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“How do you mitigate the downsides of technology to ensure that human values, public interests, and democracy are built into the system?”
Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the Firefox browser, launches an AI-focused startup with a mission to create an open-source, trusted alternative to upstart giants like ChatGPT I’m here. The company announced this morning that Moez Draief, former global chief of his scientist at Capgemini Invent, will lead the venture, where he has received $30 million in seed funding from the Mozilla Foundation.
Mozilla Foundation President Mark Surman said: forbes A new venture called Mozilla.ai in an extensive interview about the threats and possibilities of new technology. He also talked about how the 25-year-old company approaches AI differently.
“AI is what the web looked like 25 years ago,” he says. “It’s the structure of how we make things.”
The risk is not just that “very few players who control our entire economy” will rush to create products with unintended consequences, but will focus only where they can make a profit. “Some of the greatest corporations humankind has ever built have done all this to do what was designed for the original purpose of unifying control,” he argues. of AI innovations are running fast.”
This is not a new area of discussion for Mozilla, which has spent the past few years focused on creating debate and innovation around AI. The startup also comes at a time when Microsoft, a major investor in Open AI, ChatGPT’s parent company, laid off its main AI ethics team.
Will the competition get tougher? of course. “Going back to 25 years before Mozilla started, he said, ‘I got this open source code from this browser and it’s not popular anymore. Beat the world’s biggest tech company.’ You would have been laughed out of the room. (Instead) it really restarted the web and actually led to most of today’s modern web properties and social networks. ”
“We need to start building poor technology that shows that AI can work differently… an independent alternative to the direction big companies are headed and that’s Mozilla.ai It is the appearance of
“We are both activists and pragmatists, advocates and builders of technology,” said Surman. “We are steadfast in our mission to make the Internet open and accessible to all and for the benefit of mankind.”
Mozilla later rallied in response to what the Justice Department determined was a monopoly on Microsoft’s part. This required the PC maker to license and install his Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer, as a condition of using the software. With the release of the source code for the Netscape browser suite, the Mozilla community created Firefox, a standalone free browser. A subsidiary of a non-profit foundation led by Surman, the Mozilla Corporation continues to be a developer of free and open source browsers, apps, code and tools.
“We’ve seen great things in terms of human connection, innovation, and creativity,” says Surman of the early days of the web. Democracy. ”
The key moment for Thurman and many others to see how the Internet could be weaponized came almost a decade ago. Former computer his intelligence consultant and National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, leaked evidence that the US government was spying on its own citizens. A British company called Cambridge Analytica then improperly harvested the data of up to 87 million people on Facebook and used it to target political ads by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and others. It is revealed that you have created a voter profile.
What the world needs now is not to stop innovation, but smart safeguards, greater transparency and greater access. He likens it to food safety and seat belts. As an academic, Toronto-based Surman says Gen Z already understands that. “They are very aware that algorithms are manipulating them and trying to get them back in the game. It’s a platform that allows you to do more extreme things.
Thurman’s worst-case scenario doesn’t look like much if the current characters don’t change. terminator Rather matrix, but “Incredibly mediocre.” In that scenario, “technology is getting more powerful, things are becoming more automated, there are fewer players controlling it, and we fall into a funk of trying to fit things in. All of us check Everything feels good now that I’m out.”
Again, he said: Indeed, in a world where there is tremendous conflict, I think the idea that AI will weaponize information and accelerate those who want to cause conflict is very plausible. Someone doesn’t have to be a Terminator. Just a bad guy with better tools.
Or put those tools into the hands of people with more inspiring motivations. Having challenged giants in the past, Thurman knows the power that comes from democratizing technology and giving people a platform to use it.