Can people at AI labs speak up? Each square rates what's publicly known about one lab's staff contracts. Tap a square to see the evidence.
Scroll sideways to see all five labs. Use the arrow keys when the grid is focused.
“Meets” needs a written policy or the contract wording. One public statement, such as an interview comment or a statement reported in the press, earns “Partly” at most. “Falls short” can rest on credible reporting, such as a news report quoting staff. When it does, the evidence says so and includes the lab’s response.
Public evidence only
Can people who work at AI labs tell the public when something's wrong? Lab Canary checks what's publicly known about lab contracts and speak-up policies against a simple standard: protect real secrets, never gag criticism or whistleblowing.
Click a tile to see the evidence. Click a lab's name for its summary.
Goals
The scorecard is a start, not the point. Here's what Lab Canary is pushing for.
- Labs publish their terms. Every lab publishes its standard employment, exit and equity terms and its speak-up policy, so no one has to guess.
- Labs adopt the standard. Every lab meets all seven clauses. The model wording below is there so saying yes is easy.
- Labs say so, and keep saying so. Each lab posts a dated statement that it meets the standard and renews it every quarter. If a statement goes missing, that says something too.
- Someone independent checks. A whistleblowing lawyer reads each lab's terms and confirms they match what the lab says.
- People ask before they sign. Anyone offered a job at a lab can check its terms here and ask about anything that's missing before they sign.
The standard
Seven principles a lab's staff contracts should meet, and the yardstick for this scorecard. Each comes with draft model wording a lab could adopt, so saying yes is easy. The wording hasn't been reviewed by a lawyer yet and isn't legal advice. Employment law differs between countries, so anyone drafting or signing a contract should get their own lawyer.
Show the seven clauses
The evidence
| Lab | Clause | Rating | Evidence | Sources and dates |
|---|
Updates
Ratings change when labs publish their terms or new evidence comes out. Every change is listed here, newest first.
Follow the changes
One email when a rating changes, nothing else. Any address is fine. You don't need to use a work one. What happens to my email?
https://labcanary.com/feed.xml
Paste the link into a feed reader, such as Feedly, Inoreader or NetNewsWire, and each change will show up there. No email address needed.
Coming soon
What I'm working on next. None of this is live yet, and some of it depends on other people saying yes.
- A free contract check for lab staff. I'm hoping to connect anyone at a lab with whistleblowing lawyers who can look over their NDA for free.
- A safe way to share your contract. Contracts would go straight to the lawyers, not to me, so they stay legally protected. I'd only see anonymised findings and update the ratings from those. Until this exists, please still don't send me anything.
- A lawyer's read of the standard. Whistleblowing lawyers review the seven clauses and the model wording. That includes the difference between a non-disparagement clause you sign when you join and one in a voluntary exit deal, and when losing equity is fair.
- A canary statement tracker. Each lab's dated statement that it meets the standard, shown here, with a flag when one goes missing or out of date.
- Private checks for labs. A lab that doesn't want to publish everything could share its terms with an independent lawyer, who confirms here whether they meet the standard.
- Why this should work. A short write-up of how a scorecard can lead to better contracts, and what would count as a win.
- Faster updates. An automated check for news about each lab's terms, so new evidence shows up here sooner. Every change will still be checked by hand against a public source.
- Support to keep going. Funding so I can keep this running for at least the next year, and a copy of the site hosted with a whistleblowing organisation.
- A way to chip in. A small tip jar to cover the domain and running costs.
- A sister site for countries. Rating countries on their AI policy, with an easy way to write to your MP about it.
How opting in works
1. Publish your terms
A lab shares its standard employment, exit and equity terms (redacted is fine) plus its speak-up policy.
2. Get scored
Each clause gets a rating, with the exact wording that earned it.
3. Shown here
Opted-in labs are marked. Everyone else stays rated on public evidence only.
Q&A
“Why did you make this?”
Hi, I'm Johnny. I made this after reading a BBC report where a Google DeepMind engineer said, "In principle I'm not allowed to criticise Google for the duration of my life", and wondering how the other labs compare. It's a rough first version that I built quickly with help from Claude. To be upfront: I've applied for jobs and fellowships at Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind, and nobody pays for this site. Every lab is rated on public evidence under the same rules, and every rating links to its source, but I'll have got some things wrong. If you spot one, open an issue on GitHub with a public source.
“How is this different from AI Lab Watch, the FLI AI Safety Index or AIWI?”
Those mostly look at policies and safety practice. This looks at what’s publicly known about the contracts: non-disparagement, equity, NDAs and confidentiality. AIWI’s Publish Your Policies campaign is the closest, and I cite it a lot.
“Anthropic and OpenAI are top. Are you tied to them?”
Fair question. I’ve applied for jobs and fellowships at Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind, and I say so in why I made this. Nobody pays for it, and I don’t own shares in any AI lab. Both are only on 43%, and almost every rating is “Partly”. They’re top because they’ve published more, not because their terms are known to be good.
“Not public = fail is unfair.”
I went back and forth on it. Treating it as neutral rewards publishing nothing. It’s a score for openness, not a finding that the terms are bad, and the labs control what’s published, so they can fix it. The site shows “Not public” separately so you can see the gap.
“Why these seven clauses?”
They’re the bits of a contract that decide whether someone can speak up: what they can say, what they lose if they do, and who they can tell. Happy to hear if one’s unfair or something’s missing.
“How can you rate contracts you haven’t seen?”
Mostly I can’t, and the site says so. 18 of 35 are “Not public”. The rest come from published policies, public statements and reporting, each linked. Staff who joined or left at different times may have signed different versions, so a rating is about the latest public terms, not every contract still in force.
“Why do Anthropic and OpenAI have the same score?”
Equal weights. They get to 43% differently, and the site breaks it down.
“US law already bans some of this.”
Some of it, in some places, for some disclosures. A clause can be unenforceable and still stop people talking, because most people won’t test it. Saying it plainly in the contract is the point of C4.
“What’s the site made of, and where does it run?”
One HTML page and two data files, ratings.json and criteria.json, plus update feeds made from the ratings file. There’s no server, database or login. It’s hosted on Cloudflare Pages and the domain is registered with Cloudflare. All the code and every rating are public on GitHub under the MIT licence, with a history of every change. I built it with help from Claude.
“Who pays for it?”
Nobody. I pay for the domain, about $10 a year, and the hosting is free. There are no ads.
“What do you track?”
I want to see how people use the page so I can make it better. Cloudflare Web Analytics and PostHog (hosted in the EU) count visits, and PostHog also records sessions on this page: clicks, scrolling and mouse movement. Neither sets cookies, PostHog doesn’t keep IP addresses, and nothing you type is recorded. Recordings are deleted after 30 days. I don’t sell or share any of it.
“Do you keep my email?”
Only if you sign up for updates. Your address is stored with Buttondown, the newsletter service, and only used to email you when a rating changes. You confirm by email first, every email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing deletes your address. I don’t sell or share it. Use any address you like: you don’t need to use a work one.
“Can I send you my contract, or a tip?”
Please don’t. The point is to get labs to publish their terms, not to collect leaks. I only use public evidence, so I’d delete anything confidential without using it, and sending it to a website probably isn’t legally protected. Worried about your own terms? Protect gives free, confidential whistleblowing advice in the UK, and Psst.org offers tech and AI workers a legally privileged conversation with a lawyer.
“How do I get in touch, or fix a mistake?”
Email hello@labcanary.com. Please don’t send contracts or anything confidential. If a rating is wrong or missing, you can also open an issue on GitHub with a link to a public source, so everyone can see the change and why. Labs can do the same, or publish their terms and opt in.