METR President Responds to Independence Concerns: No Funding from Frontier AI Companies, Contracts Retain Public Disclosure Rights METR President Chris Painter addressed recent debates about the organization’s independence, stating that METR’s goal is to ensure the public is informed if AI shows signs of going out of control. Since 2022, METR has been collaborating with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and others to pilot third-party evaluations, with no internal, private safety determinations involved. Painter emphasized that METR’s conclusions don’t fully align with either 'doomsday' or 'accelerationist' perspectives. The team is also actively recruiting individuals with diverse viewpoints. Funding comes entirely from donations, with no payments or employee contributions accepted from frontier AI companies, though many companies provide free access to their models. Regarding the common use of non-disclosure agreements in third-party evaluations, Painter stated that METR, in principle, retains the right to publicly disclose contract terms and the nature of any redacted content. For example, the investigation report on the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident included such information. Previously, a U.S. investigative blogger claimed that METR’s funding came from a co-investor in Anthropic.