We’re committing $30 million to building Mozilla.ai: a startup and community building a trusted, independent, and open-source AI ecosystem.
We’re only in the third month of 2023 and it’s already clear that one of the biggest stories of the year is AI. AI has captured public attention like Netscape in 1994 and the iPhone in 2007.
New tools like Stable Diffusion and the recently released GPT-4 are changing not only how we think about the Internet, but also about communication, creativity and society as a whole. At the same time, relatively old AI tools, like the recommendation engines that power YouTube, TikTok, and other social apps, are becoming even more powerful and continue to impact billions of lives.
This new wave of AI has generated excitement, but also a lot of concern. We not only ask ourselves what is possible and how people can benefit from it. We also wonder what could go wrong and how to fix it. Two decades of social media, smartphones and their consequences have made us suspicious.
Mozilla has been asking these questions about AI for a while – to outline a vision for trustworthy AI, mobilize our community to document what’s broken, and invest in startups trying to build more responsible AI.
We have learned that this new AI wave (like the previous one) has tremendous potential to enrich people’s lives. But that’s only possible if we design technology very differently – if we put human agency and user interests at the center and if we prioritize transparency and accountability. The AI tipping point we are currently at presents a real opportunity to develop technology with different values, new incentives and a better ownership model.
The good news: we’ve met thousands of founders, engineers, scientists, designers, artists, and activists who are taking this approach to AI. Smart, dedicated people are building open-source AI technologies, testing new audit approaches, and figuring out how to embed “trust” in real-world AI.
The bad news: The big tech and cloud computing companies that have the most power and influence aren’t doing the same thing. Meanwhile, these companies continue to tighten their grip on the market.
In short, some people start things differently, but the most important work (and investment) is still done the same way. We want to change that.
That’s why today we’re announcing Mozilla.ai: a startup – and community – that will build an independent, trusted, open-source AI ecosystem. Mozilla will make an initial investment of $30 million in the company.
Mozilla.ai’s vision is to make it easier to build reliable AI products. We will build things and hire/work with people who share our vision: AI is about agency, accountability, transparency and openness. Mozilla.ai will be a space outside of big tech and academia to bring together like-minded founders, developers, scientists, product managers and developers. We believe that this group of people, working together, can turn the tide and create an independent, decentralized and trusted AI ecosystem – a true counterbalance to the status quo.
The original goal of Mozilla.ai? Tools that make generative AI safer and more transparent. And human-centric recommendation systems that don’t misinform or harm our well-being. We’ll be talking more about this – and what we’re building – in the coming months.
This new company will be led by Managing Director Moez Draief. Moez has spent more than a decade working on the practical applications of cutting-edge AI as an academic at Imperial College and LSE, and as a senior scientist in industry. Karim Lakhani from Harvard, Navrina Singh from Credo and I will form the first board of Mozilla.ai. Throughout the year we will announce more initiatives, partners and events where people can get involved.