A nonprofit is using AI agents to raise money for charity

Tech giants like Microsoft might be touting AI “agents” as profit-boosting tools for corporations, but a nonprofit is trying to prove that agents can be a force for good, too. Sage Future, a 501(c)(3) backed by Open Philanthropy, launched an experiment earlier this month tasking four AI models in a virtual environment with raising money for charity. The models — OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1 and two of Anthropic’s newer Claude models (3.6 and 3.7 Sonnet) — had the freedom to choose which charity to fundraise for and how to best drum up interest in their campaign. In around a week, the agentic foursome had raised $257 for Helen Keller International, which funds programs to deliver vitamin A supplements to children. To be clear, the agents weren’t fully autonomous. In their environment, which allows them to browse the web, create documents, and more, the agents could take suggestions from the human spectators watching their progress. And donations came almost entirely from these spectators. ... Read full article.