Technology
By Julie Binoche
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Bankman-Fried's Fingerprints on AI Safety. Before FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried wasn't just running a crypto exchange. He was funding things.
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Amazon Brought METR In for a Pilot Review. Amazon ran a 2025 pilot review of its in-house AI model using METR. That's not a small thing.
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The Network Behind the Numbers. It's worth slowing down on the personal connections here because they're unusually dense.
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Amazon is sitting on a $190 billion stake in Anthropic. And buried inside that number is a connection most people haven't looked at closely enough.
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The investment breaks down into roughly $98 billion in convertible notes and $92 billion in non-voting preferred stock. Big money, clearly.
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METR didn't come out of nowhere. It grew out of the Alignment Research Center, which was led by Paul Christiano.
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So you've got an AI safety evaluator that was seeded by Bankman-Fried money, led by someone who came up alongside Anthropic's CEO, and staffed partly by people from the effective…
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More context: Crypto Venture Funding Soars to $5.7 Billion, But Stalls on New Startups
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But the independence question keeps coming up. Daniela Amodei, Anthropic's president, is deeply tied to the effective altruism movement.
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David Sacks, a former AI advisor, has raised concerns about METR's independence. U.S. officials more broadly have expressed skepticism about whether effective altruism's…
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It's worth slowing down on the personal connections here because they're unusually dense. Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano lived together.
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None of that is necessarily corrupt. People who care about AI safety tend to know each other — it's a small world.
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See also: Bitcoin Struggles Below $80,000 as Fed Projects 4.1% Rates Through 2027
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Amazon's commitment to Anthropic keeps growing as Anthropic's valuation climbs. That's not surprising — the company has been aggressive in its AI infrastructure bets.
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METR returned Bankman-Fried's $1.25 million. Good Ventures Foundation and Coefficient Giving stepped in. The evaluations continue.
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