At a moment when artificial intelligence is reshaping consequential decisions across society, more than a hundred researchers and scholars have signed a public letter asking a deceptively simple question: how do we actually know these systems are safe, and who gets to verify the answer? The letter, whose signatories include Princeton computer scientist Arvind Narayanan, argues that financial incentives make corporate self-assessment an unreliable foundation for public trust. Like pharmaceuticals, aircraft, and financial institutions before them, AI systems — these experts contend — have grown