Mozilla, which develops the Firefox browser, launched a startup focused on artificial intelligence on Wednesday. It's called Mozilla.ai, and its purpose is to work to create an independent, trusted open source AI ecosystem.
"The vision for her mozilla.ai is to facilitate the development of reliable artificial intelligence products," says Mark Surman, Mozilla's executive chairman and Mozilla.ai board member. in a blog post.
Surman says he and Mozilla have met with people who want to develop AI that prioritizes transparency, accountability and user interests — unlike, he said, the approach taken by other tech companies.
"Mozilla.ai will be a space outside of big tech and academia to bring together like-minded founders, developers, scientists, product managers and makers," it says.
"We believe that this group of people, working collectively, will be able to turn the tide to create an independent, decentralized and trusted artificial intelligence ecosystem – a true counterweight to the status quo."
The release of Mozilla.ai comes as companies rush to release artificial intelligence tools after the November release of ChatGPT, a chatbot that can quickly search the web, write essays and more. On Tuesday, for example, Google opened a waiting list for its AI tool, Bard.
The initial focus for Mozilla.ai, Surman wrote, will be on tools that make productive AI services, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, safer and more transparent, as well as recommendation systems that don't misinform people.
Mozilla made an initial investment of $30 million in Mozilla.ai. Moez Draief, former chief scientist at Huawei's Noah's Ark lab, will be the agency's CEO, and a three-person board will help lead it.
