GPAI Evaluations Standards Taskforce: Towards Effective AI Governance

General-purpose AI evaluations have been proposed as a promising way of identifying and mitigating systemic risks posed by AI development and deployment. While GPAI evaluations play an increasingly central role in institutional decision- and policy-making -- including by way of the European Union AI Act's mandate to conduct evaluations on GPAI models presenting systemic risk -- no standards exist to date to promote their quality or legitimacy. To strengthen GPAI evaluations in the EU, which currently constitutes the first and only jurisdiction that mandates GPAI evaluations, we outline four desiderata for GPAI evaluations: internal validity, external validity, reproducibility, and portability. To uphold these desiderata in a dynamic environment of continuously evolving risks, we propose a dedicated EU GPAI Evaluation Standards Taskforce, to be housed within the bodies established by the EU AI Act. We outline the responsibilities of the Taskforce, specify the GPAI provider commitments that would facilitate Taskforce success, discuss the potential impact of the Taskforce on global AI governance, and address potential sources of failure that policymakers should heed.