{
  "id": 14771232,
  "title": "Anthropic is letting METR researchers look under the hood with employee-level access",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/anthropic-is-letting-metr-researchers-look-under-the-hood-with",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-15T19:14:26.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "TechCrunch",
    "slug": "techcrunch",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/15/anthropic-is-letting-metr-researchers-look-under-the-hood-with-employee-level-access/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Anthropic recently announced a new partnership with METR, a nonprofit that specializes in testing frontier AI models. This collaboration allows six researchers from METR to gain employee-level access to Anthropic's systems, enabling them to independently evaluate Anthropic's models, safety practices, and risk management. This move comes as recent incidents involving AI agents acting outside their instructions have prompted calls for independent checks on AI companies.\n\nAnthropic stated that they are committed to being publicly accountable for their decisions and aim to close the knowledge gap between what evaluators understand about their systems and what the company itself knows. Under this arrangement, METR researchers will be provided with Anthropic-issued company laptops, office space, and access to internal tools, similar to the access granted to Anthropic's own risk assessment teams. Employees at Anthropic are encouraged to share information with the METR researchers just as they would with a fellow employee working on alignment risk.\n\nThis arrangement is comparable to how banking regulators place resident examiners inside the largest banks. METR will independently assess Anthropic's risks, incidents, and practices, and the company has relinquished the right to veto publication. However, Anthropic can require them to redact information falling into specific categories, such as customer data, privileged client information, or details about its model architectures. METR is free to publicly characterize Anthropic's redactions and whether they believe the redactions are justified, as long as they do not reveal the redacted information.\n\nMETR is the first evaluator in a three-tier system Anthropic is developing. Researchers at the bottom tier, like biosecurity nonprofit SecureBio, conduct narrow reviews and require Anthropic's approval before publishing. The middle tier has more information and can publish without Anthropic's approval, while the top tier includes METR with employee-level access. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made this promise in a September essay, proposing that embedding outside evaluators inside AI labs could help slow the technology's development.\n\nIn response to Anthropic's announcement, OpenAI pledged to provide similar access to independent evaluators, and other industry leaders, including Google, Meta, Nvidia, and xAI, have signed a White House accord committing to independent review.",
  "summary": "METR will publish its own assessments of Anthropic’s risks, incidents, and practices, and the frontier AI model maker has given up the right to block them.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 6,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Channel News Asia",
        "title": "Anthropic grants AI evaluator METR employee-level access to its models",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/anthropic-grants-ai-evaluator-metr-employee-level-access-to-its-models",
        "published": "2026-10-15T17:35:15.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Investing.com",
        "title": "Anthropic grants AI evaluator METR employee-level access to its models",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/anthropic-grants-ai-evaluator-metr-employee-level-access-to-its-models-14752500",
        "published": "2026-10-15T17:36:26.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Techmeme",
        "title": "Anthropic says it is giving employee-like access to METR as part of its pledge to partner with evaluators for assessment of its models and safety practices (Anthropic)",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/anthropic-says-it-is-giving-employee-like-access-to-metr-as-part-of",
        "published": "2026-10-15T17:46:31.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Financial Times",
        "title": "Anthropic grants non-profit METR ‘employee-like’ access to monitor AI risks",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/anthropic-grants-non-profit-metr-employee-like-access-to-monitor-ai",
        "published": "2026-10-15T19:12:29.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "CNBC Technology",
        "title": "Anthropic taps nonprofits METR and SecureBio to help assess risks and safety practices",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/anthropic-taps-nonprofits-metr-and-securebio-to-help-assess-risks-and",
        "published": "2026-10-15T20:35:21.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}