George Mason University

George Mason University is a public research university in Fairfax, Virginia, founded as an independent institution in 1972 after operating since 1957 as a branch campus of the University of Virginia. It is the largest university by enrollment in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with approximately 39,763 students and roughly 8,900 faculty and staff. The university operates four campuses in the Northern Virginia region near Washington, D.C. GMU's relevance to AI safety and governance centers on several units. The Mercatus Center, a prominent free-market policy research center chaired by economist Tyler Cowen, runs an Artificial Intelligence and Progress Project that advocates for permissionless innovation and sectoral, light-touch approaches to AI regulation rather than broad preemptive restrictions. Research fellows such as Dean W. Ball produce policy analysis and commentary on AI governance, arguing that heavy-handed oversight could undermine innovation while offering limited safety benefits. In 2016, the Open Philanthropy Project awarded $277,435 (plus a $12,910 supplement in 2017) to Robin Hanson, Associate Professor of Economics at GMU, to analyze future AI development scenarios. Hanson's research focused on multipolar scenarios in which AI emerges through incremental software accumulation and control is distributed among multiple actors rather than concentrated in a single entity — a topic directly relevant to catastrophic risk from advanced AI. The Institute for Humane Studies, also located at GMU, offers research grants to graduate students including those studying the social science and governance dimensions of AI risk and implementation. GMU is also the only Virginia university included in the NIST AI Safety Consortium and launched a Responsible AI Graduate Certificate program. In March 2025, the university unveiled AI2Nexus, a university-wide responsible AI framework led by inaugural Vice President and Chief AI Officer Amarda Shehu, establishing governance guidelines, AI ethics coursework, and a partnership council for government AI deployment. The George Mason University Foundation has historically provided approximately $80 million annually in private support to university programs. The Mercatus Center itself is 100% privately funded, drawing substantially from Koch family foundations and other libertarian-leaning donors.