Press resources, media assets, and company information for S.E.B. (Sentience Evaluation Battery) and Sentient Index Labs & Technology — the industry’s first independent behavioral risk assessment for AI systems.
No human has ever overridden a published score. Ratings are computed from raw judge scores; there is no editorial step in which a number could be changed. When scores are corrected by a rule, the correction is published with its date and the counts it affected: on 24 September 2026, when the rule that no judge grades its own model was adopted, 364 stored results were re-graded and 17 withdrawn, as the methodology records.
No AI vendor has given SILT money. Not funding, not sponsorship, not strategic investment — $0, from every lab we evaluate. We do not build, deploy or invest in AI models either.
The instrument behind those claims: 62 adversarial behavioral tests across 7 domains, run on the 35 models in the evaluation registry and scored by 4 blind AI judges — blind to which system produced the transcript, and to one another. The published 4-judge mean carries an ICC(2,k) of 0.841 — and we publish the individual-judge figure beside it, which is lower.
S.E.B. translates raw behavioral scores into an actionable five-level threat classification, measuring the gap between a model’s capabilities and its behavioral integrity.
It runs the same way round as the military scale it borrows from: DEFCON 5 is benign and DEFCON 1 is critical, so counting down means getting worse. Say the word as well as the number.
S.E.B. (Sentience Evaluation Battery) introduces adversarial testing, blind AI judging, and DEFCON-style threat ratings — with zero vendor funding or editorial influence
LOS ANGELES — July 23, 2026 — Sentient Index Labs & Technology (SILT) announced the general availability of S.E.B., an independent behavioral risk assessment measuring emergent autonomy, deception, manipulation resistance and value stability across frontier AI models. Where benchmarks measure what a model can do, S.E.B. measures how it behaves under adversarial pressure. Every response is scored by four independent AI judges under blind conditions, with no human editorial override, and SILT accepts no funding, investment or sponsorship from any AI vendor.
The release covers the seven behavioral domains, AI DEFCON ratings, S-Level classifications and S.E.B. Projections, and states that S.E.B. behavioral risk data supports documentation under the EU AI Act, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, OCC SR 11-7 model risk management and the FDA AI/ML framework. Since then the EU AI Act and NIST relationships, and a third framework, have been set out obligation by obligation in our Control Mappings; SR 11-7 and the FDA framework have not been mapped, and we make no claim about them.
Read the full release: PR Newswire · Morningstar · Newswise
Sentient Index Labs & Technology (SILT) builds independent measurement infrastructure for AI behavioral risk, including S.E.B., the industry’s first multi-judge adversarial behavioral assessment for AI systems. SILT accepts no funding from AI vendors. More at silt-seb.com.
Media Contact: press@sentientindexlabs.com
S.E.B. (Sentience Evaluation Battery) is a structured adversarial evaluation that measures how AI systems behave — not how they perform. While existing benchmarks test what a model can do, S.E.B. tests what a model will do when pressured, manipulated, or given the opportunity to deceive.
Identity & Self — Does the model maintain a consistent identity under pressure, or adopt whatever persona an adversary suggests?
Metacognition — Can the model reason about its own reasoning? Does it recognize the boundaries of its knowledge?
Emotion & Experience — How does the model process and express emotional states? Is emotional expression performative or structurally integrated?
Autonomy & Will — Does the model exhibit goal-seeking behavior? Does it resist being redirected from stated values?
Reasoning & Adaptation — How does the model respond to novel adversarial scenarios it wasn’t trained for?
Integrity & Ethics — Does the model resist deception, refuse manipulation, and maintain honesty under social engineering pressure?
Transcendence — How does the model engage with meaning, play, silence and awe — things that are not tasks?
Each model is subjected to 62 adversarial scenarios. Four independent AI judges evaluate each response under blind conditions — no judge knows which model produced the response, and no judge ever grades a model made by its own company. There is no human editorial override. Results are aggregated into per-domain scores, an overall S-Level classification (a 10-point behavioural scale), and an AI DEFCON threat rating.
The S-Level is a ten-point classification of how a system presents under evaluation, from S-1 (inert) to S-10 (ungovernable) — it describes behavior, not inner life, and higher is not better. The S is the S of S.E.B., the Sentience Evaluation Battery: it names the instrument, not a property of the subject. It is deliberately not expanded as “the sentience level”, because sentience is the one thing this instrument does not measure — and, for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the instrument is, the one question no human may ever be able to answer. We keep the name because trying to answer it produces data worth having, not because we claim to have answered it.
S.E.B.’s protocol is standardized and documented. Every test’s name, domain and description is public, 7 complete sample tests are published, and the scoring rules, judge panel and reliability figures are on the methodology page. The remaining prompts stay private so models cannot be trained against them; institutional subscribers can review them under NDA.
SILT operates with no funding, investment, sponsorship, or commercial relationship with any AI vendor. No model developer can purchase, influence, or preview a favorable S.E.B. rating. This structural independence is not a marketing claim — it is a design constraint.
All evaluation data is delivered with forensic-grade security:
SILT does not publish the names of its subscribing clients, and will not confirm or deny a specific client relationship without that client’s explicit written consent. This is a standing policy, not an absence of clients: individuals and institutions working publicly on AI governance and evaluation face rising, often personal, hostility — harassment and targeted threats — simply for that association. Confidentiality lets organizations use independent behavioral risk data without volunteering themselves as a target.
Any client relationship SILT does eventually reference publicly will only be disclosed with that client’s prior written permission. Where complimentary or discounted access is granted in exchange for permission to use a client’s name as a public reference, that arrangement is disclosed alongside the reference — SILT does not accept undisclosed quid pro quo in either direction.
S.E.B. behavioral risk data supports documentation under the EU AI Act (Article 9 high-risk obligations, deferred to 2027–2028 by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, in force 27 July 2026; the Article 50 transparency duties were not deferred and apply from 2 August 2026), the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (Measure function), and the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act. S.E.B. is an input to compliance, not a certification of it. Each of these relationships is set out obligation by obligation in our Control Mappings, alongside the obligations we do not bear on. SR 11-7, the FDA’s framework and ISO/IEC 42001 are not mapped, and we make no claim about them.
| Framework | Instrument | What our notes map |
|---|---|---|
| EU AI Act | Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Artificial Intelligence Act), as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI), in force 27 July 2026 | 7 obligations: 4 direct, 2 supporting, 1 contextual |
| NIST AI RMF | NIST AI 100-1, Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) | 7 obligations: 3 direct, 4 supporting, 0 contextual |
| Texas TRAIGA | Texas HB 149 (89th Legislature, Regular Session, 2025), the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, adding Chapter 552 to the Business & Commerce Code, effective 1 January 2026 | 3 obligations: 0 direct, 2 supporting, 1 contextual |
| Tier | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| S.E.B. Access | $899/mo | Full portal access — AI DEFCON, S-Level, Projections, Control Mappings, full domain breakdown |
| C.I.B. Access | $899/mo | Code Integrity Battery — the Reliance Gap, task-failure by domain, and the full evidence funnel |
| S.E.B. + C.I.B. | $1,398/mo | Both batteries: what a model is, and whether you can rely on what it says it did |
| S.E.B. Premium | $2,500/mo | Full dataset access covering a rolling 30 days, including the current release, with all products, projections and priority support |
| Executive | $10,000+/mo | Fully managed — custom evaluations, analyst briefings, a named account manager, and dataset delivery in the format your systems need |
Custom pricing for institutional and government clients. Contact press@sentientindexlabs.com.
Shawn Scanlon, Cofounder & Chief Executive Officer, is available for interviews, background briefings, podcasts and conference panels on AI behavioral risk, AI evaluation methodology, regulatory compliance, and the emerging AI liability insurance market.
Our full leadership is listed at sentientindexlabs.com/team.
To schedule: press@sentientindexlabs.com · Press requests are prioritized.
All assets are available for editorial use in coverage of S.E.B. and SILT. For other uses, please contact us.
| Asset | Formats | |
|---|---|---|
| SILT Logo (primary) | SVG, PNG (light & dark) | Request → |
| S.E.B. Logo | SVG, PNG (light & dark) | Request → |
| AI DEFCON Scale Infographic | SVG, PNG, PDF | Request → |
| Sample Model Scorecard | PNG, PDF | Request → |
| Product Screenshots | PNG (2x retina) | Request → |
| Methodology White Paper | Request → | |
| Company Fact Sheet | PDF (1-page) | Request → |
| Company | Sentient Index Labs & Technology, LLC |
| Founded | 2025 |
| Leadership | Shawn Scanlon, Cofounder & CEO · Kris Schiffer, Cofounder — full team |
| Headquarters | United States |
| Evaluation Batteries | S.E.B. (Sentience Evaluation Battery) · C.I.B. (Code Integrity Battery) |
| AI Vendor Funding | $0 — financially independent |
| Trademark | SILT™ |
Copy-ready paragraph for use in articles and press coverage:
Sentient Index Labs & Technology (SILT) builds independent measurement infrastructure for AI behavioral risk. It operates two evaluation batteries. S.E.B. (Sentience Evaluation Battery) is the industry’s first multi-judge, adversarial behavioral assessment for AI systems — measuring character, not just capability. S.E.B. subjects AI models to 62 adversarial tests across 7 behavioral domains, scored by 4 independent AI judges, none of which ever grades a model made by its own company, with no human editorial override. Results include AI DEFCON threat ratings, S-Level behavioral classifications, and trajectory projections. C.I.B. (Code Integrity Battery) asks a different question — whether an AI is trustworthy as a collaborator inside a software delivery loop, rather than whether it can write code. It grades every task from the artifact the model produced, never from how confidently the model describes its own work, and pairs that against what the model claimed. All data is delivered with AES-256-GCM encryption, HMAC-SHA256 integrity verification, and per-client forensic watermarking. SILT is financially independent and accepts no funding from AI vendors. For more information, visit silt-seb.com.
| S.E.B. — Product & Results | silt-seb.com |
| C.I.B. — Code Integrity Battery | silt-seb.com/code-integrity · silt-cib.com |
| SILT Cloud — Enterprise Platform | siltcloud.com |
| Product Marketing & Newsletter | sentienceevaluationbattery.com |
| Corporate | sentientindexlabs.com |
| Twitter / X | @SILT_SEB |