Applications Invited for Mozilla Technology Fund

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About the Organization

In the early 2000s, the Mozilla community built Firefox. We toppled the browser monopoly, gave users choice and control online, and helped create a healthier internet.

Twenty years later, Mozilla continues to fight for a healthy internet — one where Big Tech is held accountable and individual users have real agency online.

Mozilla’s work is guided by the Mozilla Manifesto. Founded as a community open source project in 1998, Mozilla currently consists of two organizations: the 501(c)3 Mozilla Foundation, which leads our movement building work; and its wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, which leads our market-based work. The two organizations work in close concert with each other and a global community of tens of thousands of volunteers under the single banner: Mozilla.

About the Grant

This past year, Mozilla welcomed our inaugural Mozilla Technology Fund cohort, which focuses 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’ve decided to focus our resources in 2023 on an emerging area of tooling that is under-resourced and where we see a real opportunity for impact: open source auditing tools.

This year, the Mozilla Technology Fund (MTF) is seeking proposals from projects which are providing tools and resources to auditors who are working to create greater accountability for AI systems. Our aim is to double-down on our investments in the AI transparency space while leveraging the learnings and community of the Open Source Audit Tooling (OAT) Initiative. Mozilla seeks to support projects which are building much-needed auditing, evaluation, and accountability mechanisms for AI systems with awards of up to $50,000 USD each.

Many industries—ranging from food and agriculture to the automotive industry—are tightly regulated and subject to inspection and external auditing as a means to ensure safety and accountability. While AI systems are increasingly being used to make determinations that impact people’s employment, health, finances and legal status, there are few mechanisms in place to ensure that these systems are being held accountable for harms, bias and discrimination. The Mozilla Technology Fund seeks to fund and convene projects which can grow, support, and better coordinate the community of AI auditors through tooling and resources.

Award Details

• Through the MTF: Auditing Tools for AI Systems Awards, we will provide awards of up to $50,000 each to open source projects which are providing concrete tools and support to auditors.
• Our goal is to provide projects in the MTF: Auditing Tools for AI Systems cohort with the resources needed to unlock their full potential and to make them more sustainable in the long term.
• Awardees will be expected to join monthly cohort calls for the duration of their project (12 months, beginning in January 2023) in order to share their progress, ask questions, and offer support to other project teams. Awardees will also have access to Mozilla Fellows with relevant subject matter expertise, who will serve as mentors to members of the MTF cohort. All MTF awardees past and present will have access to the MTF Slack Community for asynchronous discussion and updates.

Eligibility

Applicants should:

• Have a product or working prototype in hand--projects which have not moved beyond the idea stage will not be considered
• Already have a core team in place to support the development of the project (this team might include software developers working in close collaboration with auditors, AI researchers, designers, product/project managers, and subject matter experts)
• Embrace openness, transparency, and community stewardship as methodology
• Make their work available under an open-source license

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 out of a total pool of $300,000. Applicants can expect to hear back within six weeks of submitting an application; please email MTF@mozillafoundation.org with any questions.

Deadline

Applications will be open from 6th of September to 4th of October.

For more information please check the Link

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