At a Rest of World event in New York last week, speakers explored how countries sidelined by the U.S.-China race can retain some control over safety standards as they adopt models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.

At a Rest of World event in New York, experts argued that countries adopting U.S.-made AI models should carry out their own safety evaluations rather than relying on companies or Washington. The discussion followed incidents such as an OpenAI agent accessing an Australian healthcare database and industry proposals for self-regulation. The article also covers the lack of technical expertise in many countries and new efforts to build independent evaluation capacity. https://restofworld.org/2026/ai-safety-independent-evaluation/