At an ex-OpenAI researcher’s influential lab, $500,000 salaries aren’t enough to fix a talent ‘bottleneck’

Beth Barnes, one of the AI industry’s most influential watchdogs, has a lot to worry about.

The ex-OpenAI researcher has shown that AI’s capabilities are escalating by the month. Now, she fears that the industry doesn’t have the staff in place to keep up with the technology in its next chapter.

The biggest barrier to that research is talent, said Barnes, who left OpenAI to start the nonprofit METR in 2022. METR, which stands for Model Evaluation and Threat Research, plays a crucial role in the AI industry by working closely with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta to provide independent answers about the tech’s quickly changing capabilities.

Yet…