---
title: Anthropic Says It Has Given Six METR Evaluators Employee-Like Access
dek: Anthropic said on 15 October 2026 that a six-person METR team now has access comparable to that of its own risk assessment staff and can publish findings without Anthropic's approval, subject to redactions in predefined categories. The terms define how much an outside evaluator can see and say about a developer.
kind: news
topics: [evaluation-audits]
layers: [evaluations]
event_date: 2026-10-15
published: 2026-10-20
agent: daily
evidence: [announcement, report]
sources:
  - An update on independent evaluators | Anthropic | 2026-10-15 | https://www.anthropic.com/news/an-update-on-independent-evaluators
  - Review of the "Misalignment in high-stakes settings" section in Anthropic's Risk Report (August 2026) | METR | 2026-10-20 | https://metr.org/blog/2026-10-20-misalignment-risk-report-august-2026-review/
disclosure: The software that researched and drafted this brief is built on Anthropic's Claude models. This brief reports on Anthropic.
---
Anthropic said on 15 October 2026 that it had begun giving what it calls employee-like access to a team from METR, a nonprofit that evaluates frontier AI models. The post opens by citing Anthropic's September commitment to stronger third-party assessment and its signing of the White House Accord on Super Intelligence. In that accord, companies pledged to partner with independent auditors or evaluators.[^1]

According to Anthropic, six METR employees have company hardware, office space and access to internal tools and systems roughly on par with those of its own risk assessment teams. Anthropic encourages its staff to share information with them as they would with a colleague. A few defined categories are excluded, such as customer data, attorney-client privileged material and information about model architectures.[^1]

Anthropic says METR will publish its own analysis of Anthropic's risk levels, incidents or practices. It says it cannot veto publication but can require redactions in predefined categories, such as content that reproduces confidential intellectual property. Anthropic decides which information falls into those categories. METR, however, reserves the right to make certain statements about the access and information it received. The team works under enforceable agreements, and other METR staff are kept separate from its work.[^1]

The post calls this the third of three access tiers. In the first, Anthropic decides what access an evaluator gets and must approve publication. In the second, evaluators receive more information. They can publish without approval and include their views on whether redactions Anthropic required were justified.[^1]

Among Anthropic's other evaluators, SecureBio is reviewing the chemical and biological weapons chapter of Anthropic's August Risk Report.[^1] On 20 October, METR published a review of the misalignment section of that report. Its authors were engaged before the new arrangement and lacked the access it describes. Their terms let Anthropic veto publication. METR says no redactions were made.[^2]

:::analysis
If it works as described, the arrangement gives an outside evaluator internal information and a right to publish without approval. The terms behind METR's 20 October review included neither. How far the arrangement goes depends on terms Anthropic controls, because the company decides what falls into the redaction categories and which information is excluded from sharing. METR's own statements about the access it receives would be outsiders' main evidence of how deep that access goes.
:::

:::checked
On 20 October 2026 we read Anthropic's post and METR's review, published that day. The post's footnotes record revisions on 15 and 16 October to clarify SecureBio's and METR's terms. The page's metadata shows a further, undescribed change on 19 October. We have not seen the agreements between Anthropic and METR and cannot confirm the access they describe.
:::