Past waves of innovation, from railroads to electricity to the Internet, drove profound progress but also left deep inequalities in their wake. We can do better with AI.
And it starts with a simple but powerful idea: Treating access to AI as a right.
We have a moment — almost literally, given how quickly AI is advancing and being adopted — to approach AI differently from previous revolutionary technologies, where we considered the economic and societal impacts long after they were widely adopted. There are compelling economic and civic reasons to make those choices now: Participation will define our era.
Every technological revolution has forced us to renegotiate our social contract. The Industrial Revolution gave rise to the right to a public education, a minimum wage, and social security. The Intelligence Age will demand its own set of rights. At the center should be access to AI, from which other rights will flow. That’s why OpenAI believes everyone has a “Right to AI” – and is proposing a framework to guide policy and regulatory decisions and ensure AI works for everyone.
AI as a right begins with a strong baseline for everyone. We have to think of AI as a basic building block for improving all of our lives, akin to electricity or clean water. No one should be locked out of modern life because they can’t afford to participate. This does not mean unmediated access to the most advanced frontier systems — it means that useful, free AI tools should be widely available. Most OpenAI users already access our product through free tiers. That is deliberate and part of our commitment to access.
Accessible AI means nothing if it is not safe and trustworthy. AI systems should be tested, evaluated, and held to account. People should have confidence that the AI systems they use won’t deceive them, manipulate them, or cause harm. The right to AI is inseparable from the right to safe and trustworthy AI.
Safe and trustworthy AI likewise should be inseparable from access to AI that keeps getting better — more capable, more useful, and more impactful.
Widespread access demands real infrastructure. Beyond the data centers, chips, and resilient energy supply needed to deliver AI to everyone, it also includes investing in people to give them the skills and confidence to use AI effectively. This means integrating AI literacy into school curricula, vocational training, employee learning and development, and lifelong learning programs that empower everyone. AI education is more than a question of how to do your homework or ensure job security — it’s a foundation for raising living standards, ensuring economic competitiveness, and strengthening our democracies.
Maintaining choice and competition is essential. People should be free to choose the AI products and services they use and carry what they’ve accumulated with them. Safeguarding choice and competition is crucial to a healthy and dynamic marketplace. AI should be both easy to access and to change, not restricted by Big Tech platforms that favor their own products or embed their AI preferences in legacy services. Ease of switching and accessible standards that ensure AI tools interoperate smoothly and the ability to port your data and preferences to other services should be the rule, not the exception. AI should serve people, not steer them.
AI should serve the public directly. Governments have a duty to innovate with AI and use it to increase efficiency, access, and transparency. Local, state, and federal agencies should all adopt AI — for education, health care, and across critical and strategically important sectors. Public procurement rules should be updated to get taxpayers the most value from competitive and dynamic AI providers, not just legacy firms that have longstanding ties with government agencies.
Governments can also speed AI advances with greater access to government-held data sets, fast-tracked planning for new energy generation and data center construction, and smart incentives and policies for AI adoption and upskilling the workforce.
AI isn’t just another technology — it’s integral to the next century of progress. Handled well, AI can strengthen democracies, expand opportunity, and improve lives everywhere. The Right to AI provides a simple but powerful framework: compute, public benefit, choice, literacy, improvement, and safety. Enshrining these rights ensures that AI remains a tool for people — not for elites, not for monopolies, and not for authoritarian control.
Policymakers have a rare chance to act with foresight: ensure open data, eliminate exclusionary practices, and mandate that technologies enable AI choice. Do that, and the US won’t just have one AI champion; it will have a vast ecosystem of them — competing vigorously, advancing the frontier, and delivering better tools to every household and business.
AI belongs to all of us. Securing the “Right to AI” is how we make sure it works for us all.