PAI's independence depends on a simple rule: vendors, platforms, and commercial partners cannot buy influence over the PSF, PAI-8, Lab findings, ecosystem assessments, or the public record.
The policy is intentionally direct because ambiguity is where conflicts of interest hide.
PAI does not accept sponsorship, grants, paid placements, or in-kind contributions from AI model providers, cloud platforms, agent framework vendors, or organisations whose commercial interests could influence framework content.
No vendor, partner, customer, or research participant can pay to add, remove, weaken, or reword a PSF or PAI-8 requirement.
Ecosystem and Lab assessments are not marketing assets. Findings are published against criteria and may include gaps, limitations, or adverse results.
Lab and ecosystem criteria test transferable production AI judgement. They do not reward familiarity with a vendor's marketing language or private product roadmap.
PAI may sell capability to organisations it also observes. These rules keep the public record independent of commercial relationships.
No client, vendor, or partner can pay to be added to, removed from, upgraded in, or softened on the public record. The record is not for sale.
When PAI has a paid engagement with an entity we also record, that relationship is disclosed on the relevant record pages. The disclosure is part of the evidence trail.
PAI may sell integration, monitoring, advisory, and operational capability. PAI does not sell favourable assessments, attestations, or record outcomes to the parties being recorded.
High-ticket work is scoped, disclosed, and kept structurally separate from editorial record decisions. For institutional engagement, contact PAI: there is no public sales funnel on the record.
PAI charges for some programmes. Fees do not buy influence over the standard, research, Lab findings, or assessment criteria.