Anthropic Funds Research Into AI and Wellbeing

Anthropic has launched a grant programme aimed at improving how the effect of AI systems on human wellbeing is measured.

Evaluation is the weak point here. Benchmarks for capability are plentiful and well understood — you can measure whether a model solves a problem. Measuring whether sustained use of a conversational system leaves someone better or worse off is a far messier question, closer to public health research than to machine learning, and the field has comparatively little to work with.

Funding the measurement side rather than the product side is the more useful move, if the resulting instruments end up in independent hands.

Source: Anthropic, August 25, 2026.