Fei-Fei Li calls for independent oversight of AI technology

Fei-Fei Li, one of the most influential voices in artificial intelligence research and CEO of World Labs, is making the case that AI evaluation cannot be left to the companies building the technology. In a Bloomberg interview on September 22, 2026, Li argued for independent benchmarks and a multi-stakeholder approach to assessing advanced AI systems, one that pulls in academia, government, and industry rather than trusting any single group to grade its own homework. The timing is not accidental. Her comments arrive just days after the AI Evaluator Forum, a coalition of over 100 experts, published a letter demanding genuine structural independence for third-party evaluators of frontier AI models. The letter was a direct response to pledges from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who in mid-September committed to giving third-party evaluators “employee-like access” to their systems. The expert coalition’s verdict on those pledges: not enough. The independence problem Li’s position frames the issue in broader institutional terms. She’s calling for independent benchmarks, not just independent evaluators. The distinction matters. Benchmarks set the standards against w...