The left-handed proponents of METR argue that AI could trigger catastrophic scenarios and advocate for strong regulations on its development
Hjalmar Wijk: Chief Scientist of METR, focused on "trying to reduce the risks of worst-case future models".
Megan Kinniment, Pip Arnott, and Hjalmar Wijk himself come from the same research cluster at Oxford University, the main breeding ground of effective altruism. Megan Kinniment previously worked at the Center on Long-Term Risk in London analyzing how "malicious actors could increase the likelihood of bad AI outcomes".
Jasmine Dhaliwal: Serves as a policy writer within the entity.
The forefront of global technological development is facing a new onslaught from the ideologized bureaucracy that seeks to paralyze industrial progress. It was revealed that Dario Amodei —CEO of Anthropic and creator of the Claude model— proposed the creation of an external evaluators' cabinet made up of woke globalist elitists. The goal of this scheme is to lead the industry's regulatory response to the supposed threats of the AI apocalypse, a catastrophic narrative put forth by Amodei in his recent article titled "We Must Pace the Frontier".
Under the pretext of preventing advanced artificial intelligence models from becoming a kind of "Terminator" capable of annihilating humanity, they intend to impose an audit on new developments through the organization Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR).
This entity, closely linked to the effective altruism movement, includes well-known advocates of open borders and the use of gender-neutral pronouns, reflecting the agenda of a radical left that seeks to suffocate technical progress. In his essay, Amodei demanded that major tech companies allow these "integrated independent evaluators" to maintain "access similar to that of an employee" to oversee security efforts and inspect not only finished models but also training processes and pipelines.
To justify this regulatory siege on the market, the leadership of Anthropic has begun to spread unfounded apocalyptic forecasts. Dario Amodei alarmingly warned that the internet could be dominated by AI bots within 6 to 12 months, potentially causing "hundreds of billions of dollars in damages". This internal panic campaign even led to the resignation of Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic (a former member of OpenAI), who left his position claiming that companies were "betting with our lives".
However, behind this apocalyptic discourse operates a well-oiled machine of ideological financing. In August, METR announced that it had raised $71 million in new funding from external investors over the previous 6 months. Among the main financiers of the effective altruism network are figures like Dustin Moskovitz, a well-known mega-donor to the Democratic Party, and Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, both with direct equity stakes in Anthropic.
Public records reveal that Tallinn's foundation, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, allocated up to $752,000 to METR, broken down into $324,000 in direct cash and $428,000 in a matching fund commitment. Meanwhile, Moskovitz's firm, Coefficient Giving (formerly known as Open Philanthropy before its rebranding), granted $1,515,000 in 2022 to the incubator from which METR emerged.
Far from being an impartial technical body, the internal structure of METR exposes a blatant conflict of interest. The entity originally started as a division called ARC Evals within the Alignment Research Center (ARC) before becoming independent in 2023. The ARC is led by researcher Paul Christiano, who was a housemate, colleague, and direct collaborator of Amodei at OpenAI during the 2010s, and was also one of the first 5 trustees of Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust.
Endogamous connections extend throughout the key staff of METR:
Beth Barnes: Founder and CEO of METR, was hired by Paul Christiano after becoming involved in the effective altruism movement during her college years.
Ajeya Cotra: Technical staff member of METR, is the wife of Paul Christiano and a prominent organizer of effective altruism.
Dario Amodei himself, who committed to donating 80% of his personal wealth, has direct family ties to this ecosystem: his sister Daniela Amodei is married to Holden Karnofsky, founder of two of the most influential nonprofit organizations in effective altruism. It is worth remembering that this movement —which preaches accumulating multi-billion dollar fortunes under the premise of solving the world's problems— suffered a severe setback after the collapse of the cryptocurrency empire of Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the first and significant investors in Anthropic, who is now imprisoned for fraud.
In the face of this maneuver to halt technological development through audits led by friends and partners, free market sectors and conservative leaders have raised their voices denouncing the farce. A source close to the White House stated flatly that "METR is essentially Anthropic in another form", anticipating a frontal rejection by the administration of President Donald Trump, who labeled the catastrophic warnings of AI as a "hoax".
The criticisms exposed the cartelization strategy:
Perry Metzger, president of the AI policy group Alliance for the Future, tore apart the proposal stating: "To say you want to be audited by the 'independent' people from METR is a complete joke". And he concluded: "It's people funded by your own friends. It's completely ridiculous. If you came out tomorrow as a big bank and your audits were done by an organization made up entirely of your own former employees, funded by the same investors who invest in you, do you know what the feds would do to you? It would be positively medieval".
David Sacks, former AI czar of the White House, directly challenged the executive: "Stop pretending that METR is independent when it is intertwined with the investors and staff of Anthropic". Sacks added: "Above all, stop pretending that the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You are facing enormous exposure for product liability if your products allow for a truly harmful cyberattack".
Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), warned at an event at Georgetown University: "Everyone should be deeply suspicious" of any request for antitrust exemption or preferential regulation. Ferguson emphasized: "If companies come simultaneously to Washington asking for a series of regulations and an antitrust exemption, all my alarms go off".
Although Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, agreed on the "need to pace the frontier" and resort to independent evaluators, he deliberately avoided endorsing METR. The maneuver has been exposed: cloaked in the discourse of fear and the fallacy of the technological apocalypse, the globalist elite seeks to erect bureaucratic barriers to consolidate their own control of the sector and halt the true advancement of the free market.
