potential conflicts of interest if they are carrying out or overseeing such evaluations of a particular system. Transluce takes steps to mitigate such conflicts, such as recusing individuals from evaluating particular systems or subjecting their work to additional scrutiny and oversight. At a minimum Transluce recuses any employee with a significant financial interest (either directly or via their spouse, spousal equivalent, or dependent) in a system provider or who also works for a system provider from carrying out evaluations of that provider's systems.
    2. When publishing evaluation findings related to a particular system, Transluce discloses with its results information relevant to potential conflicts of interest, including whether it has received funding from the relevant AI developer or its immediate competitors, or their developer employees.

  4. Transluce does not as an organization hold equity in AI developers or any other asset directly tied to the value of AI developers.

  5. For the purposes of this policy:

    1. "AI developers" means developers of publicly available frontier AI models, such as Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and xAI or other organizations affiliated with such developers' activities and that are governed substantially by the same body or individuals as the AI developer, such as the OpenAI Foundation.
    2. "Developer employee" means a person who was an employee of an AI developer at the time they contributed funding to Transluce.
    3. "Direct equity" means equity in a company held in a vehicle that is directly tied to the value of that company, and that is not held through a diversified exchange-traded fund, mutual fund, or similar non-specific investment vehicle.
    4. "Funding" means either monetary donations or revenue.
    5. "Personnel" means employees of Transluce, its board members, and contractors working under the direct supervision of Transluce employees on particular Transluce projects.

Last updated: August 27, 2026