Mozilla announced Mozilla.ai, a startup aiming to make a trustworthy and independent open-source AI ecosystem, and pledged an initial $30 million investment in the company.
“We’ve learned that this coming wave of AI (and also the last one) has tremendous potential to enrich people’s lives. But it will only do so if we design the technology very differently — if we put human agency and the interests of users at the core, and if we prioritize transparency and accountability,” Mark Surman, the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, said in a blog post. “The AI inflection point that we’re in right now offers a real opportunity to build technology with different values, new incentives, and a better ownership model.”
Surman added that while many founders, engineers, scientists, designers, artists, and activists have this positive approach to building AI, there are also big tech and cloud companies with the most power and influence that want to consolidate control over the market, and Mozilla wants to change this.
The startup’s initial focuses are on tools that make generative AI safer and more transparent and on building people-centric recommendation systems that don’t misinform or undermine the well-being of people.
Moez Draief, who worked as an academic at Imperial College and LSE and as a global chief scientist, will be the managing director of the startup. Additional initiatives, partners, and events will be announced later this year.
