An independent panel graded nine AI companies on safety. The best grade in the industry was a C+.
Key takeaways
- The Future of Life Institute's Summer 2026 AI Safety Index graded nine companies across six categories: risk assessment, current harms, safety frameworks, existential safety, governance and.
- 139 live listings in this category publish a rate, at a median top-of-range of $80 an hour and a ceiling of $250.
- The work is remote contract work, asynchronous, with no set hours and no guaranteed volume.
- Applications screen on a short skills assessment rather than a resume or interview.
What was reported
The finding
The Future of Life Institute's Summer 2026 AI Safety Index graded nine companies across six categories: risk assessment, current harms, safety frameworks, existential safety, governance and accountability, and information sharing. No company scored above C+. Anthropic led with C+ (2.66), followed by OpenAI at C (2.28) and Google DeepMind at C (2.01). Meta scored D+ (1.32), Z.ai (0.88) and Alibaba Cloud (0.87) landed at D minus, and xAI (0.65), DeepSeek (0.47) and Mistral (0.33) received failing grades. The review was conducted by an independent panel of seven researchers and governance experts.
The Future of Life Institute's Summer 2026 index scored across six categories and produced Anthropic at C+ (2.66 out of 4), OpenAI at C (2.28), Google DeepMind at C (2.01), Meta at D+ (1.32), and outright failing grades for xAI (0.65), DeepSeek (0.47) and Mistral (0.33). Seven named researchers and governance experts conducted the review.
What the listings pay
Read as a job market signal rather than a scandal, it is unambiguous. An industry where the leader scores 2.66 out of 4 on safety has a very large amount of safety work left to do, and it is buying that work.
| # | Role | Advertised rate | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cybersecurity Research Expert, Offensive Security & Vulnerability Research | $200 to $250 an hour | Mercor |
| 2 | Structural Biologist (Protein Design, AI Evaluation) | $150 to $220 an hour | Mercor |
| 3 | Multilingual Primary Care Physician (MD): Clinical Documentation & AI Evaluation | $170 to $190 an hour | Mercor |
| 4 | Medical Safety Expert | $140 to $190 an hour | Mercor |
| 5 | Multilingual Inpatient Hospitalist (MD): Clinical Documentation & AI Evaluation | $170 to $170 an hour | Mercor |
| 6 | Child & Adolescent Mental Health Clinical Advisor (AI Safety Benchmark Project) | $80 to $150 an hour | Mercor |
| 7 | LLM Research Scientist (Pre-training & Computer Vision & Adversarial Robustness) | $100 to $120 an hour | Mercor |
| 8 | BI dashboards / performance reporting Evaluator | $80 to $120 an hour | Dorado |
| 9 | AI Red-Teamer - Adversarial AI Testing (Advanced) | $50 to $120 an hour | Mercor |
| 10 | Governance & Trust - Safety Specialist | $45 to $120 an hour | Mercor |
Source: 139 live listings on this board that publish a rate, read directly from each posting on 2026-09-06. Listings without a published rate are excluded rather than estimated.
How this compares across the board
A rate only means something next to the alternatives. This is every category we track with at least five listings publishing a rate, ranked by median top-of-range, so you can see where this work sits rather than taking a single number on trust.
| Category | Listings | Median low | Median top | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legal | 95 | $100 | $140 | $400 |
| Medical | 68 | $77 | $120 | $400 |
| Consulting | 45 | $80 | $120 | $280 |
| Finance | 94 | $80 | $110 | $280 |
| Engineering | 114 | $70 | $100 | $300 |
| Research/PhD | 132 | $70 | $90 | $280 |
| Writing | 36 | $40 | $80 | $280 |
| Bilingual | 78 | $44 | $52 | $120 |
| Annotation | 25 | $12 | $24 | $120 |
Same source and date as above. Categories are matched on listing title, so a role can appear in more than one.
What it means for you
Across 139 live safety, red teaming and evaluation listings on our board that publish a rate, the median top-of-range is $80 an hour, reaching $250. Most do not require security certifications; adversarial thinking and domain depth matter more. See AI safety roles.
Who should apply
Two checks before you spend time on an application. Confirm the role accepts applicants from your country with the eligibility checker, since a meaningful share of listings carry location requirements. Then run the advertised rate through the take-home calculator, because this is contract work and the headline figure is before self-employment tax.
Applications complete on the hiring platform and usually take a few minutes, with a short skills assessment in place of an interview. Fill in every credential, language and professional background field on your profile. Those are what route you to the better paid listings, and most applicants leave them blank.
Frequently asked questions
Who ran the AI Safety Index?
The Future of Life Institute, with an independent panel of seven researchers and governance experts, grading nine companies across six safety categories.
What were the scores?
Anthropic C+ (2.66), OpenAI C (2.28), Google DeepMind C (2.01), Meta D+ (1.32), Z.ai and Alibaba Cloud D minus, and xAI, DeepSeek and Mistral failing.
What does safety work pay?
Across 139 live safety and evaluation listings publishing a rate, the median top-of-range is $80 an hour, reaching $250.
Do I need a security background?
Usually not. Adversarial creativity and depth in a domain matter more, and many listings are open to people without formal security credentials.
What does the work involve?
Probing model behaviour to find failures, documenting them precisely enough to be fixed, and evaluating whether responses would be harmful in context.
Sources
See every live role
The full board updates several times a week, with the advertised rate on each listing and closed roles removed.