AI governance and model risk
How institutions establish responsibility for AI systems, evaluate their performance, and determine acceptable risk.
Research Program 02
AI, Data, and Public Policy
AI, data, and public governance
Examines how AI develops through markets and institutions, and how its use changes economic activity, public authority, and social life.
AI policy requires analysis of institutions, markets, and technical systems.
Artificial intelligence depends on technical infrastructure and the organizations that control its development and use. Those arrangements determine what systems can be built, who can deploy them, and under what conditions.
Research examines how organizations govern AI and how automated systems alter institutional practice. It also studies how markets shape technological development and how public institutions build the capacity to use AI responsibly.
Areas of inquiry
Core research domains
Data privacy and governance
How institutions govern access to data and how those arrangements shape privacy, responsibility, and technological capability.
Public-sector AI
How public institutions incorporate AI into administrative practice and how those systems change institutional capacity and accountability.
AI Markets, Industry, and Institutions
How economic institutions organize the resources required to develop AI, and how control over those resources shapes competition and technological capability.
Research agenda
Guiding questions
What evidence and oversight should institutions require before deploying consequential AI systems?
How do institutional rules for data shape privacy and access, and with what consequences for technological capability?
Under what conditions does AI strengthen public institutions, and how does its use change administrative capacity and accountability?
How do economic institutions shape which AI technologies are developed, who can build them, and who captures their benefits?
How do computing and energy infrastructures, together with supply chains, constrain AI development and deployment?
How does AI reorganize work and organizations, and how do those changes affect markets and public authority?
Cross-cutting research
AI Infrastructure
AI development depends on infrastructures that connect computing capacity with industrial and organizational capability. Access to these systems shapes who can develop AI and at what scale.
Compute and semiconductors
How access to computing capacity shapes entry into AI development and the distribution of technological capability.
Data centers and energy
How the physical demands of computing connect AI development to energy systems and infrastructure investment.
Cloud and supply chains
How infrastructure dependencies shape access, resilience, and organizational capability.
Technical labor and capabilities
How specialized expertise and organizational learning affect the capacity to develop and evaluate AI systems in practice.
Across the Institute
Connected research
AI intersects with research across the Institute because its development depends on institutions that also shape economic, industrial, military, and regulatory change.
Innovation and Economics
Examines how economic institutions shape AI investment and adoption, and how AI changes productivity and competition.
→Manufacturing Technologies
Examines how industrial capability makes AI infrastructure possible and how AI changes production systems.
→Military Technologies
Examines how military organizations incorporate AI into operational practice and how that process changes military capability and strategic choice.
→Regulation and Society
Examines how regulatory institutions shape AI development and how AI creates new problems of accountability and public authority.
→Research outputs
Research and publications
Explore Institute publications connected to AI as a technological system embedded in economic and public institutions.
Explore publicationsCollaboration
Work with the Institute
The Institute welcomes collaboration with researchers and institutions working on technology and public policy.
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