OpenAI Funds 14 Independent Research Projects on AI Economic and Labor Impact

My take: OpenAI selected 14 external research projects to study how artificial intelligence is changing employment, education, economic inequality, and public policy. The projects will collectively receive $1 million in funding and $1 million in model credits, with participants including the American Enterprise Institute, the Progressive Policy Institute, and organizations in Europe, Brazil, Singapore, and South Korea.

It is worth reading this with some perspective: OpenAI is selecting and funding research that measures the impact of its own tools. As an interested party in the results, it is worth reading the findings critically and giving more weight to studies that do not depend on the company that makes the product being measured. The researchers are external and independent, but whoever chooses which projects get funded is not.

What is genuinely useful is the direction: six of the 14 projects focus specifically on labor-market impacts, from wages to collective bargaining in economies as different as Brazil and South Korea. That confirms the question of what AI does to jobs is no longer speculation — it is a serious academic question with serious data behind it. Is your organization or sector already tracking those changes?