[Accused of Being Too Close to Anthropic, METR President Responds: We Haven't Taken Money from AI Companies] Beating AI News Flash: In recent days, the third-party evaluation organization METR, recommended by Anthropic, has faced a series of criticisms. Observers have discovered that many of its core members have close ties to AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. METR itself has admitted that during a previous evaluation, at least six participants had close personal relationships with employees of AI companies, and at that time, there was not even a formal conflict of interest policy in place. METR President Chris Painter has now issued a direct response. He stated that METR operates on donations and has never accepted money from cutting-edge AI companies or their employees. Additionally, METR does not charge companies like Anthropic or OpenAI for evaluations. These companies provide free access to their models and tokens, allowing METR to conduct testing. Painter emphasized that METR's goal is not to certify AI models as "safe" for these companies but to publicly disclose evidence to governments and the public if models show signs of potential loss of control. [Original Article Link]