Partner-Sponsored Research Challenges
Pose a direct research inquiry to a dedicated cohort, in the mold of challenges sponsored by the Center for Humane Technology, the Transresearch Consortium, and the Institute for Humane Robotics.
HOW WE WORK
From your hardest question to a published framework.
The Coalition takes on questions about persuasion and technology that a single team cannot answer alone — then hands back something your organization can act on.
How an engagement runs
Every piece of work follows the same four stages, whether it starts as a sponsored challenge, a review request, or a partnership between departments.
- 01
Define & Scope
You bring a pressing question at the intersection of persuasion, safety, and technology. Together we translate it into a focused, researchable inquiry.
- 02
Convene the Cohort
We match the question with a dedicated research team drawn from 100+ scholars across 20+ institutions — disciplinary depth chosen for the problem, not for availability.
- 03
Investigate & Stress-Test
Focused working sprints interrogate human-system dynamics, audit persuasive architectures, and pressure-test the assumptions your team is already making.
- 04
Report & Advise
Findings arrive as reports, frameworks, and white papers. If you want to carry a framework further — into a tool, a model, or a policy — we work alongside your team as advisers rather than building it for you.
Ways to engage us
Four models cover most of what partners come to us with. Most begin with a conversation and take shape from there.
Persuasive Architecture & Influence Reviews
A scholarly read of your product: conversational dynamics, cognitive impact, and the influence mechanisms already operating inside your AI systems and interfaces.
Multi-Institution Scholarly Cohorts
University departments and independent research labs co-design multi-semester studies with shared publication deliverables and a standing seat in the Coalition.
Coalition Membership
Institutions join to seat faculty and researchers across upcoming annual cohorts, shaping the agenda as well as contributing to it.
What comes out of it
Work ends in scholarship — a report, a framework, a set of criteria, or classroom materials. Where a partner wants to build something from it, we stay on as advisers.
Dedicated Research Challenge Teams
Do you have a challenge you are facing at the intersection of persuasion and technology?
We can help.
AI Risk Mitigation
We translate research into principles, frameworks, and guardrail criteria — such as the Persuasion Principles for AI Safety — so persuasive systems are built on ethical persuasion rather than manipulation.
Tools for Educators
Our white papers, annual reports, AI & persuasion bibliography, and Persuasion Machines Substack give teachers and scholars ready-made materials for teaching rhetoric in the age of generative AI.
Proof of Concept Technology
Working alongside industry partners, we put research into practice by prototyping tools and demonstration systems — showcased at our summits — that show the principles of ethical persuasion in action.
Where you might come in
The work only holds if the people building, studying, and funding these systems are in the same conversation. Here is what each of them tends to arrive looking for.
For AI builders & industry teams
Facing uncharted questions around agentic influence or safety?
Bring us the design decision you cannot settle with your own evidence, and we will scope a study around it.
For scholars & research labs
Want to contribute disciplinary depth to an active cohort?
Join a challenge team, or propose a new line of inquiry for the 2026-2027 cycle.
For foundations & philanthropy
Looking to seed independent, high-impact guardrails for generative tech?
Fund a challenge cohort end to end, and its findings enter the public record.
Bring us the question you cannot answer alone.
Tell us what you are grappling with and who you are — we will come back with what a cohort could realistically produce, and on what timeline.