OpenAI announced the winners of its grant call to study the economic and societal effects of artificial intelligence and to develop responses to related disruptions. Details were first shared with Semafor.
Fourteen selected projects will share $1 million in direct funding and may receive up to an additional $1 million in credits to use OpenAI's models. The submissions were solicited earlier this year as part of a sweeping policy document released by OpenAI.
Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, said: “To democratize the benefits of the Intelligence Age, we need policy ideas as ambitious and transformative as the technology itself. Democracies need to decide how AI is deployed, and organizations like these can serve as laboratories of democracy that develop new ways to ensure AI’s gains reach the many, not just the few.”
Winners and project focus
Recipients include U.S.-based organizations across the political spectrum—such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Progressive Policy Institute, the Tax Foundation, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative—along with groups from Europe, Brazil, Singapore, and South Korea.
The projects vary in scope. The funding awarded to AEI will support a joint project between the conservative think tank and the liberal Urban Institute that focuses on AI-driven disruption of the American workforce. The Progressive Policy Institute plans to use its grant to design a new “person-based benefits system” appropriate for an AI-influenced economy.
According to OpenAI's blog post published Monday, all 14 projects are intended to “promote economic opportunity and societal resilience” during the AI era.
Why this matters
Combining cash grants with model credits allows academic and policy organizations to run practical tests and model-driven analyses. The diversity of grantees—across political viewpoints, regions, and organizational types—suggests OpenAI seeks a broad set of perspectives to illuminate the social and economic consequences of AI.
The initiative addresses how to distribute the benefits of rapid technological change more widely and which policy tools might mitigate harms or disruptions to labor markets and social support systems caused by AI.
