An ex-OpenAI researcher's influential nonprofit is now smack in the middle of AI's doom debate

METR's president, Chris Painter, and CEO, Beth Barnes.

METR METR, a Berkeley lab started by an ex-OpenAI researcher, has grown into a prominent AI umpire.

The nonprofit works with OpenAI, Anthropic, and governments to evaluate cutting-edge models.

Anthropic researcher Joe Benton announced this week that he has left to join METR.

Beth Barnes, one of the AI industry's most influential watchdogs, said in July she was struggling to hire talented researchers to monitor AI's risks.

That has begun to change.

Researcher Joe Benton announced this week that he had left Anthropic for Barnes' nonprofit METR, writing that he worries about "extinction-level risks" from the tech.

The comments came after Jacob Coxon , another researcher, stoked those fears nationwide with a viral post announcing his own departure from Anthropic and accusing the top AI labs of "gambling with our lives." METR, all of a sudden, is in the middle of AI's biggest story.

Formed in 2022, it had already worked closely with OpenAI, Anthropic , Google, and Meta to study the tech's quickly changing capabilities.

This summer, researchers from the nonprofit investigated a security incident at OpenAI , and now plan to look into security issues at Anthropic, relying on internal access granted by each company.

"The public should know whether AI development is headed down a dangerous path," Jasmine Dhaliwal, a member of policy staff, said Friday.

"That is core to our mission: to provide independent, scientific assessment of AI capabilities, alignment, and control measures." Benton isn't alone in jumping ship from a tech juggernaut to the Berkeley-based organization.

Josh Engels, an AI safety researcher, also recently joined METR (Model Evaluation and Threat Research) from Google DeepMind.

Barnes left OpenAI to start the nonprofit in 2022 and sees such fierce competition for AI researchers that even METR's lofty salaries, which reach $503,000 on current job postings, don't address the nonprofit's talent shortage.