For Policymakers
Independent, nonpartisan AI research for the people who write the rules.
The Center for Practical AI is a nonprofit that turns peer-reviewed research and documented cases into plain-language evidence — and makes it available to policymakers as briefings, research summaries, and testimony on request. We are not an advocacy group. We do not tell you how to vote. We help you understand what the evidence actually shows.
A nonpartisan resource
The Center for Practical AI is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We provide education, research, and analysis, and we offer briefings and testimony on request. We do not endorse candidates or lobby for or against specific legislation. Everything here describes the evidence and the current landscape — the policy choices are yours.
How we can help
Three ways CPAI supports policymakers — all nonpartisan, all on request.
Briefings & testimony
We brief committees and staff, and provide expert testimony when invited — in plain language, grounded in sourced research, with no position on how you should vote.
Research & analysis
Ask us for a plain-language summary or a two-page issue brief on a specific AI question. We translate the evidence; you draw the conclusions.
Constituent education
Bring CPAI's free AI-literacy resources and workshops to your district — for libraries, schools, senior centers, and community organizations.
Issue briefs
Nonpartisan, sourced, and built to be handed to a busy office.
10 briefs across 5 issue areas. Each is a two-page summary you can read, print, or save as a PDF — and each one condenses a full CPAI research guide, so every figure traces to a primary source.
Education & Schools
What the evidence shows about AI in classrooms — how students' use of it changes learning, and how prepared the adults in the room are to teach that difference.
Education & AI literacy
Safe AI Use
The same AI tool produces opposite outcomes depending on how it is used — and usage guidance is largely absent while adoption is near-universal.
Read the brief →Educators & professional learning
Preparing Educators to Teach AI Use
Teachers are being asked to supervise a technology whose effect on learning depends entirely on how students use it — and the guidance they receive is thinnest for exactly that job.
Read the brief →Learning & cognition
AI and Student Learning
AI can raise a student's performance while lowering their learning — and the gap between the two is invisible from inside the classroom.
Read the brief →Health & Wellbeing
How AI use affects thinking and mental health, and where consumer products sit relative to clinical standards of care.
Cognition & wellbeing
Cognition & Digital Wellbeing
AI use reshapes thinking in measurable ways — and the best-replicated finding is that people cannot feel it happening.
Read the brief →Health & safety
AI Use & Mental Health
Millions turn to AI in distress, and consumer chatbots carry no professional duty of care — the gap between a wellness product and a clinician.
Read the brief →Work & Economy
AI adoption at work, the training gap behind it, and what the labor data can and cannot yet show.
Rights & Fairness
Automated decisions about people — and the privacy rules governing the data those decisions run on.
Civil rights
Bias at Scale
A biased human decides one case. A biased system deployed statewide decides every case the same way — silently, and at scale.
Read the brief →Privacy & data
AI & Data Protections
There is no comprehensive federal privacy law — so what happens to the data people put into AI depends on their zip code and the fine print.
Read the brief →Safety & Fraud
Synthetic media, non-consensual imagery, and AI-enabled fraud against consumers.
Safety & integrity
Deepfakes & Non-Consensual Imagery
People cannot reliably "spot the fake" — detection is near chance — so the durable protections are legal and procedural.
Read the brief →Consumer protection
AI-Enabled Fraud & Voice Cloning
AI voice clones and synthetic identities are supercharging fraud against consumers — and older adults are losing the most.
Read the brief →Who we are
A research nonprofit, not a vendor and not a lobby.
CPAI is a Durham, North Carolina 501(c)(3) whose mission is equipping people with the literacy and fluency to critically engage with AI. Every figure in our work traces to a primary or authoritative source, with the evidence tier shown. We publish free public education, run cohort programs, and work with schools, libraries, and employers — and we make that same rigor available to public officials.
Request a briefing
Tell us what you're working on.
Whether you need a committee briefing, a research summary, expert testimony, or AI-literacy resources for constituents, start here. We respond to policymaker inquiries directly.
A nonpartisan resource
The Center for Practical AI is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We provide education, research, and analysis, and we offer briefings and testimony on request. We do not endorse candidates or lobby for or against specific legislation. Everything here describes the evidence and the current landscape — the policy choices are yours.
A North Carolina official?
We're based in Durham and work across the state. See the resources built for North Carolina policymakers and constituents.