Anthropic’s Amodei proposes continuous evaluator access for AI firms

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has laid out a plan to embed independent third-party evaluators directly inside AI laboratories, giving them the kind of access typically reserved for full-time employees. The proposal, outlined in a September 12, 2026 essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” represents one of the most concrete self-governance commitments an AI company has made to date. What Anthropic is actually offering Under the proposed model, external reviewers would receive desks at Anthropic’s offices, company access badges, and laptops. They would function with a level of integration typically associated with internal staff, maintaining ongoing access to the company’s AI development environments rather than parachuting in for periodic check-ups. Perhaps the most notable piece of the commitment: evaluators would be able to publish their findings with minimal redaction and without Anthropic exercising editorial control over the results. Amodei specifically named METR, an AI safety evaluation organization, as a potential embedded evaluator under this framework. The shift from episodic to continuous evaluation is the key architectural change here. Traditional third-party audits ...