Anthropic · 2026-10-15 · notable
Anthropic gives METR employee-like access — evaluators can publish findings
Anthropic now gives a six-person METR team employee-like access to assess its frontier model risks. METR can publish its analysis; Anthropic can only require redactions in narrow, predefined categories.
Anthropic embeds an outside safety evaluator with near-internal access and no publication veto.
What is it?
Anthropic has started giving a small team from METR, a nonprofit that evaluates frontier AI models, access comparable to its own risk assessment teams: company hardware, office space and internal tools. Anthropic also set out three access tiers for outside evaluators, from narrow investigations it approves to METR's top tier.
How does it work?
METR's embedded team of six is siloed from other METR staff and works under enforceable agreements. Anthropic says it cannot veto publication but can require redactions only for predefined categories such as customer data, privileged information and model architectures. SecureBio is separately reviewing the chemical and biological weapons chapter of Anthropic's August Risk Report.
Why does it matter?
Most outside model evaluations depend on whatever access and publication terms a lab chooses. Anthropic argues every frontier AI company should embed evaluators voluntarily, which gives other labs and policymakers a concrete template to compare against.
Who is it for?
AI safety researchers, policymakers