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.