AI & Democracy Foundation

The AI & Democracy Foundation (AIDF) is a nonprofit organization founded by Aviv Ovadya and based in San Francisco, California. The foundation's vision is a world where democracy keeps pace with AI, and its mission is to accelerate work toward democratic governance and alignment of AI. AIDF operates as both a nonprofit funder and an advisor to philanthropic organizations, AI organizations, civil society groups, and governments regarding their funding and use of democratic processes. Aviv Ovadya, the founder and CEO, brings extensive experience in technology governance, having previously worked with OpenAI, Meta, and other major organizations. He holds a BS and MEng in computer science from MIT and has held positions at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, the Centre for the Governance of AI, and as a research fellow at the newDemocracy Foundation. He served as an advisor to OpenAI's Democratic Inputs to AI grant program. AIDF pursues its mission through two primary workstreams. The first, Building Democratic Capability, focuses on creating the infrastructure for high-quality democratic processes. This includes the Process Pattern Language and Deliberative Workflows initiative, which develops standardized documentation for the step-by-step microprocesses within citizens' assemblies and other minipublics. The foundation builds a library of process cards capturing practical elements like group size, timing, inputs and outputs, desired participant experiences, and known risks. Additional projects in this workstream include the Democratic Capabilities Gap Map, the Deliberative Tools Access Program for organizations and researchers, and Facilitator Resource Sharing Groups for knowledge exchange among practitioners. The second workstream, Realizing Democratic AI, focuses on applying democratic principles to AI governance and alignment. The Democracy Levels framework, published at ICML 2025, defines six levels (L0 through L5) of democratic decision-making ranging from fully unilateral decisions to adaptive metagovernance with institutional safeguards, providing a common language for milestones relevant to democratic AI ecosystems. The Safeguarded AI project, conducted in collaboration with the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), involves designing and building processes for deliberatively defining formal safety specifications for advanced AI systems and developing legal structures that would allow AI organizations to commit to acting in accordance with such collective decisions. The Case Law for AI project explores how judicial-inspired approaches may provide more effective knowledge representation and participant experience for connecting deliberative public input into AI alignment and inference systems. The foundation's team includes approximately 11 members, with key contributors including Andrew Konya, Kathryn Eva Williams, Kyle Redman, Luke Thorburn, Oliver Smith, Quan Ze Chen, Flynn Devine, Jessica Yu, and Bilva Chandra. AIDF works within a network of governance and AI safety-focused organizations and has published research in collaboration with academics from multiple institutions.