July 9 (Reuters) - Anthropic said on Thursday it has appointed former U.S. Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke to its Long-Term Benefit Trust, an oversight body responsible for ensuring the AI startup remains committed to its public mission.

A Nobel laureate in economic sciences, Bernanke led the Fed from 2006 to 2014, steering the central bank through the 2008 financial crisis.

"The potential of artificial intelligence is enormous, and so is the range of outcomes. How that potential plays out will depend, in part, on the institutions we build around it," Bernanke said in a statement.

Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust is an independent body whose members are selected for their diverse expertise and have no financial stake in the startup.

The company operates as a public benefit corporation, aiming to balance commercial success with social and public benefit.

Bernanke joins Neil Buddy Shah, Richard Fontaine and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar on its Long-Term Benefit Trust. They are independent of the company's management and investors and have the power to appoint and remove a majority of its corporate board members.

He chaired the economics department at Princeton and built a body of research on the Great Depression and the role banks play in financial crises - work that earned him the Nobel Prize in 2022.