About GRAIL

GRAIL is a non-profit, university-affiliated research center focused on fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, empowering students and driving rigorous research that answers critical questions facing policymakers and practitioners.

Our mission and focus

The Governance and Responsible AI Lab (GRAIL) supports research on the social, ethical and governance implications of artificial intelligence and other emerging or impactful technologies. GRAIL brings together faculty, students and partners interested in collaborative research, sharing ideas across disciplines and sectors and producing rigorous and impactful, policy-relevant work on the topic of AI.

At GRAIL, our foundational pillars are Governance and Responsibility, in the context of AI and other emerging or impactful technologies.

  • Governance is broader than public policy and politics, and refers to the collective effort to understand, regulate or manage an issue, inclusive of efforts by policymakers, regulators, industry bodies, companies, media watchdogs, professional organizations and civil society organizations as well as of individuals themselves. 
  • Responsibility refers to social, ethical, policy and legal implications that affect individuals, communities, society or the natural world.
  • Finally, while our core focus is on AI (intelligent systems, automation, etc.) we are broadly dedicated to understanding emerging technologies or established technologies that affect the public interest and can benefit from rigorous research.

What makes us unique

GRAIL researchers are amongst the earliest scholars in the fields of AI policy and AI ethics, dating back to the 2000s. While several excellent university-affiliated or academic think tanks related to AI exist, many of the most prominent such organizations focus primarily on computer science/technical research, or on strategic international dimensions of AI, such as international competition.

  • At GRAIL, we have special expertise in social and domestic policy dimensions of AI, such as the role of AI in  education, criminal justice, misinformation and the future of work. We are fortunate to have fostered some of the  first research in public policy, public administration and political science applying rigorous theoretical and methodological approaches to study AI, published in leading journals of these and other fields.
  • We bring a  strong interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral lens, with experts in political science, policy, business, design, computer science, criminology, education, law, human-computer interaction and more. We work closely with individuals and organizations in civil society, media, industry and government.
  • Mentorship, collaboration and community are the heart of what we do, and our  undergraduate and graduate students take on major roles as leaders. While we seek to positively impact policy and practice,  GRAIL is at heart a "lab."

Hosted at Purdue University

GRAIL is hosted in the  Department of Political Science in Purdue University's College of Liberal Arts. We are affiliated with the  CL@I Initiative and with Purdue's Institute for Physical AI ( IPAI).