The European AI Fund exists to promote a diverse and resilient civil society ecosystem working on policy around AI.
We were really encouraged to receive 143 applications from across the whole of Europe – a striking change from our 2021 Open Call which was dominated by responses from the UK, Germany and Belgium:
We also got proposals from organisations with a wide range of backgrounds – not just those that had previously focused on issues around technology.
This is a positive sign that social justice organisations working on issues like migration, criminal justice or poverty recognise the ways that AI is shaping their field and the need to advocate on behalf of their communities. But it was striking that some of the areas where AI has the most potentially harmful impacts such as racial discrimination or climate destruction were poorly represented in the applications we received. We will work with our partners to understand these gaps more and what we can do to address them.