Overview Research Convenings Prototypes Writings Talks People Blog

Participatory, decentralized AI markets built for human participation, reward, and oversight

01 / Mission
We need new market institutions, technical standards, and economic mechanisms to ensure that value circulates broadly rather than becoming trapped inside a handful of gatekeepers.

We identify and advance the key protocols needed to make Human+AI markets participatory and decentralized by design.

We prototype and convene for public-interest protocols and market design efforts that turn this vision into a functioning reality.

02 / How We Work

Protocols & Architecture

Modular, interoperable architectures built on open protocols, such as MCP, can support commercial AI markets that distribute value broadly.

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Mechanisms

Well-designed mechanisms can align competing incentives around shared growth, much as search and click-based advertising once did for the open web.

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Prototyping

Working with builders, platforms, and policymakers to shape the standards and tools that get actually adopted. Making market design infrastructure enforceable, inspectable, participatory, and governable.

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Convenings & Partnerships

Building shared technical standards and norms across communities. Bringing together economists, AI labs, platforms, builders, and policymakers who can design and implement change.

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03 / Current Priorities
  • Open protocols for independent memory systems and agentic communication in AI markets
  • Market mechanisms for humans to monetize their agentic ‘skills’
  • Architectures for data producers and owners to share in the benefits from AI
  • Convenings that bring economists, builders, and public-interest technologists into the same room
04 / Convenings

Major Convenings

Past Convening

Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Center, Italy

27 April – 1 May 2026
Rockefeller Foundation · 20 Leaders
June 26–28

FOO Camp

Lighthaven · Berkeley, CA
TBC 2026

Economists Convening

With Microsoft Research
05 / Press
The Regulatory Review "Regulating AI Washing" Financial Times "AI hallucinations haunt users more than job losses" TechCrunch "Researchers suggest OpenAI trained AI models on paywalled O'Reilly books" Fast Company "An AI watchdog accused OpenAI of using copyrighted books" The Register "OpenAI wants to bend copyright rules" World Economic Forum "Open Protocols Can Prevent AI Monopolies" The Batch "Study shows GPT-4o can identify verbatim excerpts from paywalled books" AI Frontiers Podcast "Open Protocols Can Prevent AI Monopolies" Up Next Podcast "Ilan Strauss on AI Markets, Not Models" The Regulatory Review "Regulating AI Washing" Financial Times "AI hallucinations haunt users more than job losses" TechCrunch "Researchers suggest OpenAI trained AI models on paywalled O'Reilly books" Fast Company "An AI watchdog accused OpenAI of using copyrighted books" The Register "OpenAI wants to bend copyright rules" World Economic Forum "Open Protocols Can Prevent AI Monopolies" The Batch "Study shows GPT-4o can identify verbatim excerpts from paywalled books" AI Frontiers Podcast "Open Protocols Can Prevent AI Monopolies" Up Next Podcast "Ilan Strauss on AI Markets, Not Models"
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06 / Featured

Open Protocols Can Prevent AI Monopolies

Isobel Moure, Tim O'Reilly, and Ilan Strauss

AI Frontiers · July 30, 2025
07 / The Big Picture Questions

Why Protocols? What does this have to do with disclosures?

At the AI Disclosures Project, we see disclosures through the lens of networking protocols and standards. Every networking protocol can also be thought of as a system of disclosures; these are far more than warning labels or mandated reports.

They are a form of structured communication that enables independent, decentralized action. The race for first-mover advantage by large centralized AI providers suggests a hub-and-spoke railroad design, while a world of open-weight AI models connected by new modes of standardized communication could look more like a road system, or today's World Wide Web.

If we want a world where everyone — not just AI model developers and those building on top of their centralized networks — is able to innovate and offer their work to others without paying a tax to access centralized networks, we need a system of disclosures that enables interoperability and discovery.

In this approach, protocols, as a type of disclosure, can architect healthier AI markets — not after things are already too far gone, but through operating as foundational "rules of the road" that enable interoperability.

"We need to stop thinking of disclosures as some kind of mandated transparency that acts as an inhibition to innovation. Instead, we should understand them as an enabler. The more control rests with systems whose ownership is limited, and whose behavior is self-interested and opaque, the more permission is required to innovate. The more we have built 'the rule of law' (i.e. standards) into our systems, the more distributed innovation can flourish."

— Tim O'Reilly

Why Disclosures?

You can't regulate what you don't understand. And right now, critical information about how AI systems work, what data they use, and how they make decisions remains hidden inside corporate black boxes.

Guard against AI's enshittification. Cory Doctorow's term captures how platforms start out serving users, then shift to serving business customers, and finally optimize for extracting value from both. Without transparency about operating metrics, we won't know when AI systems begin this transition until it's too late.

Disclosures as a language of benchmarks. Just as accounting standards created a shared language for understanding business performance, we need disclosure frameworks that let us compare AI systems against meaningful benchmarks: not just capability metrics, but measures of fairness, safety, and alignment with user interests.

Disclosures shape market structure. The choice between open and closed disclosure regimes determines whether AI markets evolve like the open internet (where anyone can participate) or like railroads (controlled by a few gatekeepers). Disclosure standards, when designed well, become the protocols that enable competitive, innovative markets.