On May 5th, 2025, the Foundation for American and the Institute for Progress ran the “The Future of Think Tanks Hackathon.” The first in a potential series of hackathons to ask the question, “Is it possible to use LLMs to scale think-tank work?” The results throughout a workday prove that it is possible, through LLMs, to build tools to speed up the work that think-tanks do. Projects ranged from the pedestrian to more out-there ideas. One person built a tool to scan business cards, while another person used LLMs to estimate how long it would take a person to comply with a set of regulations.
Projects that people were willing to share are on the projects page of the website.