Lab Canary launches AI lab speech policy ratings
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Developer Johnny releases the website Lab Canary, which scores AI labs' employee contracts and speech policies based on public evidence, assessing whether they protect whistleblowing and prohibit using confidentiality clauses to suppress criticism. Ratings fall into four tiers: "Meets," "Partially Meets," "Does Not Meet," and "Undisclosed"; each item can be expanded to view the evidence source. Currently, both Anthropic and OpenAI are at 43%. Johnny says the website was built quickly with the help of Claude, uses only public evidence, and does not accept payment from labs. He says features such as email alerts for rating changes are not yet live, and some features depend on whether others agree; until then, do not send him materials. The website domain costs about $10 per year, which he pays himself, and hosting is free.
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- Hacker News AIShow HN: Lab Canary – Rating AI labs on whether their staff can speak up
Lab Canary is a public scorecard that rates what is publicly known about AI labs' staff contracts and speak-up policies against a seven-clause standard: protect real secrets, never gag criticism or whistleblowing. Ratings draw only on public evidence—published policies, public statements and credible reporting—with each rating linked to its source, and "Not public" is shown separately rather than treated as neutral. The site is a single HTML page with public data files on GitHub under the MIT licence, built by an author who discloses having applied for jobs at Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
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