--- aliases: - ARI - Americans For Responsible Innovation Ltd - ARI PAC category: AI & Effective Altruism created: 2026-09-23 location: Washington, D.C. relations: - fn: 1 reverse: true start: 2023 type: founded with: '[[Brad Carson]]' - fn: 1 reverse: true start: 2023 type: founded with: '[[Eric Gastfriend]]' - fn: 4 reverse: true role: president type: head_of with: '[[Brad Carson]]' - fn: 3 reverse: true role: executive director; treasurer of ARI PAC type: head_of with: '[[Eric Gastfriend]]' - fn: 3 reverse: true role: senior vice president of government affairs start: 2024 type: employed_by with: '[[Douglass Calidas]]' - fn: 3 reverse: true role: senior vice president of government affairs start: 2024-05 type: employed_by with: '[[Satya Thallam]]' - fn: 1 reverse: true role: listed donor, as Coefficient Giving type: funded with: '[[Open Philanthropy]]' - fn: 1 reverse: true role: listed donor type: funded with: '[[Omidyar Network]]' - fn: 1 reverse: true role: listed donor type: funded with: '[[Inclusive Abundance Action]]' - fn: 5 reverse: true role: registered outside lobbying firm start: 2024 type: contractor_to with: '[[Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid]]' - end: 2024 fn: 5 reverse: true role: registered outside lobbying firm start: 2024 type: contractor_to with: '[[Navigators Global]]' - fn: 5 reverse: true role: registered outside lobbying firm start: 2025 type: contractor_to with: '[[Mindset Advocacy]]' - fn: 5 reverse: true role: registered outside lobbying firm start: 2025 type: contractor_to with: '[[Neil Hill Global Strategies]]' start: 2023 summary: Washington 501(c)(4) AI-policy lobby founded in late 2023 by former congressman Brad Carson and Eric Gastfriend, funded by Coefficient Giving and Omidyar Network, whose PAC is financed by AI-safety researchers. tags: - Organization - AIPolicy - Lobbying - EffectiveAltruism - OpenPhilanthropy - PoliticalActionCommittee updated: 2026-09-23 --- Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) is a [Washington, D.C.](/places/washington-dc/) nonprofit that lobbies on the regulation of artificial intelligence. It states that it "was founded in late 2023 by former Congressman Brad Carson (President) and tech entrepreneur Eric Gastfriend (Executive Director)," and that its mission is to "help U.S. policymakers develop a thoughtful governance framework for rapidly advancing technologies that protects the public from harm while continuing to foster innovation."[^1] Its public launch was announced on March 6, 2024, in a letter signed by the two men as co-founders, describing themselves as "a former member of Congress and health tech startup founder, respectively," and stating that ARI was "funded by individuals who share our concern for responsible innovation, rather than by industry."[^2] Its offices are at 750 17th Street NW, Suite 1200, in Washington. A sister 501(c)(3), the Center for Responsible Innovation, operates alongside it.[^1] ### Funding ARI describes itself as "a 501c4 nonprofit organization" and lists as its supporters "organizations including Inclusive Abundance Action, [Omidyar Network](/organizations/omidyar-network/), and Coefficient Giving and ... individual donors including Brad Carson & Julie Carson, Eric Gastfriend & Caroline Mehl, and Steve Newman." It states that it does "not take money from for-profit corporations or non-U.S. entities" and that it is "run fully independently of our donors." It adds that it is "recommended for giving by Founders Pledge."[^1] Coefficient Giving is the name adopted in November 2025 by [Open Philanthropy](/organizations/open-philanthropy/), the grantmaker funded by [Dustin Moskovitz](/people/dustin-moskovitz/) and [Cari Tuna](/people/cari-tuna/). The organization is registered with the [Internal Revenue Service](/organizations/internal-revenue-service/) as Americans For Responsible Innovation Ltd, EIN 93-3248564, under section 501(c)(4). For 2023 it reported revenue of 501,673 dollars, 500,100 dollars of it contributions, expenses of 23,064 dollars and no executive pay. For 2024 it reported revenue of 5,244,469 dollars, almost all of it contributions, expenses of 2,592,128 dollars and net assets of 3,130,427 dollars; executive compensation came to 1,095,356 dollars, 42.3 percent of expenses. The 2024 return listed Douglass Calidas, senior vice president of government affairs, at 438,631 dollars; Satya Thallam, senior vice president of government affairs from May 2024, at 265,156 dollars; Gastfriend, executive director, at 253,159 dollars; Adam Pastrich, chief of staff from June 2024, at 102,711 dollars; Carson, president, at no salary; and Thomas Adelson, board member and treasurer from December 2024.[^3] ### Staff and Advisers Carson is described on ARI's staff page as a former president of the University of Tulsa, former congressman, Under Secretary of the Army and acting Under Secretary of Defense; Gastfriend as the former chief executive and president of DynamiCare Health, "a digital health startup with awards from NIH & FDA." Calidas, listed as Doug Calidas, is a former chief of staff to Senator Amy Klobuchar and former chief counsel to Senator Joe Manchin. The chief of staff, Blair Mallin, was director of operations to Samantha Power at [USAID](/organizations/agency-for-international-development/) and to Klobuchar. Other staff came from the Bureau of Industry and Security (policy director Rachel Hovde), the Department of the Treasury and Tanium (Pastrich), the offices of Senator John Barrasso and the Department of Transportation (Mitch Kominsky), the Navy staff at The Pentagon (Jared Wilhelm), the National Security Innovation Network of the [Department of Defense](/organizations/department-of-defense/) (Michael Dila and Morgan C. Plummer), the Air Force Research Laboratory (George Dougherty) and the House Select Committee on the CCP. McKenna Fitzgerald, in external relations, is a former research manager at the MATS AI-safety training program and former deputy director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute.[^4] Its board of advisors, which "have no official authority in our decision-making process," comprises Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas at Austin; Erik Brynjolfsson of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab; Gillian Hadfield of [Johns Hopkins University](/organizations/johns-hopkins-university/), a "former Senior Policy Advisor, Open AI"; Samuel Hammond of the [Foundation for American Innovation](/organizations/foundation-for-american-innovation/); Stuart Russell, director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI at the University of California, Berkeley; and the former congressman Tim Ryan.[^4] ### Lobbying ARI registered as its own lobbyist in the first quarter of 2024, reporting 50,000 dollars in lobbying expenses, with Calidas as its lobbyist; in the second quarter it reported 220,000 dollars, listing Calidas and Thallam and naming the House, the Senate and the National Institute of Standards and Technology among the bodies lobbied. Its quarterly expenses were 230,000 and 200,000 dollars in the second half of 2024; 260,000, 330,000, 450,000 and 470,000 dollars in the four quarters of 2025, or 1.51 million dollars for the year; and 480,000 and 620,000 dollars in the first two quarters of 2026. Under both issue codes it used, computer industry and science and technology, the filings give the same description: "Issues related to the responsible governance of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies."[^5] Four outside firms have been registered to lobby for ARI. Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid has filed for it continuously since the first quarter of 2024, its quarterly fee rising from 20,000 to 90,000 dollars; the lobbyists on its first registration were Lisa Kountoupes, a former deputy assistant to the president and House liaison and former assistant director for legislative affairs at the Office of Management and Budget; Clayton Patrick Hayes, a former chief of staff to Manchin and deputy legislative director to Senator Evan Bayh; Adam Hechavarria, a former legislative director to Senators Todd Young and Kelly Ayotte; MJ Kenny, a former deputy floor director for the Senate Democratic whip and aide to Senator Richard Durbin; and David Paul Peluso, a former chief of staff to Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Gus Bilirakis. Navigators Global, formerly DC Navigators, filed from the first to the third quarter of 2024 at 40,000 to 50,000 dollars a quarter, with the lobbyists Andy Keiser, Ryan Berger and Philmore B. Anderson. Mindset Advocacy registered in the second quarter of 2025 at 80,000 dollars a quarter, and Neil Hill Global Strategies in the fourth quarter of 2025 at 20,000 to 40,000 dollars.[^5] Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid and Navigators Global were also registered as outside lobbying firms for [Anthropic](/organizations/anthropic/), the first reporting 10,000 dollars from Anthropic in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second 30,000 to 60,000 dollars a quarter in 2026.[^6] ### ARI PAC Americans for Responsible Innovation Ltd. Political Action Committee (ARI PAC), Federal Election Commission identifier C00893883, registered on December 11, 2024, as a lobbyist-registrant political action committee of a membership organization, at ARI's address and with Gastfriend as treasurer. Through its report of July 15, 2026, it had received 390,475 dollars in contributions, 99.2 percent of them from individuals, had given 329,000 dollars to federal candidates and held 49,150.51 dollars in cash.[^7] Its itemized receipts consist almost entirely of 5,000-dollar contributions, the annual limit on an individual's contribution to a political action committee, many of them repeated in 2025 and 2026. The employers entered on the filings include Anthropic, for Todor Markov, Peter Lofgren, Evan Hubinger, Daniel Ziegler, Jan Leike, Scott Johnston, Steven Bills, Andrew Charles Callahan, Samuel R. Bowman, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein and Adam S. Jermyn; Open Philanthropy, for its program director Claire Zabel and for Howard Lempel, each giving twice; [METR](/organizations/metr/), for Benjamin West, Sydney Von Arx, Lawrence Chan and Tao Lin; [Redwood Research](/organizations/redwood-research/), for its chief executive Michael Shlegeris, Ryan Greenblatt, Vivek Hebbar, Aryan Bhatt and Alex Mallen; the [Alignment Research Center](/organizations/alignment-research-center/), for Eric Neyman; [OpenAI](/organizations/openai/), for Julie Steele and Dillon Bowen; and Google DeepMind, for Kate Woolverton. Gastfriend himself gave 5,000 dollars on February 21, 2025, and again on May 9, 2026, listing his employer as ARI.[^8] Several of the same donors (Lofgren, Leike, Jermyn, Bowen and Woolverton) gave again in 2026 to the super PAC Public First, affiliated with [Public First Action](/organizations/public-first-action/), Lofgren giving 999,900 dollars and Leike 400,000 dollars.[^9] Among the PAC's other donors was Derek Kaufman of Greenwich, Connecticut, who gave 5,000 dollars listing "Inclusive Abundance" as his employer.[^8] [^1]: Americans for Responsible Innovation, "About Us," accessed September 23, 2026. https://ari.us/about-us/ [^2]: Carson, Brad, and Eric Gastfriend. "Announcing Americans for Responsible Innovation." Americans for Responsible Innovation, March 6, 2024. https://ari.us/announcing-americans-for-responsible-innovation/ [^3]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Americans For Responsible Innovation Ltd," EIN 93-3248564, Form 990 data for 2023 (filed April 10, 2025) and 2024 (filed November 17, 2025). https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/933248564 [^4]: Americans for Responsible Innovation, "Our Team," accessed September 23, 2026. https://ari.us/team/ [^5]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, 38 registrations and quarterly reports for client "Americans for Responsible Innovation," first quarter 2024 to second quarter 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Americans+for+Responsible+Innovation [^6]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings with client "Anthropic," 2023 to second quarter 2026, retrieved September 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Anthropic [^7]: Federal Election Commission, committee C00893883, "Americans for Responsible Innovation Ltd. Political Action Committee," registration and financial totals through the report of July 15, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00893883/ [^8]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A) for committee C00893883, 94 records, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00893883 [^9]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A) for committee C00930503, "Public First," retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00930503