What AI Objectives Institute does

AI Objectives Institute (AOI) is a US-domiciled non-profit research institute founded in 2019 by the late Dr. Peter Eckersley, internet pioneer and former EFF technology director. AOI conducts applied research on AI alignment, institutional design, and democratic deliberation, organizing its work around four research areas: Governance with AI (scaling cooperation), Alignment of Markets/AI/Other Optimizers, Human (Dis)empowerment and Structural Risks, and AI in the Global Supply Chain. Its core deliverable is Talk to the City (T3C), an open-source LLM deliberation tool that ingests unstructured qualitative data (text, survey responses from Pol.is, and video interviews), extracts positions via frontier LLMs, clusters arguments, and exposes interactive visualization plus cluster-representative chatbots for policymakers and the public. Complementary outputs include the AOI Whitepaper, a research blog, the Open Agency Architecture (a framework for bounded, human-overseen AI components), and the AI Supply Chain Observatory program. Supporting technology is multimodal (text, structured survey data, video), and deployments have been delivered with Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs, the Youth Water Alliance in Australia, blockchain governance pilots, AGI lab research surveys, and US community re-entry organizations.

The organization operates on a non-profit, grant-and-donation-funded model: T3C is free, research is openly published, and there is no commercial pricing. Its go-to-market is community-led, executed through working groups of academics, scientists, economists, and government officials, plus open-source distribution at talktothe.city and direct partnership deployments with government and civil society organizations. Primary customer segments are governments and policymakers seeking public-input tooling, AI safety and governance researchers, civil society organizations, and AI labs and tech companies needing alignment and coordination instruments. Geographic operating footprint spans the United States (San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles), the United Kingdom (London, King's College London affiliation), Taiwan (Taipei, MoDA and g0v integrations), and Australia (YWA deployment).

Leadership transitions and structure: Following founder Peter Eckersley's passing in 2023, Colleen McKenzie (formerly of Google, Center for Humane Technology, and Kalix Systems) was appointed Executive Director in April 2024, with Değer Turan as President. The board includes Tasha McCauley (former OpenAI board, GeoSim Systems), Timothy Telleen-Lawton (former Head of Procurement at Anthropic), and Anders Sandberg (Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, 2006-2024). Advisors include David Dalrymple (Open Agency Architecture, Protocol Labs), Brian Christian (UC Berkeley), Aviv Ovadya (Harvard Berkman Klein), Max Wainwright (Metaculus), and Orowa Sikder (Anthropic).

Name

AI Objectives Institute

Legal name

AI Objectives Institute

Website

https://ai.objectives.institute

Company type

Private

Founded year

2019

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

AI Objectives Institute is a US non-profit research institute that builds the open-source Talk to the City deliberation tool and conducts research on AI alignment, market/institutional design, and gradual disempowerment, serving governments, civil society, and AI safety researchers worldwide.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Collective Intelligence Software

NAICS

Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

Third-Party Model/Vendor Risk & Supply-Chain Assurance (HDAAAMAK)

akta.pro secondary industry

Enterprise Architecture & IT Operating Model (BPAHAEAB)

Keywords

• AI alignment research
• Deliberation tools
• AI safety governance
• Collective intelligence software
• Open-source LLM tools

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Research Grants and Philanthropic Funding: AOI operates as a non-profit research lab relying on grants, donations, and philanthropic funding. Founded by Dr. Peter Eckersley with support from various backers including technology leaders who have funded neuroscience and AI safety research.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

AOI is a non-profit research institute that develops open-source tools like Talk to the City (T3C), an LLM-powered deliberation platform for scaling collective decision-making by analyzing qualitative data and clustering arguments. The organization also conducts research on AI alignment, market optimization, and governance frameworks across four research areas: Governance with AI, Alignment of Markets/AI/Optimizers, Human Disempowerment and Structural Risks, and AI in the Global Supply Chain.

Product overview

AI Objectives Institute (AOI) is a non-profit research institute focused on ensuring AI and economic systems align with human interests. The organization operates as a research incubator with multiple interconnected products and research areas. The core product is Talk to the City (T3C), an open-source LLM deliberation tool for scaling collective decision-making. Supporting products include the AOI Whitepaper (foundational research document), the Research Blog (ongoing publication of research findings), and the Open Agency Architecture (research framework for safe AI adoption). AOI's work spans four broad research categories: Governance with AI (scaling cooperation through Talk to the City), Alignment of Markets/AI/Other Optimizers (exploring economic and AI alignment parallels), Human Disempowerment and Structural Risks (examining gradual AI risks), and AI in the Global Supply Chain (observatory program). The organization also conducts specialized programs including Moral Learning and incentive modeling using LLMs.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Talk to the City (T3C): An open-source LLM interface and deliberation tool for improving collective decision-making by analyzing qualitative data and aggregating responses into clusters.
• AI and Transformations of Capitalism Working Group

Products and services

• Talk to the City (T3C) An open-source LLM deliberation tool that improves collective decision-making by analyzing detailed, qualitative data. It aggregates responses, arranges similar arguments into clusters, and generates interactive reports and chatbots representing specific viewpoints. Used by governments and civil society organizations to scale democratic deliberation.
• AOI Whitepaper Foundational research document outlining AOI's research agenda for aligning AI, markets, and institutions with human flourishing, covering three main research areas and the sociotechnical stack approach.
• Research Blog Ongoing publication of research articles covering topics including AI governance, market alignment, collective deliberation, moral learning, and labor market impacts of AI.

Quantifiable outcome

• Talk to the City analyzed 85 hour-long video interviews for Youth Water Alliance Australia
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers6 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability9 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core, key case study, key partner, pilot partner, infrastructure partner, collaborator, integration partner, academic partner and community partner.

• MetaGovcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 13 December 2023Collaboration between AOI and MetaGov for the LLM-powered incentive modeling project. Project PIs: Bruno Marnette (AOI) and Philipp Zahn (MetaGov, 20squares). Intended to be co-hosted by both non-profits for joint research on modeling incentives at scale.
• Youth Water Alliance (YWA), Australiakey case studyStrategic or Co-development PartnerYWA deployed Talk to the City as one of their research platforms for amplifying youth voices in Australia. The platform's key innovation was its interactive visualization interface that bridged large-scale data collection with qualitative insight.
• Taiwan Ministry of Digital Affairs (MoDA)key partnerStrategic or Co-development PartnerZoey Tseng from AOI played key role in deploying Talk to the City for MoDA's web3 and AI-related projects. Taiwan integration builds on existing vTaiwan project for democratic deliberation.
• Mina Protocolspilot partnerStrategic or Co-development PartnerEarly testing partner for Talk to the City prototype. Testing deployment for collective deliberation on new blockchain protocols using the open-source toolkit.
• OpenAI and Anthropicinfrastructure partnerTechnology or IntegrationTalk to the City is based on OpenAI and Anthropic's LLMs, donated for this research project. These frontier models power the deliberation tool's analysis capabilities.
• Collective Intelligence ProjectcollaboratorStrategic or Co-development PartnerReferenced in AI governance research as partner organization engaged in collective intelligence and deliberation work. Shared interest in democratic oversight and regulation of AI systems.
• vTaiwan Projectintegration partnerTechnology or IntegrationTalk to the City integration built on existing vTaiwan project infrastructure, analyzing free-form text responses of respondents' opinions in Taiwan's technological and democratic evolution.
• Polis/Pol.isintegration partnerTechnology or IntegrationTalk to the City integrates content from Pol.is deliberation platforms. Initial testing used publicly available Polis survey data alongside Mina Protocols deployment.
• King's College Londonacademic partnerStrategic or Co-development PartnerBouke Klein Teeselink serves as Senior Research Fellow at AOI and Assistant Professor in Economics at King's College London, enabling academic collaboration.
• g0v Community (Taiwan)community partnerStrategic or Co-development PartnerZoey Tseng actively involved in the g0v community, a civic technology community in Taiwan. Conducted research on designing government funding mechanisms for open-source projects.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Partnership on AI: Multi-stakeholder organization researching AI safety, fairness, and coordination; shares AOI's focus on AI labs coordination, governance frameworks, and collective deliberation, and previously employed AOI advisor Max Wainwright.
• AI Now Institute: Policy research institute examining the social implications of AI, including governance, accountability, and labor impacts; overlaps with AOI's sociotechnical agenda on AI institutional risk and disempowerment research.
• Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI): Research organization studying AI governance, policy, and existential risk; AOI board member Tasha McCauley serves on its board, and the organizations operate in overlapping intellectual territory on AI alignment and policy.
• Metaculus: Crowd-sourced forecasting platform that improves collective prediction on AI timelines and policy; AOI president Değer Turan is a former Metaculus CEO, and AOI advisor Max Wainwright is Metaculus's co-founder and CTO, making the two organizations deeply connected.
• Pol.is: Open-source real-time deliberation platform that maps opinion clusters at scale; Talk to the City integrates Pol.is survey data as an input source, and the two are functionally adjacent for civic-tech deliberation deployments.
• Collective Intelligence Project: Civic-tech organization focused on collective intelligence, deliberation, and democratic oversight of AI; explicitly listed as an AOI collaborator on AI governance research and shares overlapping interests in democratic deliberation infrastructure.
• Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI): Academic research center studying value alignment, reward modeling, and cooperative inverse reinforcement learning; AOI advisor Brian Christian is a Berkeley visiting scholar and AOI's AI alignment research directly intersects CHAI's core agenda.

Broad incumbents

• Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI): Large, well-funded interdisciplinary AI research institute studying alignment, governance, and societal impact; overlaps with AOI's research on alignment of optimizers, governance with AI, and human empowerment.
• New America: Think tank with a technology and democracy portfolio covering AI policy, civic technology, and governance; comparable to AOI in producing policy-relevant research and advisory work for governments on technology and democracy.

Emerging players

• MIT Center for Constructive Communication: Research center developing tools and methods for constructive deliberation, deliberation quality, and large-scale public input — adjacent to AOI's Talk to the City work on scaling and structuring collective dialogue.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/AIObjectives
• Facebookfacebook.com/AIObjectivesInstitute
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/ai-objectives-institute

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles16 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about AI Objectives Institute