We’re committing $30 million to build 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 caught the public eye like Netscape did in 1994 and the iPhone did in 2007.
New tools like Stable Diffusion and GPT-4, which has just been released, change not only our conception of the Internet, but also of communication, creativity and society as a whole. At the same time, relatively old AI tools, such as 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 enthusiasm, but also a lot of apprehension. We don’t just 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 some time now – outlining a vision for trustworthy AI, mobilizing our community to document what’s broken, and investing in startups trying to create more responsible AI.
We have learned that this new wave of AI (as well as the previous one) has enormous potential to enrich people’s lives. But it will only do so if we design technology very differently – if we put human agency and the interests of users at the centre, and if we prioritize transparency and accountability. The AI inflection point we currently find ourselves in offers a real opportunity to build 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 approaches to auditing, and figuring out how to embed “trust” in real-world AI.
The bad news: The big tech and cloud computing companies, who have the most power and influence, aren’t doing the same. Meanwhile, these companies continue to consolidate their control over the market.
In short: some people start out doing 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 a community — that will build an independent, trustworthy open-source AI ecosystem. Mozilla will make an initial investment of $30 million in the company.
The vision of Mozilla.ai is to facilitate the development of reliable AI products. We will build things and hire/collaborate 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 builders. We believe that this group of people, working collectively, can turn the tide and create an independent, decentralized and trustworthy AI ecosystem – a real counterweight to the status quo.
The initial objective of Mozilla.ai? Tools that make generative AI safer and more transparent. And people-centric recommender systems that don’t misinform or harm our well-being. We’ll talk more about this – and what we’re building – in the coming months.
This new company will be headed 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 chief scientist in industry. Karim Lakhani from Harvard, Navrina Singh from Credo and myself will form the first board of directors of Mozilla.ai. Over the course of the year, we will announce other initiatives, partners and events in which people can get involved.