OpenAI has selected Yonsei University to be among the participating institutions in the company's initiative of funding 14 independent research and pilot projects across universities, research institutes and policy organizations in the United States, the European Union, Brazil, Singapore and Korea.

Aimed at expanding economic opportunity and strengthening social resilience as artificial intelligence (AI) advances, the San Francisco-based AI company said Tuesday it will provide a combined $1 million in research funding and up to $1 million in OpenAI API credits across the 14 projects.

The initiative addresses two questions: How AI can broaden economic opportunity, and how societies can build resilience as AI capabilities advance. Projects on economic opportunity will study how workers, businesses and regions can more broadly share AI-driven productivity gains, while those on social resilience will examine AI safety, cross-border information sharing and responsible AI use in public policy.

In Korea, Yonsei University was selected to conduct a project on "democratic accountability using AI." Researchers will use AI to analyze National Assembly meeting records to assess how effectively the legislature checks and oversees the government, with findings independently verified by multiple researchers.

The funded work includes not only research reports and policy models but also prototypes, datasets and evaluation frameworks intended for real-world testing.

OpenAI said it received proposals from more than 400 individuals and organizations, and selected projects based on the feasibility, cost and responsible implementation of their proposed policy approaches.

The program follows up on OpenAI's Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age framework, published in June, in which the company said it would support external, independently operated institutions in testing policy ideas to help broaden the benefits of advanced AI.

OpenAI noted that ChatGPT is used by 1 billion people worldwide across a wide range of regions, income levels and age groups, and said decisions about how AI is used should be shaped through democratic deliberation rather than by technology companies alone. The selected projects will run for six months, with results to be published in 2027.

"We hope this research will help governments and societies design policies suited to local conditions and broaden public discussion of economic opportunity and social resilience in the AI era," said Lee Sang-hyun, OpenAI's head of Asia Pacific, Global Affairs.

"We hope Yonsei's research becomes an example of responsible AI use that contributes to the National Assembly and the development of Korean democracy."

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.