Update on the OpenAI Foundation

去年秋天， OpenAI 宣布了其重组融资，为 OpenAI Foundation 获得大量资源铺平了道路。今天我们说明该基金会如何开始把这些资源投入到实际工作中。

我们的使命是确保更强大的 AI 能惠及全人类。这是一项多层面的事业。

AI 已经在改变人们的工作、学习和就医方式，并有望带来巨大的好处——更快的医学突破、加速的科学发现、更个性化的医疗和教育服务、新的创造与发明工具、更高的生产力与经济增长、以及更完善的公共服务如交通系统等。自成立以来，对这种潜力的信念一直引导着 OpenAI 。

但构建强大的系统以造福人类只是使命的一部分。更先进的 AI 模型也会带来新的挑战，这些挑战已经开始显现，我们必须准备好识别这些问题并开发应对之策。

因此，我们打造 OpenAI Foundation 的目标有两条：一是推动利用 AI 寻找解决人类最棘手问题的办法，改变人们的能力边界并在实际生活中带来切实利益；二是与合作伙伴一道，为潜在的新挑战做好准备，增强社会在 AI 发展下的韧性。

这项工作才刚刚起步。未来一年，随着我们迅速扩张， OpenAI Foundation 预计将在 一年内至少投入 10 亿美元，用于包括 Life Sciences & Curing Diseases 、就业与经济影响、 AI 韧性和社区项目在内的领域。这其中包括对我们此前宣布的 250 亿美元用于治愈疾病与 AI 韧性的承诺的早期投入。

接下来几个月，我们将在各个领域持续公布进展，通过新的资助和项目不断完善方法、推进使命。

Life Sciences & Curing Diseases

我们先从 Life Sciences & Curing Diseases 入手，因为我们认为 AI 在加速科学与医疗进展、挽救和改善生命方面潜力巨大。已有许多早期迹象表明 AI 在这些领域的能力：研究者正用 AI 更好地理解疾病、探索新的预防和治疗方式，并把实验室中的想法更快地推向患者。

在基金会内部，我们确立了三个初期重点领域，认为这些方向能带来实质性改变：

• AI for Alzheimer’s：阿尔茨海默病是家庭最痛心、医学上最难攻克的疾病之一。 AI 在跨复杂数据推理方面的能力，可能帮助研究者发现新见解。我们将与顶尖研究机构合作，初步聚焦绘制病理通路、发现用于临床护理和试验的生物标志物、加速治疗个性化进程——并在可能的情况下，探索已获 FDA 批准药物的再利用。
• Public Data for Health：医学上的许多重大进展都得益于共享的科学数据，数据的公开获取对于实现 AI 驱动的科学突破至关重要。我们将协助合作伙伴创建和扩展开放的高质量数据集，并在适当情况下审慎开放之前闭合的数据，使全球研究人员都能利用 AI 和数据推动各类疾病的进展。
• Accelerating Progress on High-Mortality and High-Burden Diseases：我们认为 AI 能推动科学突破，降低研发或再利用疗法的成本与风险，尤其是在那些高病死率、高负担但资金不足的疾病领域。我们将把 AI 研究者与疾病领域专家聚集起来，首先通过一次聚焦研讨会识别如何用 AI 工具赋能科学家，并发掘有前景的机会。

Jacob Trefethen 将担任 Head of Life Sciences and Curing Diseases，负责这项工作。他来自 Coefficient Giving ，在那里他监督了超过 5 亿美元用于科学与健康的资助。

就业与经济影响

AI 将改变工作的性质和经济格局——既带来机遇，也带来挑战。我们认识到这是极其重要的问题。基金会已开始与专家和社区接触——包括民间社会、小企业主、工会、领先经济学家、政策制定者等——以制定并资助切实可行的解决方案。我们打算把大量资源投入到最有前景的方法上，并将在未来数周公布更多细节。

AI 韧性

如先前所述， AI 韧性将成为我们的主要项目之一。这部分工作聚焦于随更强大 AI 而出现的新挑战，目的是让人们能充分从 AI 中受益，同时支持和扩展人的能动性、创造力与机会。

我们将首先聚焦若干已经显现影响风险且早期工作能产生实效的领域：

• AI 对儿童与青年的影响：我们希望确保 AI 工具对年轻人是安全的、能支持健康发展。为此我们会投资数据驱动的研究和评估，并跨领域合作，帮助确定合适的保护措施，以确保 AI 与儿童和青年之间的互动既安全又有益。
• 生物安全：我们希望强化社会应对潜在生物威胁（包括自然发生和由 AI 促成的疫情）的准备能力，改进检测、预防与缓解措施。
• AI 模型安全：我们希望让 AI 系统默认更安全。为此将支持独立测试与评估、推动更强的行业标准，并资助基础研究，以避免安全问题或在早期发现并解决它们。

OpenAI 的联合创始人 Wojciech Zaremba 将加入基金会，担任 Head of AI Resilience ，负责这部分工作。

支持社区

我们将很快公布最初的 People-First AI Fund 的最后一波资助，并说明下一步计划。

通过这项由我们 Nonprofit Commission 建议发起的工作，我们看到基于社区的组织在帮助人们应对 AI 驱动变化方面具有独特优势。这些高信任度的群体最贴近服务对象，并在基层开展关键工作。

我们将继续投资支持社区的项目，重点帮助人们理解 AI、从中受益并适应由此带来的变化。

团队建设

除 Wojciech 和 Jacob 外，我们正在组建团队以规模化推进工作。

四月中旬， Anna Makanju 将出任 Head of AI for Civil Society and Philanthropy ，负责推动基金会利用 AI 帮助非营利组织、非政府组织、慈善机构和更广泛的民间社会生态系统提升与扩大影响。 Anna 曾任 OpenAI 的 VP of Global Impact。我们将在未来几周分享更多相关工作细节。

Robert Kaiden 将出任 Chief Financial Officer 。 Robert 曾在 Deloitte、Twitter 和 Inspirato 担任高级领导职务，将协助确保基金会在成长过程中保持严谨的财务纪律。

Jeff Arnold 将出任 Director of Operations 。 Jeff 是 OpenAI 的早期成员，职业生涯中曾在 Oracle 和 Dropbox 等公司负责建设与扩张，公司运营方面经验丰富，他将帮助构建支持基金会目标所需的运营体系。

基金会董事会也在寻找一位执行董事。未来几个月我们会继续扩充团队。

后续计划

我们仍处在 AI 所能带来的可能性的起点上。

机会与责任并存——要确保这些技术为人们带来真实进步。我们将快速学习、与合作伙伴紧密协作，并投资于可规模化、能带来变革的解决方案。

我们的目标是帮助更多人解决最难的问题、更好地照顾所爱之人，并建立此前难以企及的充实生活。

我们对未来的工作充满期待，并将在未来数月内继续公布更多进展。

Last fall, OpenAI announced its recapitalization⁠, paving the way for the OpenAI Foundation to access significant resources. Today, we’re sharing how the Foundation is starting to put that support to work. 

Our mission

Our mission is to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. This is a multi-faceted endeavor. 

AI is already changing how people work, learn, and access care. It has the potential to unlock extraordinary benefits—faster medical breakthroughs, accelerated scientific discovery, more personalized services in healthcare and education, new tools for creativity and invention, higher productivity and economic growth, improved public services like transportation systems, and so much more. Our belief in this potential has guided OpenAI since its founding.

But building powerful systems to benefit humanity is only a part of the work of our mission. Advanced AI models will also present new challenges that are already surfacing, and we need to be prepared to identify these challenges and develop solutions to address them. 

These are the two dimensions of what we’re building the Foundation to do. We aim to enable the use of AI to find solutions to humanity’s hardest problems, transform what people are capable of, and deliver real benefits in people’s lives—while working hard with partners to be ready for new challenges, and to help make society resilient, as AI advances.    

This work is just beginning. Over the next year, as we quickly ramp up, the Foundation expects to invest at least $1 billion across life sciences and curing diseases, jobs and economic impact, AI resilience, and community programs. This includes early investments toward our previously announced $25 billion commitment to curing diseases and AI resilience.

In the months ahead, we will share updates in each of these areas as we build, learn, and refine our approach and advance our mission with new grants and programs.

Life Sciences & Curing Diseases1

We’re starting with Life Sciences & Curing Diseases, where we believe that AI has enormous potential to speed up scientific and medical progress to save and improve lives. We are already seeing many early signs of AI’s abilities in these areas. Researchers are using AI to better understand diseases, explore new ways to prevent and treat them, and move ideas from the lab to patients faster.

At the Foundation, we’ve identified three initial focus areas where we think this work could make a real difference:

• AI for Alzheimer’s: Alzheimer’s is one of the hardest and most heartbreaking diseases families face – and one of the toughest problems in medicine. AI’s ability to reason across complex data could help researchers uncover new insights. We will be partnering with leading research institutions, with an initial focus on mapping disease pathways, detecting biomarkers for clinical care and clinical trials, and accelerating personalization of treatments—including, where possible, repurposing existing FDA-approved molecules.
• Public Data for Health: Many of medicine’s biggest advances have been made possible by shared scientific data, and public access to data is essential to deliver the promise of AI for scientific breakthroughs. We will help partners create and expand open, high-quality datasets—and, where appropriate, help responsibly open previously closed ones – so researchers everywhere can leverage AI and use data to drive progress across diseases.
• Accelerating Progress on High-Mortality and High-Burden Diseases: We believe AI can help lead to scientific breakthroughs, and lower the cost and risk of developing or repurposing therapies, particularly in high-mortality and high-burden disease areas that are underfunded. We will bring together AI researchers and disease experts, starting with a focused workshop to identify how best to empower scientists with AI tools and surface promising opportunities.

Jacob Trefethen will lead this work as Head of Life Sciences and Curing Diseases. He is joining from Coefficient Giving, where he oversaw more than $500 million in grantmaking to science and health.

Jobs and Economic Impact 

AI will change the nature of work and the economy—bringing challenges as well as opportunities. We recognize this as profoundly important. The Foundation has begun engaging with experts and communities—civil society, small business owners, unions, leading economists, policymakers, and others—to develop and fund practical solutions in this space. We intend to deploy substantial resources behind the most promising approaches and will share more in the coming weeks.

AI Resilience

As previously announced, AI Resilience will also be one of our primary programs. This work concentrates on the new challenges that inevitably arise from more capable AI, so people can fully benefit from AI in ways that support and expand human agency, creativity, and opportunity.

We will initially focus on a few areas where concerns about impact are already apparent, and where we think early work can make a real difference:

• AI Impact on Children & Youth: We want to help make sure AI tools are safe for young people and support healthy development. That includes investing in data-driven research and evaluation, and working across fields to help identify the right safeguards that help assure safe and beneficial interactions between AI and children and youth.
• Biosecurity: We want to strengthen how society prepares for potential biological threats—both naturally occurring and AI enabled outbreaks. That includes improving detection, prevention, and mitigation. 
• AI Model Safety: We want AI systems to be safer by default. That means supporting independent testing and evaluations, developing new and stronger industry standards, and funding foundational research that helps to avoid safety issues or to detect and address them early.

Wojciech Zaremba, a co-founder of OpenAI, is joining the Foundation as Head of AI Resilience to lead this work.

Supporting communities

We will soon announce the final wave of grants from the initial People-First AI Fund, along with more detail on what comes next.

Through this work—launched at the recommendation of our Nonprofit Commission⁠—we’ve seen that community-based organizations are uniquely positioned to help people navigate AI-driven change. These high-trust groups are closest to the communities they serve and lead critical work on the ground.

We will continue investing in initiatives that support communities, with a focus on helping people understand AI, benefit from its capabilities, and adapt to the changes it brings.

Building our team

In addition to Wojciech and Jacob, we’re building a team to advance our work at scale.

In mid-April, Anna Makanju is joining as Head of AI for Civil Society and Philanthropy to lead the Foundation’s work in leveraging AI to help nonprofits, NGOs, philanthropic institutions, and the broader civil society ecosystem accelerate and scale their impact. Anna previously served as VP of Global Impact at OpenAI. We look forward to sharing more about this work in the coming weeks.

Robert Kaiden is joining as Chief Financial Officer. Robert previously held senior leadership roles at Deloitte, Twitter, and Inspirato. He will help ensure the Foundation operates with strong financial discipline as we grow.

Jeff Arnold is joining as Director of Operations. Jeff was an early member of OpenAI. He has spent his career building and scaling companies, including in leadership roles at Oracle and Dropbox. He will help build the operational systems needed to support the Foundation’s goals. 

The Foundation Board is also searching for an Executive Director. We’ll continue adding to the team over the coming months.

What comes next

We are still at the beginning of what AI can make possible.

The opportunity—and responsibility—is to make sure these technologies lead to real progress for people. We will learn quickly, work closely with partners, and invest in solutions that can scale and transform.

Our goal is to help more people solve the hardest problems, take better care of the people they love, and build fulfilling lives that were previously out of reach.

We’re excited for the work ahead and will be sharing more in the coming months.

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