The Brookings Institution is a Washington, DC, policy research think tank whose AI work spans the Center for Technology Innovation (CTI), the AI Equity Lab, Governance Studies, and the Metropolitan Policy Program. Its AI output centers on US domestic-policy framing: analysis of federal and state AI legislation, labor and equity impacts, and regulatory design.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | 501(c)(3) nonprofit policy research (think tank) |
| Headquarters | Washington, DC |
| Founded | 1916 (institutionally); dedicated AI/tech work since the late 2010s |
| Relevant units | Center for Technology Innovation (CTI); AI Equity Lab; Governance Studies |
Overview
Brookings is a mainstream US policy think tank operating from a broadly center, pro-governance vantage. Relative to Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which adopts a more competitive posture, and to RAND Corporation, which focuses on national security, Brookings tends toward domestic-policy framing: legislation analysis, labor and equity impacts, and federal and state regulatory design.
Activities
Brookings has been among the more active explainers of US state AI laws. Its analysis of California SB 53, authored by Malihe Alikhani and Aidan Kane (December 2025), is one of two practitioner-facing breakdowns of the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act cited here; the analysis is summarized in FPF and Brookings — California SB 53 Compliance Analyses (Oct–Dec 2025).
The AI Equity Lab, led by Nicol Turner Lee, focuses on bias, civil rights, and distributional impacts of AI systems, work adjacent to the AI-ethics tradition also represented by AI Now Institute. Brookings scholars appear regularly in the policy press, including TechTank and Lawfare-adjacent commentary, with output covering the EU AI Act, Executive Order 14110 — Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI, the America's AI Action Plan, and state legislation. Governance Studies and Foreign Policy programs produce work on AI and democracy, disinformation, and great-power competition.
Key people
AI-relevant scholars (illustrative; the AI-relevant roster is broad and rotates widely):
- Nicol Turner Lee — Director, Center for Technology Innovation; AI Equity Lab lead.
- Darrell West — long-tenured tech policy scholar and writer on AI governance.
- Malihe Alikhani and Aidan Kane — co-authors of the Brookings SB 53 analysis.
Positions
Brookings authors have generally supported transparency-oriented frontier AI legislation, including SB 53 and federal reporting memos such as OMB M-24-10. They have expressed caution toward pure state-preemption, expressing skepticism of attempts to block state AI regulation without substituted federal rules. They have also argued that voluntary frameworks such as the Frontier Model Forum (FMF) and the Seoul Commitments are insufficient as pure self-regulation without statutory backing. The AI Equity Lab argues that civil-rights and distributional concerns are parallel policy priorities rather than downstream of safety or competitiveness.
Funding and governance
Brookings is funded by a mix of foundations (Hewlett, Ford, Rockefeller), corporations, high-net-worth individuals, and foreign governments. The AI Equity Lab has specific foundation and corporate support. Critics point to corporate and foreign funding as a potential source of bias; Brookings publishes its donor list and has tightened disclosure policies in the last decade.
Relationships
- related: FPF and Brookings — California SB 53 Compliance Analyses (Oct–Dec 2025) — primary Brookings wiki source
- related: California SB 53 — Transparency in Frontier AI Act — subject of the Brookings SB 53 analysis
- related: RAND Corporation, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) — adjacent Washington think tanks; Brookings is more domestic-policy oriented
- related: AI Now Institute — overlapping concerns on equity and civil rights, from different traditions
- related: America's AI Action Plan, Executive Order 14110 — Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI — federal policy Brookings scholars analyze