The European AI & Society Fund is pleased to invite applications for a new fellowship programme on Artificial Intelligence and market power. Fellows can apply for up to $70,000 and the deadline for applications is 8 July 2024.
Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, there has been a global push to invest in and build AI on an increasingly large scale. Tech giants are racing to roll out new applications at ever greater speed and AI hype has created an investment gold rush, concentrating capital and power among a few corporate actors. Thanks to these firms’ first mover advantage, they are poised to occupy an even more powerful role in the digital infrastructure of the future. In order to shape AI to better serve people and society, it’s important to more deeply understand the market power dynamics in the current AI ecosystem and create a strong evidence base to design interventions in the public interest.
This Fellowship Programme will provide a total of $500,000 to support investigative research and critical analysis into the political economy of large-scale AI systems and aims to sharpen our collective understanding of market concentration in the AI ecosystem.
Fellows will carry out investigative research and critical analysis on one or more of the following topics:
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The nature of the partnerships between firms developing large-scale AI and infrastructure actors.
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The business models of large-scale AI systems providers.
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The impacts of concentration and abuse of market power by incumbent firms on third-party application developers and business deployers.
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The avenues for challenging market power.
The European AI & Society Fund will create opportunities for fellows to collaborate and learn from one another and the wider AI and society ecosystem, as well as support the dissemination of their outcomes. The fellowships will be administered by the Institute of International Education and are supported by the Open Society Foundations.
The ambition is for the fellows’ investigations and research to create a body of knowledge for the field that will inform the work of civil society, regulators, competition authorities, legislators, start-ups and other businesses as they contend with market power dynamics in the complex ecosystem of large-scale AI.
While this call for applications is issued by the European AI & Society Fund, we recognise that the nature of both the industry and the policy responses is global and invite proposals from all geographies.
We seek to award fellowships to applicants with a broad diversity of skills, expertise and backgrounds. Applications will be reviewed by the European AI & Society Fund team as well as an expert panel comprising:
Vera Franz, independent tech justice expert
Andrew Strait, Ada Lovelace Institute
Erin Simpson, Ford Foundation
Udbhav Tiwari, Mozilla
Philip Marsden, Bank of England
Key information
Please read the Call for Proposals for full information.
Eligibility
The Fellowship Programme welcomes applications from all countries and regions, with the exception of those subject to US sanctions (Under the IIE guidelines, fellowships cannot be granted to applications from areas subject to US sanctions as identified by the Office for Foreign Assets Control). We seek to award fellowships to applicants with a broad diversity of skills, expertise and backgrounds. We particularly encourage applications from people with journalistic experience, with strong investigative skills including OSINT, as well as fluency in market and technical research. The Programme will award fellowships to individual investigators/researchers or interdisciplinary teams of up to 3 investigators/researchers with complementary skills. The individuals can be hosted by an institution or be independent actors.
Available funding
The total budget for the fellowships is $500,000. Grant awards will be up to a maximum of $70,000. In exceptional circumstances, we will consider larger amounts.
Timeline
Applications must be received by 8 July 2024 23:59 CET. All applicants will be informed of the outcomes of the selection process no later than 16 September 2024. Fellows are expected to begin their work no later than 7 December 2024.
This programme is now closed for applications.