Conflict of Interest & Certification Independence Policy

Draft — not yet adopted

This is a draft, published for transparency. It has not yet been adopted by AIforE's Board of Directors and may change before it is. AIforE does not run a certification program today; certification is planned, as set out in our Certification Roadmap. Comments are welcome at hello@aifore.org.

1. Purpose and scope

AIforE's benchmarks, specifications and certifications are only worth something if no participant can buy, steer or self-award a result. This policy protects that neutrality. It adds to AIforE's existing Conflict of Interest Policy, which covers IRC Section 4958 and board financial interests, and does not replace it.

This policy applies to:

Directors, officers, advisors, staff, contractors and volunteers
Members of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and the Certification Committee
Representatives of sponsoring or member organizations

It covers every AIforE standards activity: specifications (including the Stardust telemetry specification and the Efficiency Control Plane), benchmark harnesses and leaderboards, and the planned AIforE Eco-Certified program.

2. Definitions

Term	Meaning
Covered Person	Anyone listed in Section 1 who takes part in an AIforE standards activity.
Related Commercial Entity	Any for-profit venture in which a Covered Person, or a family member, holds equity, a paid role, a board seat, or a revenue interest. This includes ChatGPTree.ai, EcoRouter (ecorouter.io), GridIron Cloud, SBG Inc. and any future AIforE Ventures LLC.
Affiliated Program	A program run by AIforE whose results could be affected by certification outcomes, such as the AIforE carbon sequestration marketplace.
AIforE Reference Implementation	Open-source software that AIforE itself builds and maintains to show how its specifications work, including Stardust and the AIforE open-source router (Efficiency Control Plane).
Certification Decision	Any decision to grant, deny, renew, downgrade or revoke an AIforE Eco-Certified status, or to approve a test method used for certification.
Benchmark Decision	Any decision on benchmark methods, weights, hardware baselines or leaderboard publication.

3. Separation from Related Commercial Entities

AIforE and its Related Commercial Entities operate as fully separate organizations. AIforE's open-source router (the Efficiency Control Plane) is AIforE's own independent project. It has no relationship to EcoRouter or ChatGPTree.

Code. AIforE repositories (the AIforEcology GitHub org) contain no code copied from, licensed from, or written for a Related Commercial Entity. A Related Commercial Entity may use AIforE's open-source code only under the same public license terms as anyone else.
Data. AIforE does not share benchmark data, certification applications, member information or telemetry with a Related Commercial Entity before it is public.
Roles. Nobody may act for AIforE in a standards activity while also acting for a Related Commercial Entity in a matter connected to that activity.
Branding. A Related Commercial Entity may not suggest AIforE endorses it, or use AIforE marks, except for a certification it earned through Section 5.
Money. Any payment, donation, sponsorship or in-kind support from a Related Commercial Entity to AIforE is disclosed publicly and is approved by board members who have no interest in that entity.
Affiliated Programs. The carbon marketplace and any similar Affiliated Program are run separately from certification. Being certified never requires buying credits through AIforE, and buying credits never improves a certification result.

4. AIforE's own Reference Implementations

AIforE builds open-source software, including Stardust and its own router, the Efficiency Control Plane. It cannot judge that software against competing products.

Not eligible for certification. AIforE Reference Implementations are never certified, and are never described as AIforE Eco-Certified.
Clearly labeled on leaderboards. If a Reference Implementation appears on a public leaderboard, it is marked “AIforE reference, unranked.” It runs the same harness as every other entry, and it is excluded from any ranking or award.
Neutral test methods. No benchmark or certification method may require, favor or be tuned toward a Reference Implementation's design, APIs or defaults. The TSC checks every proposed method for this before adopting it.
Open licensing. Reference Implementations are released under Apache 2.0 or another OSI-approved license. Competing implementations get equal access to specifications, test harnesses and conformance suites.
Separate maintainers where possible. People who maintain a Reference Implementation sit out Certification Decisions on products that compete with it.

5. Independent Certification Committee

All Certification Decisions are made by an independent Certification Committee, not by the board or AIforE officers.

Composition. The committee has three to five members, appointed by the board for staggered two-year terms. A majority must be independent, meaning that for the past 24 months they have:

held no equity, paid role or board seat in any Related Commercial Entity
held no paid role or contract with a company applying for certification or competing with an applicant
not been an AIforE officer or a maintainer of an AIforE Reference Implementation

Preferred members include academic researchers, people from standards bodies, and independent auditors.

Decision rules.

Applicants are judged only against the published certification criteria and test results.
A quorum is a majority of members, and independent members must make up the majority of those voting.
A member with a conflict on an application sits out the discussion and the vote.
Every decision is recorded in writing with its reasons. A summary is published for each granted certification.
Applicants can appeal once, to a panel of independent members who did not hear the original application.

Founder recusal. While Charles Finkelstein holds interests in ChatGPTree.ai and EcoRouter, he does not sit on the Certification Committee. He does not take part in any Certification Decision or Benchmark Decision involving LLM routing, model selection, or carbon credit products.

6. Disclosure, recusal and sponsor safeguards

Disclosure. Every Covered Person files a written disclosure of their Related Commercial Entities and other relevant interests. They file it when they join, every year, and within 30 days of any change. Disclosures from board members, TSC members and Certification Committee members are posted publicly on aifore.org.

Recusal. A Covered Person with an interest in a matter declares it, leaves the discussion, and does not vote. The minutes record the recusal.

Sponsors and members. Funding never buys results.

A sponsor or member, at any tier, gets no vote and no veto on Certification Decisions.
On the TSC, no single organization holds more than one seat or one-third of the votes. Changes to a benchmark method need a two-thirds vote that includes at least one independent or academic member.
Hardware or compute donated for benchmarking is used under published rules. Donated hardware is tested with the same harness as everything else, and results are published whether or not they flatter the donor.
Sponsor money goes into AIforE's general operations, not into specific certification files.

Transparency. Benchmark methods, harness code, raw results and TSC meeting summaries are published under open licenses.

7. Enforcement, review and adoption

Enforcement. If a Covered Person breaks this policy, the board, acting without any conflicted members, may remove them from their AIforE role. If a breach affected a Certification Decision, the Certification Committee reviews that decision again and may revoke it.

Annual attestation. Each year, every Covered Person signs a statement that they have read and followed this policy.

Review. The board reviews this policy every year, and before the AIforE Eco-Certified program launches.

Adoption. This policy takes effect when the Board of Directors adopts it by resolution, as a supplement to AIforE's existing Conflict of Interest Policy. This page will show the adoption date once it does.