Anthropic has launched a $200 million Economic Futures Research Fund to support external research on how to prepare society for the economic impacts of AI. The initiative aims to study interventions that can make the economy more flexible and resilient, ensure the benefits of AI are shared, and minimize potential harm from AI-driven disruption. The fund will prioritize five research areas, including shaping AI's impact on workers, equipping people for AI-driven transitions, modernizing income support, building worker stakes in growth, and generating new evidence on public investments.
The fund is part of a broader effort to address uncertainties surrounding AI's economic effects, which are expected to evolve faster than traditional research cycles can keep pace with. Anthropic emphasized the need for empirical evidence on interventions that could work in an AI-transformed economy, particularly those that make the economy more flexible and resilient. The fund will support large-scale randomized control trials, creative pilots, and program evaluations to expand understanding of what shows promise and in which contexts.
Anthropic outlined its research priorities, including field experiments to study AI integration in workplaces, evaluations of retraining and job placement programs, and assessments of income support for displaced workers. The fund is global in scope, with a focus on U.S.-centric directions due to the company's headquarters in San Francisco and the widespread use of Claude in the United States. Proposals will be accepted from accredited universities, research institutes, and nonprofits with a track record of running field experiments at scale.
Source: anthropic
