Published: 15 Sep 2023 572 views
The Mozilla Technology Fund (MTF) supports open source technologists whose work furthers promising approaches to solving pressing issues.
In 2022, Mozilla welcomed our inaugural Mozilla Technology Fund cohort, which focused on reducing the bias in and increasing the transparency of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. We intentionally cast a wide net for our first cohort, funding art projects, creative writing utilities and crowdsourcing tools that did everything from measuring the unfair outcomes of voice assistant technology to exposing the inner workings of social media recommendation engines. Building on our learnings from that cohort, we decided to focus our resources in 2023 on an emerging area of tooling where we saw a real opportunity for impact: open source auditing tools.
This year we're asking: Is there a role AI systems can play in addressing topics like environmental degradation, climate change, indigenous justice, food justice, and energy justice? Could AI technologies be a part of the solutions to these issues and not just a part of the problem? For this year's call, we are particularly interested in projects which address the health, economic and social impacts of climate change on the Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA) — people of color, indigenous and traditional peoples, local communities, and specific ethnic-racial groups across the global south. Click here to learn more about the 2024 AI and Environmental Justice awards.
The Mozilla Foundation works to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all.
Application Deadline | 05 Oct 2023 |
Type | Entrepreneurs |
Sponsor | Mozilla Foundation |
Gender | Men and Women |
Successful applications will be rewarded awards of up to $50,000 USD each out of a total pool of $300,000 USD.
We imagine that the Bias and Transparency in AI Awards will support a variety of software projects (including utilities and frameworks), data sets, tools and design concepts. We will not consider applications for policy or research projects (though software projects which leverage, support or amplify policy and research initiatives will be considered—for example, bias metrics and statistical analyses being turned into easy to use and interpret software implementations). Some example projects we can imagine:
Applicants should:
Applicants must meet the following requirements
These awards are open to all applicants regardless of geographic location or institutional affiliation, except where legally prohibited. However, Mozilla is especially interested in receiving applications from members of the Global Majority or Global South; ??Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color; women, transgender, non-binary and/or gender-diverse applicants; migrant and diasporic communities; and/or persons coming from climate displaced/impacted communities, etc. We strongly encourage all such applicants to apply.
Applications will be accepted for a period of four weeks and will then be reviewed by a committee of experts, which will make final funding decisions and allocate awards.
For more details, visit Mozilla website