OpenAI Wants to Talk About The Federalist Papers
OpenAI has launched a 'Strategic Futures' team tasked with exploring how AI might impact constitutional rights and individual liberty. The initiative reflects a growing internal and public debate about the concentration of power within the AI industry and the potential for technology to displace human agency.
Why it matters
It highlights the tension between the rapid development of powerful AI technologies and the need for political and ethical frameworks to protect democratic values.
The AI giant is worried about what all-powerful bots could mean for our constitutional rights.
Illustration by the Atlantic. Source: Joe Sohm / Visions of America / Getty; Smith Collection / Gado / Getty. September 4, 2026, 1:01 PM ET Share Save Late last month, OpenAI launched a rather grand mission: nothing less than defending individual political freedom in an age of all-powerful machines. The company’s “Strategic Futures” team has styled itself, in a sense, as inheriting the task of America’s Founding Fathers: “We labor in service of the ideals of free expression and individual liberty that are enshrined in the humble parchment of the U.S. Constitution,” Dean Ball, the team’s leader, wrote in a new OpenAI blog post. (The post opens with a quote from James Madison in The Federalist Papers .)
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