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Hunter Ash@ArtemisConsort · Sep 15, 2026

METR is the EA doomer AI safety NGO that Dario wants to install as political commissars with employee-level access in…

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Summary

A critical analysis of METR's leadership, characterizing the AI safety organization as an ideologically homogenous group of predominantly Oxford/Cambridge-educated, foreign-born EA members seeking to establish oversight positions in US AI labs. The thread argues this represents an extension of British and EU regulatory overreach and anti-growth ideology.

Summarized by ThreadOut AI from the full thread. May miss nuance — read the thread below.

  1. #1

    METR is the EA doomer AI safety NGO that Dario wants to install as political commissars with employee-level access in every frontier lab. So let’s meet them: 🧵

  2. #2

    Beth Barnes, Founder and CEO: British, founded the EA society at Exeter. In a 2016 TED talk, she advocated for open borders, saying our descendants would judge us because “we still think it’s acceptable to bar people from having a particular job or from entering a particular location based on where they happen to be born — their nationality.”

  3. #3

    Ajeya Cotra, technical staff: wife of Paul Christiano, founder of METR's parent organization. "I'm an EA, a rationalist, and a woman". Endorses "radical empathy"

  4. #4

    Pip Arnott (they/them), technical staff: Oxford alum

  5. #5

    Hjalmar Wijk, chief scientist: Oxford alum

  6. #6

    Megan Kinniment, technical staff: Oxford alum

  7. #7

    Jasmine Dhaliwal, policy staff: former British diplomat

  8. #8

    METR is ideologically homogenous, largely foreign-born or foreign-educated, and intellectually incestuous. They are an outgrowth of a particular EA subculture at Oxford and Cambridge with a niche and unusual set of values.

  9. #9

    METR's attempt to become the priest-caste over US Al companies should be seen as an extension of the general British and EU tendency to regulate what they cannot build. UK elites try to control American speech through the Online Safety Act. METR capture of American labs would be the equivalent for AI.

  10. #10

    UK elites regulated their own society into the ground as American prosperity skyrocketed. Rather than learn the lesson, they and their US counterparts want to impose the same neurotic anti-growth ideology on us.