The Breakthrough Initiative
Our Breakthrough Initiative seizes the current window of strategic opportunities to fight for AI that upholds our shared democratic values. With four new grantmaking programmes we are supporting bold work to use European regulation to challenge the harmful impacts of AI, work collectively towards global governance grounded in human rights, build a new political agenda for AI in the public interest and write new narratives that centre people – not the tech industry. Discover more about these programmes below.
The European AI & Society Fund will raise at least €10 million to invest in both challenging harms caused by the use of AI as well as charting a path towards a future where AI serves people and society. Join this collective philanthropic mission and support the public interest experts that advocates that can seize this moment of opportunity.
This programme challenges the harmful impacts of AI on society by supporting the effective implementation and enforcement of legislation in Europe. We have awarded:
€2 million in AI Accountability grants to test and use Europe’s AI regulation.
The 15 new projects involving a total of 35 organisations will focus their efforts on AI accountability in Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, and the UK. As well as a grant up to €200,000, grantees will receive capacity building support and join a community of practice to learn about participatory community engagement, data requests, investigations, AI-harm reporting, and strategic litigation.
Defending workers’ rights, holding data centre operators accountable for environmental and social damage, and tackling AI-enabled profiling affecting black and migrant communities, are just some of the projects groups will be implementing.
€400,000 in AI Act Implementation grants to support immediate work to promote social justice objectives in the implementation of the European AI Act. This outstanding group of consumer, human rights, and tech justice organisations will strengthen national civil society networks, make sure technical standards comply with fundamental rights, and empower creative workers against the unauthorised use of their work by generative AI companies. These grantees received grants of up to €60,000.
This programme promotes fair, inclusive and sustainable societies by generating a proactive policy agenda around AI and communicating it persuasively to decisionmakers. We have awarded:
€450,000 to 8 Global AI & Market Power Fellows to spearhead investigations into market power dynamics in the current AI ecosystem and create a strong evidence base to design interventions in the public interest.
The fellows will study diverse yet complementary topics, including investment strategies and dependencies in the value chain of AI start-ups, the use of automated trading platforms in Europe’s energy market, and the potential of open cloud computing.
“AI as the solution to all problems” and “innovation at any cost” are two dominant narratives that are leading to the deployment of algorithms, automated-decision-making systems and the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) like Chat GPT, without addressing underlying systemic biases or political agendas. This programme will support organisations to develop new narratives rooted in humanity, care, wellbeing and dignity to counter the dominance of the tech industry agenda.
This programme will put human rights at the heart of how AI is governed globally by building capacity and networks to leverage collective civil society power.