Anthropic Gives METR a Desk Inside the Lab, With Access to Its Hardware and Systems
Anthropic has granted external evaluators “employee-like access” to assess the risks of its models, following through on a commitment to increase safeguards over concern that the technology could run catastrophically out of control. The beneficiary is METR, a nonprofit that has worked with leading labs including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta; it now has a team embedded in the Claude maker's office with access to its hardware and internal systems. A greater role for third-party evaluators is among the main concrete steps the labs have proposed as concern rises about dangers more capable AI systems could pose to the economy, cyber security and humanity at large.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
“Employee-like access” is the phrase to sit with. METR isn't being handed an API key and a rate limit; its people are in the building with the lab's own hardware and internal systems, which is the difference between testing a product and watching how it is made.
Embedded access is also access somebody had to grant. Whether that makes evaluation independent or merely insider-permitted is the open question, and third-party evaluation is described not as a settled practice but as one of the steps the labs themselves have proposed in response to worry about more capable systems.