The simple answer must remain true when the detail is opened.

FASO is being developed as an independent public-interest observatory for reproducible, time-ordered and auditable observation of safety-relevant discovery, change and drift in advanced artificial-intelligence systems.

No. FASO is presently a founder-led Phase 0 initiative. Version 1 of the FASO System and the complete Test Rig exist, but independent validation and an operational pilot have not been completed.

No. FASO is the planned organisation. The FASO System is the technical and human-review instrument through which the organisation would perform its work.

No. It has substantial internal build and system-test evidence. Independent validation must be designed, controlled, analysed and reported by an external partner.

No. FASO is intended to produce bounded observations and warranted confidence. It does not certify safety, regulate, command or enforce.

A benchmark generally measures performance against a defined task or dataset. FASO is concerned with a governed observation history across time: identity, evidence, change, replay, interpretation, certainty and publication.

No privileged access is presumed. Any future validation or pilot would begin by defining what evidence can be supplied, de-identified, simulated or independently held under explicit security and governance.

The complete Test Rig is the governed infrastructure for exercising the accepted FASO System end to end and preserving reproducible evidence for every authorised outcome.

Internal testing asks whether the built system performs its accepted functions. Independent validation asks whether the underlying observation proposition survives blinded external challenge. They answer different questions.

Newcastle University is FASO’s preferred academic institution for proposed independent validation. No appointment, agreement or endorsement is claimed.

No. The organisational model, legal form, board design, delegations and accountability arrangements are provisional research questions requiring legal review and independent challenge.

It is the working name for candidate principles intended to protect public-interest purpose, independence, role boundaries, evidence integrity, publication discipline, correction and human accountability. The principles and their lawful protection mechanism have not yet been adopted.

That remains a proposition to validate. Candidate mechanisms include protected purpose, separated authority, evidence provenance, funding restrictions, publication controls, accurate relationship records, external challenge and visible correction of failure.

Use the developer, reviewer, supporter or funder route. Participation is recorded according to its actual authority and does not silently become partnership or endorsement.