Why this clock exists
At 5:24 PM ET, on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, President Trump announced the White House Accord on Super Intelligence Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities. This Accord allows Google, Meta, Anthropic, SpaceXAI, Nvidia, and OpenAI to continue to write their own safety and governance policies with no third-party oversight or regulation at signing. It also says nothing about any other AI lab, so companies that did not sign remain outside it entirely. Full text of the Accord below.
The Accord’s first two commitments concern controls that a company builds and runs itself. Items 3 and 4 are different: they call for an independent external auditor or evaluator, and an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee the audit, evaluation findings, and the monitoring output of the controls themselves. These are the commitments that allow the public to verify that frontier technology is operating as intended, rather than simply taking the word of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
I believe there is no intention to complete either of these third-party commitments. Furthermore, the Accord is voluntary, sets no deadline for any of its four commitments, and provides no mechanism for confirming or enforcing them. It only says that it "may make sense" to codify these steps into law "over time." Without dates, public reporting, or consequences, commitments that depend on outside scrutiny are the easiest to defer indefinitely.
This page exists to keep this issue visible and to hold accountable those responsible for implementing third-party oversight of artificial intelligence. The clock will keep running until third-party oversight is in place and publicly documented.
Full text of the Accord:
In order to build a positive future for the American people and the world, we believe every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public.
This starts with every company that is training and deploying frontier models having robust internal processes and controls to ensure that their technology behaves as intended and that any issues are promptly identified and resolved. Therefore, in addition to any other precautions, we believe each company should implement the following four layers of controls and audits:
- Implement robust internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of its models during training and deployment around areas like cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats, and to ensure that its models do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways.
- Empower an internal team to ensure all of the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended, and that any issues are remediated.
- Not completedPartner with an independent external auditor or evaluator to carry out independent assessments of whether the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended.
- Not completedDesignate an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee and receive reports from the teams operating the controls and the internal and external auditors and evaluators, as well as to ensure any issues identified are remediated.
Together, these steps will give each company, its customers, and the public confidence that the technology is operating as intended.
The participating companies will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices to improve the safety of their systems.
Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations. Regardless of whether this is required of companies, we believe that implementing these controls and audits is critical to ensuring a safe future for everyone, and each of our companies are committed to doing this.