Anthropic buys its own safety audit while calling for pooled or government funding

The company being evaluated is writing the cheque, and Anthropic's release treats that as temporary. "Long-term, we think funding should come from pooled or government sources, as we called for in our Advanced AI Framework in June," Anthropic said. It added that "as neither exists today, we plan to work with different evaluators under different funding arrangements" ^[9][10]. Anthropic said there is no existing system for funding independent evaluation ^[11]. It also said it is still responsible for the safety of its models, and that working with embedded evaluators will not reduce its accountability ^[12].

The two published accounts of the commitment do not agree on its size. Cointelegraph reported that Anthropic and Accenture each expect to invest at least $1 billion in the project over the next five years ^[6]. CNBC reported that both had agreed to invest at least $1 billion toward "building capacity in this area" over the same five years, without splitting the figure ^[7]. One billion over five years is $200 million a year; two of them is $400 million ^[1][2]. The weaker version of this reading is the smaller number. If $1 billion is the combined total, Anthropic's own share runs well under $200 million a year, and the money looks like seed funding for a practice instead of a standing cost. Either way the figure is now public. As CNBC put it, many questioned what Amodei's proposal would mean in practice as Anthropic gears up for what is widely expected to be a blockbuster IPO ^[19].

Accenture's case rests on work Faculty already does. The company said Faculty, its specialist AI business, is expert in testing and evaluating models for some of the world's leading AI labs and in building complex AI systems that are safe and ethical by design ^[15]. "Embedded evaluation is an emerging area, and we look forward to partnering with Anthropic to help accelerate the development of embedded evaluators," said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture. Sweet said embedded evaluators are "an important part of the safety landscape going forward" ^[16].

Whether anyone else buys the service is unsettled. Sam Altman and Elon Musk responded positively to Amodei's proposal; Jensen Huang did not, and argued that such regulation was not necessary ^[18]. According to CNBC, Anthropic and OpenAI have been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks after a growing chorus of researchers warned about the potential for AI to cause catastrophic harm ^[22].

I would treat this as one lab buying a service that so far has one customer. Accenture's money is the speculative half of the deal: capital committed to a capability before a second buyer has signed ^[6][15]. Anthropic said the details of how the work will happen are still being worked out, as embedded evaluation is new ^[5].