Independent research institute producing policy analysis on AI's social implications — with a focus on power, accountability, and labor. If the frontier labs are building the future of AI, AI Now is asking who that future is actually for.
What It Is
The AI Now Institute conducts and publishes research on AI's social, political, and economic implications. Founded in 2017 at NYU by Kate Crawford and Meredith Whittaker, it became independent in 2023.
AI Now produces annual landscape reports, policy recommendations, and deep-dive research on specific issues — from facial recognition bans to AI in hiring to the labor conditions of data workers. The work is explicitly normative: not just "what's happening" but "what should be done."
Why It Matters for Redistribution
AI Now provides the analysis that enables redistribution politics.
Who benefits? Policymakers get rigorous research to support regulation. Advocates get citations and frameworks. Journalists get expert sources. The public gets accessible explanations of technical issues.
Who pays? Foundation grants (Ford, MacArthur, etc.) fund the work. This creates accountability to funders rather than industry, which matters for independence.
What changes? AI Now helped establish that AI raises political questions, not just technical ones. Before 2017, "AI ethics" largely meant trolley problems and science fiction scenarios. AI Now shifted the conversation to power, labor, discrimination, and accountability.
Concrete policy wins trace partly to AI Now's work. Bans on facial recognition in public housing. Restrictions on AI in hiring. Documentation requirements for public-sector algorithms. The path from research to policy isn't direct, but AI Now built much of the intellectual foundation.
The institute also models what independent tech research looks like — not funded by the companies being studied, not bound by NDA, able to name problems plainly. In a landscape where The Frontier Lab Oligopoly concentrates both the resources and the research agenda, AI Now represents an alternative center of gravity: one oriented toward public interest rather than shareholder value.
Crawford's Atlas of AI (2021) — which emerged from AI Now's intellectual ecosystem — traces how AI systems depend on material extraction, exploited labor, and concentrated power. This kind of structural analysis is what makes AI Now essential to the redistribution conversation: it connects individual AI harms to the political economy that produces them.
Current Status
Active with a full research agenda. Recent work covers AI labor practices, foundation model governance, and corporate concentration. The independence from NYU (2023) allows more flexibility but also more fundraising pressure.
Key personnel have moved to other positions (Whittaker to Signal, various researchers to government roles), spreading the approach into other institutions.
How to Get Involved
- Read the research: Publications — all freely available
- Use in policy work: AI Now reports are designed to be cited and used
- Follow developments: Newsletter for updates
- Support independent research: Funding goes directly to research, not corporate partnerships
Related
- Algorithmic Justice League
- DAIR Institute
- The Frontier Lab Oligopoly
- Atlas of AI
- Ghost Work
- Democratic AI Governance
- Data Labeling in the Global South