New policy ideas for the Intelligence Age

OpenAI is awarding grants to 14 projects led by independent organizations to promote economic opportunity and societal resilience as AI advances. The grants follow through on a commitment we made when we published Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age in April 2026: to support others in testing, challenging, and building on the ideas we put forward to ensure that advanced AI benefits everyone.

AI is quickly becoming more capable, with the potential to transform how people learn, create, and participate in the economy. Its reach is also expanding: ChatGPT is used by 1 billion people around the world, across geographies, income levels, and demographic groups. Users span every major age group; we have more adult users both under and over the age of 30 than any other frontier lab.

But broad access to the technology is only part of the equation. Whether AI ultimately serves the many rather than the few will also depend on the choices societies make about how to deploy it and distribute its benefits. If the benefits of the Intelligence Age are going to be broadly shared, the policy response needs to be as ambitious as the technological change itself—and that means calling for new approaches rather than adjustments to existing policy.

These choices should not be made by technology companies alone. In democratic societies, they should be shaped through democratic institutions and public debate. Independent research and policy organizations play an especially important role: they can develop and test new approaches, challenge assumptions—including ours—and serve as laboratories for ideas that governments can adapt to their own communities and circumstances.