Opportunities

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Grants

Closed

Free Systems Fall Fast Grants

We are funding researchers interested in exploring the contours of political superintelligence — fast-turn projects and prototypes on how AI interprets political information, whether AI systems can be faithful representatives, and how AI interacts with power.

Deadline: Closed 14 September 2026

The political economy of AI is moving fast, and we want everyone to keep pace with it.

We will fund a small cohort of researchers this fall to advance projects in political AI research. If you’re interested in producing fast, open, empirical research on how AI intersects with politics, this is the place.

We’re accepting applications to extend, replicate, improve, or challenge existing Free Systems research, including work in the following areas:

  • AI as a political advisor

    Replicate our political-advice work in new elections or contexts, audit voting recommendations, or develop better ways to design and evaluate AI representatives.

  • The Dictatorship Eval

    Test the eval on new models, languages, or political contexts; improve the methodology; or develop new ways to measure how models respond to authoritarian requests.

  • The political economy of AI agents

    Study agent behavior, preference drift, delegation, and whether agents continue to represent the interests of their principals.

  • 100x Research

    Replicate or improve agentic research workflows, and explore new ways AI can accelerate rigorous social-science research.

We’re especially interested in productive forks of our work: projects that test whether our findings generalize, expose weaknesses in our methods, or build better tools and approaches on top of them. If you are interested in exploring other areas of our work, you’re very welcome to.

The grants

All of our grants are generously supported by our community fund. Grants start at $250 in OpenRouter credits, and can scale based on demonstrated progress.

What you get

Once approved, we will get your project set up and check in as your project progresses.

All completed work will be published on the Free Systems website and receive a write-up on the Free Systems Substack under your name.

Strong projects open doors to further collaboration with the lab.

Applications closed

Applications for the Fall Fast Grants closed on 14 September 2026. The programme runs 5 October to 13 November.

We expect to run further rounds. Subscribe to the Free Systems Substack to hear when the next one opens.