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Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC, dedicated to policy advocacy in the public interest for emerging technologies, with a primary focus on artificial intelligence. The organization was co-founded in 2023 by Brad Carson, a former U.S. Congressman and former Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and Eric Gastfriend, a tech entrepreneur and former CEO of DynamiCare Health. ARI publicly launched in early 2024.

ARI operates on a bipartisan basis, working with legislators and officials across the political spectrum. To preserve its independence as a public interest organization, ARI does not accept funding from for-profit corporations or non-U.S. sources. Its funders include Inclusive Abundance Action, Omidyar Network, Coefficient Giving, and individual donors including its co-founders. ARI is recommended for giving by Founders Pledge…

ARI believes that U.S. policymakers are making consequential decisions about AI governance without adequate technical expertise or independent policy analysis, and that industry-captured or ideologically siloed advocacy groups are failing to represent the public interest. By providing rigorous, bipartisan policy analysis and advocacy that is independent of corporate funding, ARI aims to shift the legislative and regulatory environment toward governance frameworks that address both near-term AI harms (scams, deepfakes, privacy violations) and longer-term catastrophic risks (dangerous capability proliferation, loss of human oversight). The causal chain is: develop credible policy proposals, build coalitions across party lines, engage Congress and federal agencies directly, and thereby raise the probability that robust AI governance infrastructure is in place before transformative AI systems are deployed at scale.