OpenAI said on Aug. 18 it will support 14 research and empirical projects worldwide studying expanded economic opportunity and stronger social resilience as AI advances. In South Korea, Yonsei University was selected as the research institution.

OpenAI will provide a total of $1 million (about 1.4 billion won) in research funding for 14 projects in the United States, the European Union, Brazil, Singapore and South Korea. It will also provide up to $1 million in OpenAI API credits. The selected projects will run for six months.

The research topics fall broadly into expanding economic opportunity through AI and ways to strengthen social resilience during AI development.

In the economic opportunity track, researchers will study how the productivity gains and economic benefits brought by AI can be broadly shared by workers, companies and regions. In the social resilience track, topics include AI safety, information sharing between countries and responsible use of AI in public policy.

In South Korea, Yonsei University will carry out a project on "democratic accountability using AI." It will use AI to analyse National Assembly meeting minutes and other records to assess how faithfully the legislature checks and supervises the government. Multiple researchers plan to independently verify the analysis results.

The supported work includes not only research reports and policy models, but also prototypes that can be tested, datasets and the development of evaluation systems. More than 400 individuals and organisations submitted proposals for the call.

The programme is a follow-up plan to OpenAI's "industrial policy for the intelligence era," announced in June. At the time, OpenAI said it would support research in which outside institutions test policy ideas and develop new alternatives to broadly share the benefits of advanced AI.

The results of the selected projects are expected to be released in 2027.

Lee Sang-hyun (이상현), OpenAI's head of Asia-Pacific external affairs, said he hopes the findings will be used to help governments and societies design policies suited to local conditions and broaden public discussion on economic opportunity and social resilience in the AI era.