​​Laws encode values and norms to regulate behavior. Beyond a legal framework, AI, much like society, needs more intricate and adaptive guidelines for its conduct. For example: under what conditions should AI systems condemn or criticize public figures, given different opinions across groups regarding those figures? How should disputed views be represented in AI outputs? Should AI by default reflect the persona of a median individual in the world, the user’s country, the user’s demographic, or something entirely different? No single individual, company, or even country should dictate these decisions.

AGI⁠ should benefit all of humanity and be shaped to be as inclusive as possible. We are launching this grant program to take a first step in this direction. We are seeking teams from across the world to develop proof-of-concepts for a democratic process that could answer questions about what rules AI systems should follow. We want to learn from these experiments, and use them as the basis for a more global, and more ambitious process going forward. While these initial experiments are not (at least for now) intended to be binding for decisions, we hope that they explore decision relevant questions and build novel democratic tools that can more directly inform decisions in the future.

The governance of the most powerful systems⁠, as well as decisions regarding their deployment, must have strong public oversight. This grant represents a step to establish democratic processes for overseeing AGI and, ultimately, superintelligence. It will be provided by the OpenAI non-profit organization, and the results of the studies will be freely accessible.

By “democratic process,” we mean a process in which a broadly representative group of peopleA exchange opinions, engage in deliberative discussions,B and ultimately decide on an outcome via a transparent decision making process.C There are many ways such a process could be structured—we encourage applicants to be innovative, building off known methodologies, and coming up with wholly new approaches. Examples of creative approaches that inspire us include Wikipedia⁠(opens in a new window), Twitter Community Notes⁠(opens in a new window), DemocracyNext⁠(opens in a new window), Platform Assemblies⁠(opens in a new window), MetaGov⁠(opens in a new window), RadicalxChange⁠(opens in a new window), People Powered⁠(opens in a new window), Collective Response Systems⁠(opens in a new window), and pol.is⁠(opens in a new window). Another notable ongoing effort is led by the Collective Intelligence Project⁠(opens in a new window) (CIP), with whom we are partnering on public input to AI, contributing to their upcoming Alignment Assemblies⁠(opens in a new window). We also encourage applicants to envision how AI could enhance⁠(opens in a new window) the democratic process. For example, AI could enable⁠(opens in a new window) more efficient communication among numerous people.