Punk Rock, the Peace Movement, and Open-Source AI: The Mozilla Foundation’s Mark Surman

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:02)
How can open-source technology platforms keep AI trustworthy and safe? Find out on today's episode.

**Mark Surman** (0:11)
I'm Mark Surman from Mozilla, and you're listening to Me, Myself, and AI.

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:16)
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence and business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI.
I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Analytics at Boston College. I'm also the AI and Business Strategy guest editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:34)
And I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG and one of the leaders of our AI business. Together, Mit Smr and BCG have been researching and publishing on AI since 2017, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and to deploy and scale AI capabilities and really transform the way organizations operate.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:02)
Hey everyone, today Shervin and I are pleased to be joined by Mark Surman, president of the Mozilla Foundation.
Mark, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Let's get started.

**Mark Surman** (1:10)
Thanks, Sam and Shervin.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (1:12)
Mark, maybe let's start by hearing a little bit about the Mozilla Foundation and your role there. Could you describe that for us, please?

**Mark Surman** (1:19)
Mozilla has been around for 25 years now.
It's our 25th anniversary. Really making sure that the Internet is in the hands of the public. How we build the Internet is something that balances not just commercial interests, but also public interests, personal interests, that humans are in mind as we design technology. In the first era, we focused on the web. We built Firefox. Right now, we're really focused on making sure those values show up in the era of AI. We really want things like human agency accountability for how tech gets built to show up in the era of AI.
We talk a lot about that when we hear people talking about responsible AI, but it's not how we see what gets built for us. Often there's just a rush to get stuff out the door. We've seen that really a lot in the last year with all the GPTX and everything else, these things rolling out to billions of people without a lot of consideration for how they might impact people. Really that's what we're trying to do is make sure that that changes, trying to make sure it changes through advocacy, trying to make sure it changes through building new open source AI, and also slowly by building AI into things like Firefox, but in a way that actually keeps people in mind, keeps them safe, empowers them.

**Sam Ransbotham** (2:36)
I think that keeping people in mind is big. Use the phrase human agency a lot. One of my personal pet peeves is when we talk about artificial intelligence does X, artificial intelligence does Y, people use these tools to do something. When we use phrases like AI does something, I think we sort of abdicate any responsibility as if, oh no, it's the machine doing it. We got to retain some of that agency here that we are in charge, or we can be at least for a while in charge.
What are these sorts of initiatives that you're talking about? For example, with the Foundation and Dressworthy AI and the progress you made in Mozilla Ventures, tell us about some of these initiatives.

**Mark Surman** (3:19)
Well, I think that's right.
People need to be in charge, and it is an AI that does things. Sometimes actually it is companies that own big pieces of AI that do things.
It's a lot of what we are working on is how you put AI in the hands of people or smaller companies or developers. One example of that is around open source large language models. You are hearing a lot about open source large language models, but how many of us have actually used them for something? Used them to build a personal assistant? Used them to help do sensitive research?
Used them in our work or our everyday lives? We have launched a company, Mozilla AI, that is about taking open source large language models and making them user-friendly, making them trustworthy. You know, letting you use them on your own personal data in a way that you control. You'll see things coming out of Mozilla AI early in this year.
Some of the other things we're doing is looking at how you take the current wave of AI and roll it into something like in a browser, but not in a way that's about selling you something, actually in a way that helps protect you or helps you make better choices. So over the course of the next few months, we're rolling something called Fakespot, a company we bought into Firefox that uses AI to help you spot scams, help you spot fake ratings. And so it's those kinds of things, taking the current wave of technology and putting it into the hands of people to make decisions for themselves.