Planet Mozilla

At Mozilla, we know we can’t create a better future alone, that is why each year we will be highlighting the work of 25 digital leaders using technology to amplify voices, effect change, and build new technologies globally through our Rise 25 Awards. These storytellers, innovators, activists, advocates, builders and artists are helping make the internet more diverse, ethical, responsible and inclusive.

This week, we chatted with creator Rachel Hislop, a true storyteller at heart that is currently the VP of content and editor-in-chief at OkayAfrica. We talked with Rachel about the ways the internet allows us to tell our own stories, working for Beyoncé and what’s to come in the next chapter of her career.

So the first question I have is what was your favorite Beyoncé project to work on? I want to know. Also, what’s your favorite Beyoncé album?  

I’ll say that my favorite project to work on was definitely Lemonade. It was just so different from anything that had ever existed. It was so culturally relevant. It was well-timed. It was honest and just really beautiful. You can sometimes be jaded by the work when you’re too close to it, and I think that’s across the board in any industry, but there was never a moment of working on that project that I didn’t understand and appreciate just how beautiful everything was. It was really just like, all of you people that I see at work every day, this came out of your minds? And then, it was just a lot of love, and it was a really important time in culture, I think. And I really enjoyed being part of that.

My favorite Beyoncé album … I don’t know that I can answer that because every part has had a very important impact on my life. I had The Writings on the Wall on a cassette tape that I used to play in my little boombox. And Dangerously in Love, I was in high school and experiencing little crushes for the first time. The albums grew. I met Sasha Fierce when I’m in college and learning the dualities of self when I’m away from home, and so on and so forth. So, it’s hard to pick a favorite when each of those moments were so tied to different portions of my life. 

I’m curious to know what types of stories pull you in and influence the work that you do as a writer?

It’s living, honestly. I’m a really curious person, and I think all the best writers are. It’s even weird calling myself a writer sometimes because so much of what I write right now is just for me, and projects that I really believe in. It’s really just the curiosity. I want to know how everything went. How did you get here? What inspired you? I’m good for going out alone and sitting next to a stranger and then learning their whole life story because I am just truly interested in people and there is no parallel in lived life. I also love reading fiction. I am not the girl that’s like, “yeah, self-help books and self-improvement” and things like that. I want to fully escape into a story. I want to be able to turn my brain on and imagine things and fully detach and escape from this world. And then I love reading old magazine articles from when people were allowed to have long, luxurious deadlines and follow subjects for a really long time. I remember this article that they would make us read in journalism school, which was Frank Sinatra has a cold, and I love that voyeurism journalism where if you can’t get to the subject, you’re talking about the things around them. Everything is so interesting to me. I also love TikTok. I learn so much. I think that it’s a really valuable form of storytelling. In short-form, I think it’s really hard — it’s harder than people give a lot of these creators credit for. My grand hope is that those small insights through those short videos are peaking curiosity and sending people on rabbit holes to go discover and read and just be deeper into the internet. I remember back in college there was this internet plugin called stumbled upon and it would roulette the internet and land on these random pages and learn things. That is how my brain is always processing. I’ll see something that’ll interest me and then be like, “I want to know more about that.” 

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Rachel Hislop at Mozilla’s Rise25 award ceremony in October 2023.</figcaption>

You’ve been in the content media space for a while. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about working in this space?

You know that saying that if you do what you love every day, you’ll never work a day in your life? I think it’s that. There is a pressure that you feel when you are following your actual passion. This is not just my job, this is what I like to do in my free time, this is what I think is important. This is what I feel like I was born to do, right? To storytell. And every day, it feels like work. And it feels even harder than work because it feels like a calling. From the outside, I’m sure people are like, “Oh, you get to do this cool stuff. You get to talk to all these interesting people. You get to talk about the things that you care about.” But there is truly a pressure to document this stuff in a way that pays homage to everyone and everything that came before it that solidifies its place in history to come, and to handle things with delicacy and care and importance.  There’s just so many layers to it. So, it’s never just about the one thing that you love. It’s about the responsibility that you now have to this thing because you love it. And when you’re working in culture spaces specifically, there is always someone that you have to give their flowers to for you to be able to do the work that you’re doing, but you also have to be forward. You have to look forward and innovate, while you are also honoring what has come before. And there can be a misconception about it like it being easy. Or “I can do that” — we see a lot of that with interviewers I love, where people say, “Shannon Sharpe didn’t ask the right questions. Insert podcaster here who got a really great hit and didn’t ask the right questions.” It’s because we’ve lost the art because people see the end product, they believe that it is easy. And they forget that everything that journalists are doing is in service to the audience and not in service to themselves. And we’re seeing this really weird landscape now where everyone is in service to themselves and to their own popularity and to growing their own audiences, but then they don’t serve those audiences with ethics. That for me is the misconception — that it’s just so easy, anyone could do it. Now everyone is doing it, and they’re wondering where the value is and the premium stories and all of these things like that.

Who are the Black women you’re inspired by and the people you go to when you’re faced with so many of the challenges Black people have in the content/media industry?

I am very intentional about friendships, and I treat my friends like extensions of myself. They’re the board of directors for my life, and these are often friends from college. I think people really discount the friends that you make in your first big girl job and how you’re learning everything together. Those have become the people that I call on throughout my career, who I call on to collaborate with projects, who I call on when things are falling apart. I’ve been just so blessed to have those people in my life as my board of directors for all things. And I serve as the same for them. I am going to tell you the truth: I don’t know that I’ve met a Black woman that I’m not inspired by. I truly am just so in awe of so many women. 

I made a practice after the pandemic of being like, “I don’t want these people who I like online to just be my online friends.” I wanted to meet these people in real life. I started just DM’ing people and being like, “Hey, we’ve been on here a while. Can we grab lunch?” And then just continuing that connection in person has been so, so fantastic.

I do also want to shout out Poynter Institute. I did a training with them in 2019 right before the pandemic for women in leadership positions in newsrooms. When I tell you it was a week-long, intensive, seven days we were in a classroom … it was like therapy for work in a way that I didn’t know I needed, and I didn’t know was available to any of us. We built such strong bonds, even though some people worked at competing publications. But when we put all of that aside, it was just women of all ages and all backgrounds who were working in an industry and really, really cared about the work they were doing and wanted to be their best. And through that group of people, I have just made true, lifelong friends. When things were falling apart in 2020, I was calling on my cohort members and building deep, deep connections from there.

What do you think is the biggest challenge we face in the world this year on and offline? How do we combat it?

There’s so much happening in the world that I think the one thing that I can say that continues to be dangerous is misinformation online. I’m going to speak specifically about Palestine. We see the power of storytelling from the front lines in a way that we have never witnessed before with any conflict, right? And we’ve seen that unfold into just horrors that we would never know were happening if we did not see it coming from the front lines. I just give kudos to the journalists that are on the ground and the people who have become journalists by force who have documented us through situations that we couldn’t even fathom. Even if we tried, we couldn’t fathom what it’s like to work through that. And while that is really helpful and illuminating the evils of the world, the other side of that there’s so much misinformation because everyone is trying to be fast to discredit what we’re seeing with our own eyes and framing that used to be able to take place is not available anymore. And I’m not going to speak to that being a political tool or otherwise, but the framing is not as readily available. I think we saw this with our election in America. Specifically, we’re in an election year — we saw this with our elections, four, eight years ago — and now as technology starts to grow and change faster than we are learning how to master it, I really do believe that misinformation is going to be one of the hardest things to combat. 

I really don’t know how to combat it. Things are just changing so quickly and there’s just so much access to so much. I think the answer as it is with most things is community and people coming together to dream together. There’s not going to be a single person that solves for all of this. It’s going to take collective efforts to help make sure that we’re doing our best.

What is one action that you think everyone should take to make the world and our lives online a little better?

I think everyone can be a little bit more curious. We don’t need to trust things at face value the first time. We need to be more curious about the sources of the information that we are taking in. And it doesn’t mean that we have to be constantly engaging in combat with it. You can take things at face value and then do more research to inform yourself about all sides of a story, and I think that that’s one action that we can take in our day-to-day lives to just be better.  

We started Rise25 to celebrate Mozilla’s 25th anniversary. What do you hope people are celebrating in the next 25 years?

I hope we get those flying cars that we were promised (laughs). But truly, I hope that in 25 years, we are celebrating the earth more. I really do hope that we’re celebrating the earth still housing us and that we’re all just being a little kinder and more thoughtful in the ways that we’re engaging with nature and ourselves, and that people are spending a little bit more time reconnecting with who they are offline.

What gives you hope about the future of our world?

I mentor with the Lower East Side Girls Club, which is a nonprofit here in New York, and we do a mentee outing once a month. The girls are aged middle school through high school, and they are so bright and so well-rounded and smart, but they’re also funny, and they have great social cues and they think so deeply about the world and they’re really compassionate. They don’t allow the things that used to trip me up and trip me and my peers up as like middle schoolers, like they’re so evolved past that. Every time that I think that mentoring means me teaching, I realize that it really means me learning, and when I leave those girls, I’m like, “alright, we’re going to be okay.” They give me some hope.

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The post Rachel Hislop reflects on working for Beyoncé, creating community for Black women and the power of storytelling appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Did you know you could choose the search engine of your choice right from your Firefox URL bar? Whether you prioritize privacy, climate protection, or simply want a search experience tailored to your preferences, we’ve got you covered.

Qwant is a privacy-focused search engine that puts your needs first while protecting your personal data. By blocking trackers and advertisements, Qwant helps your search results remain unbiased and comprehensive. Just like Firefox, they are committed to protecting your privacy and preserving the decentralized nature of the web, where people have control over their online experiences.

Together, Firefox and Qwant are contributing to a more open, inclusive web, and above all — one where you can make an informed choice about what tech you use, and why. Your tech choices make a difference. 

As Firefox continues to champion user empowerment and innovation, we invite you to join us in shaping a web that works for everyone. Together, let’s make a positive impact—one search at a time.

The post Empowering Choice: Firefox Partners with Qwant for a Better Web  appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

In a year marked by extraordinary advancements in artificial intelligence, largely driven by the evolution of large language models (LLMs), one factor stands out as a universal accelerator: the exponential growth in computational power.

Over the last few years, researchers have continuously pushed the boundaries of what a ‘large’ language model means, increasing both the size of these models and the volume of data they were trained on. This exploration has revealed a consistent trend: as the models have grown, so have their capabilities.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape has radically transformed. Training state-of-the-art LLMs like ChatGPT has become an immensely costly endeavor. The bulk of this expense stems from the staggering amount of computational resources required. To train an LLM, researchers process enormous datasets using the latest, most advanced GPUs (graphics processing units). The cost of acquiring just one of these GPUs, such as the H100, can reach upwards of $30,000. Moreover, these units are power-hungry, contributing to significant electricity usage. 

While there have been substantial efforts by researchers and organizations towards openness in the development of large language models, in addition to the compute challenges, three major hurdles have also hampered efforts to level the playing field:

• Limited Transparency: The specifics of model architecture, data sources, and tuning parameters are often closely guarded.
• Challenging Reproducibility: Due to the swift pace of innovation, independently replicating these models on your own infrastructure can be very difficult.
• Disjointed Evaluation: The absence of a universally accepted benchmark for LLM evaluation complicates direct comparisons. The multitude of available tasks and frameworks, each assessing different capabilities, means comparisons are often inconclusive.

The high compute requirements, coupled with the opaqueness and the complexities of developing and evaluating LLMs, are hampering progress for researchers and smaller organizations striving for openness in the field. This not only threatens to reduce the diversity of innovation but also risks centralizing control of powerful models in the hands of a few large entities. The critical question arises: are these entities prepared to shoulder the ethical and moral responsibilities this control entails? Moreover, what steps can we take to bridge the divide between open innovators and those who hold the keys to the leading LLM technology?

Why LLMs make model evaluation harder than ever

Evaluation of LLMs involves assessing their performance and capabilities across various tasks and benchmarks and provides a measure of progress and highlights areas where models excel or need improvement. 

‘Traditional’ machine learning evaluation is quite straightforward: if we develop a model to predict lung cancer from X-ray images, we can test its accuracy by using a collection of X-rays that doctors have already diagnosed as either having cancer (YES) or not (NO). By comparing the model’s predictions with the doctor-diagnosed cases, we can assess how well it matches the expert classifications.

In contrast, LLMs can complete an almost endless number of tasks: summarization, autocompletion, reasoning, generating recommendations for movies and recipes, writing essays, telling stories, generating good code, and so on. Evaluation of performance therefore becomes much, much harder.

At Mozilla.ai, we believe that making open-source model fine-tuning and evaluation as accessible as possible is an important step to helping people own and trust the technology they use. Currently, this still requires expertise and the ability to navigate a rapidly evolving ecosystem of techniques, frameworks, and infrastructure requirements. We want to make this less overwhelming for organizations and developers, which is why we’re building tools that:

• Help them find the right open-source LLM for their needs
• Make it simple to fine-tune an open-source LLM on their own data
• Make language model evaluation and validation more accessible

We think there will be a significant opportunity for many organizations to use these tools to develop their own small and specialized language models that address a range of meaningful use cases in a cost-effective way. We strive to empower developers and organizations to engage with and trust the open-source ecosystem and minimize their dependence on using closed-source models over which they have no ownership or control.

Read the whole publication and subscribe to future ones in the Mozilla.ai blog.

The post The cost of cutting-edge: Scaling compute and limiting access appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Google relies on tracking too, but this change has the potential to skew the advertising market in Google’s favor.  For online advertisers looking to perform individualized ad targeting, tracking is a significant important source of visitor information. Smaller ad networks and websites depend on being able to source information about what people do on other sites in order to be competitive in the ruthless online advertising marketplace. Without that, these smaller players might be less able to connect visitors with the — often shady — trade in personal data.  

On the other hand, entities like Google who operate large sites, might rely less on information from other sites.  Losing the information that comes from tracking people might affect them far less when they can use information they gather from their many services.

So, while the privacy gains are clear — reducing tracking means a reduction in the collection and trade of information about what people do online — the competition situation is awkward. Here we have a company that dominates both the advertising and browser markets, proposing a change that comes with clear privacy benefits, but it will also further entrench its own dominance in the massively profitable online advertising market.

Protected Audience is a cornerstone of Google’s response to pressure from competition regulators, in particular the UK Competition and Markets Authority, with whom Google entered into a voluntary agreement in 2022. Protected Audience seeks to provide some counterbalance to the effects of better privacy in the advertising market.

We find Google’s claims about the effect of Protected Audience on advertising competition credible. The proposal could make targeted advertising better for sites that heavily relied on tracking in the past. That comes with a small caveat: complexity might cause a larger share of advertising profits to go to ad tech intermediaries.

However, the proposal fails to meet its own privacy goals. The technical privacy measures in Protected Audience fail to prevent sites from abusing the API to learn about what you did on other sites.

To say that the details are a bit complicated would be something of an understatement.  Protected Audience is big and involved, with lots of moving parts, but it can be explained with a simple analogy.

The idea behind Protected Audience is that it creates something like an alternative information dimension inside of your (Chrome) browser. In this alternative dimension, tracking what you saw and did online is possible. Any website can push information into that dimension. While we normally avoid mixing data from multiple sites, those rules are changed to allow that. Sites can then process that data in order to select advertisements. However, no one can see into this dimension, except you. Sites can only open a window for you to peek into that dimension, but only to see the ads they chose.

Leaving the details aside for the moment, the idea that personal data might be made available for specific uses like this, is quite appealing. A few years ago, something like Protected Audience might have been the stuff of science fiction. Protected Audience might be flawed, but it demonstrates real potential. If this is possible, that might give people more of a say in how their data is used. Rather than just have someone spy on your every action then use that information as they like, you might be able to specify what they can and cannot do. The technology could guarantee that your choice is respected.

Maybe advertising is not the first thing you would do with this newfound power, but maybe if the advertising industry is willing to fund investments in new technology that others could eventually use, that could be a good thing.

Sadly, Protected Audience fails in two ways. To be successful, it must process data without leaks.  In a complex design like this, it is almost expected that there will be a few holes in the design.  However, the biggest problem is that the browser needs to stop websites from seeing the information that they process.

Preventing advertising companies from looking at the information they process makes it extremely difficult to use Protected Audience. In response to concerns from these companies, Google loosened privacy protections in a number of places to make it easier to use. Of course, by weakening protections, the current proposal provides no privacy.  In other words, to help make Protected Audience easier to use, they made the design even leakier.

A lot of these leaks are temporary. Google has a plan and even a timeline for closing most of the holes that were added to make Protected Audience easier to use for advertisers. The problem is that there is no credible fix for some of the information leaks embedded in Protected Audience’s architecture. 

A stronger Protected Audience might lead us to ask some fairly challenging questions. We might ask whether objections to targeted advertising arise solely from the privacy problems with current technology? Or, is it the case that targeted manipulation itself is the problem? Targeted advertising is more effective because it uses greater information about its audience — you — to better influence your decisions. So would a system that prevented information collection, but still allowed advertisers to exercise that influence, be acceptable?

We would also need to decide to what extent a browser — a user agent — can justifiably act in ways that are not directly in the interests of its user. Protected Audience exists for the benefit of the advertising industry. A system that makes it easier to make websites supported by advertising has benefits. After all, advertising does have the potential to make content more widely accessible to people of different means, with richer people effectively subsidizing content for those of lesser means. A stronger Protected Audience might then provide people with a real, if indirect, benefit. Does that benefit outweigh the costs of giving advertisers greater influence over our decision-making?

With Protected Audience as it is today, we can simply set those questions aside. In failing to achieve its own privacy goals, Protected Audience is not now — and maybe not ever — a good addition to the Web.

Read our much longer analysis of Protected Audience for more details.

The post Google’s Protected Audience Protects Advertisers (and Google) More Than It Protects You appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

www.mozilla.org/rise25/nominate/

On the heels of Mozilla’s Rise25 Awards in Berlin last year, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be returning once again with a special celebration that will take place in Dublin, Ireland later this year.

The 2nd Annual Rise25 Awards will feature familiar categories, but with an emphasis on trustworthy AI. We will be honoring 25 people who are leading that next wave of AI — who are using philanthropy, collective power, and the principles of open source to make sure the future of AI is responsible, trustworthy, inclusive and centered around human dignity. 

2023 was indeed the year of AI, and as more people adopt it, we know it is a technology that will continue to impact our culture and society, act as a catalyst for innovation and creation, and be a medium to engage people from all walks of life in conversations thanks to its growing ubiquity in our everyday lives.

We know we cannot do this alone: At Mozilla, we believe the most groundbreaking innovations emerge when people from diverse backgrounds unite to collaborate and openly trade ideas. 

So if you know someone who you think should be celebrated, we want to hear from you! 

Five winners from each of the five categories below will be selected to make up our 2024 Rise25 cohort: 

Advocates – Guiding AI towards a responsible future

These are the policymakers, activists, and thinkers ensuring AI is developed ethically, inclusively, and transparently. This category also includes those who are adept at translating complex AI concepts for the broader public — including journalists, content creators, and cultural commentators. They champion digital rights and accessible AI, striving to make AI a force for societal good.

Builders – Developing AI through ethical innovation

They are the architects of trustworthy AI, including engineers and data scientists dedicated to developing AI’s open-source language infrastructure. They focus on technical proficiency and responsible and ethical construction. Their work ensures AI is secure, accessible, and reliable, aiming to create tools that empower and advance society. 

Artists – Reimagining AI’s creative potential

They transcend traditional AI applications, like synthesizing visuals or using large language models. Their projects, whether interactive websites, films, or digital media, challenge our perceptions and demonstrate how AI can amplify and empower human creativity. Their work provokes thought and offers fresh perspectives on the intersection of AI and art.

Entrepreneurs – Fueling AI’s evolution with visionary ventures

These daring individuals are transforming imaginative ideas into reality. They’re crafting businesses and solutions with AI to meet societal needs, improve everyday life and forge new technological paths. They embody innovation, steering startups and projects with a commitment to ethical standards, inclusiveness and enhancing human welfare through technology.

Change Agents – Cultivating inclusive AI

They are challengers that lead the way in diversifying AI, bringing varied community voices into tech. They focus on inclusivity in AI development, ensuring technology serves and represents everyone, especially those historically excluded from the tech narrative. They are community leaders, corporate leaders, activists and outside-the-box thinkers finding ways to amplify the impacts of AI for marginalized communities. Their work fosters an AI environment of equality and empowerment.

This year’s awards build upon the success of last year’s programming and community event in Berlin, which brought to life what a future trustworthy Internet could look like. Last year’s event crowned trailblazers and visionaries across five distinct categories: Builders, Activists, Artists, Creators, and Advocates. (Psst! Stay tuned as we unveil their inspiring stories in a video series airing across Mozilla channels throughout the year, leading up to the 2nd Annual Rise25 Awards.)

So join us as we honor the innovators, advocates, entrepreneurs, and communities who are working to build a happier, healthier web. Click here to submit your nomination today.

The post Mozilla Announces Call for Entries for the 2nd Annual Rise25 Awards in Dublin, Ireland appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Today, we are publishing two readouts from the convening. 

The first is a technical memorandum that outlines three different approaches to openness in AI, and highlights different components and spectrums of openness. It includes an extensive appendix that outlines key components in the AI stack, and describes how more openness in each component can help advance system and societal goals. Finally, it outlines open questions that would be worthy of future exploration, digging deeper into the specifics of openness and AI. This memorandum will be helpful for technical leaders and practitioners who are shaping the future of AI, so that they can better incorporate principles of openness to make their own AI systems more effective for their goals and more beneficial for society. 

The second is a policy memorandum that outlines how and why policymakers should support openness in AI. It outlines the societal benefits from openness in AI, provides a higher-level overview of how different parts of the AI stack contribute to different opportunities and risks, and lays out a series of recommendations about how policymakers can advance openness in AI. This memorandum will be helpful for policymakers, especially those who are grappling with the details of policy interventions related to openness in AI.

In the coming weeks, we will also be publishing a longer document that goes into greater detail about the dimensions of openness in AI. This will help advance our broader work with partners and allies to tackle complex and important topics around openness, competition, and accountability in AI. We will continue to keep mozilla.org/research/cc updated with materials stemming from the Columbia Convening on Openness and AI.

The post Readouts from the Columbia Convening on Openness and AI appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Mozilla sponsored “The Futurist Summit: The New Age of Tech,” an event focused on addressing the wide range of promise and risks associated with emerging technologies — the largest of them being Artificial Intelligence (AI). It featured interviews moderated by journalists from The Post, as well as interactive sessions about tech for audience members in attendance at the paper’s office in Washington D.C.

Missed the event? Here are six takeaways from it that you should know about:

1. How OpenAI is preparing for the election.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election is one of the biggest topics of discussion involving the emergence and dangers of AI this year. It’s no secret that AI has incredible power to create, influence and manipulate voters with misinformation and fake media content (video, photos, audio) that can unfairly sway voters.

OpenAI, one of the biggest AI organizations, stressed an importance to provide transparency for its users to ensure their tools aren’t being used in those negative ways to mislead the public.

“It’s four billion people voting, and that is really unprecedented, and we’re very, very cognizant of that,” OpenAI VP of Global Affairs Anna Makanju said. “And obviously, it’s one of the things that we work — to ensure that our tools are not used to deceive people and to mislead people.”

Makanju reiterated that AI concerns with the election is a very large scale, and OpenAI is focused on engaging with companies to hammer down transparency in the 2024 race.

“This is like a whole of society issue,” Makanju said. “So that’s why we have engaged with other companies in this space as well. As you may have seen in the Munich Security Conference, we announced the Tech Accord, where we’re going to collaborate with social media companies and other companies that generate AI content, because there’s the issue of generation of AI content and the issue of distribution, and they’re quite different. So, for us, we really focus on things like transparency. … We of course have lots of teams investigating abuse of our systems or circumvention of the use case guidelines that are intended to prevent this kind of work. So, there are many teams at OpenAI working to ensure that these tools aren’t used for election interference.”

And OpenAI will be in the spotlight even more as the election inches closer. According to a report from Business Insider, OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-5 this summer, which will reportedly eclipse the abilities of the ChatGPT chatbot.

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The futurist summit focused on the wide range of promise and risks associated with emerging technologies</figcaption>

2. Policymakers address the potential TikTok ban.

The House overwhelmingly voted 352-65 on March 13 to pass a measure that gives ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, a decision: Sell the social media platform or face a nationwide ban on all U.S. devices.

One of the top lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), addressed the national security concerns around TikTok on a panel moderated by political reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell alongside Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.).

“There is something uniquely challenging about TikTok because ultimately if this information is turned over to the Chinese espionage services that could be then potentially used for nefarious purposes, that’s not a good thing for America’s long-term national security interests,” Werner said. “End of the day, all we want is it could be an American company, it could be a British company, it could be a Brazilian company. It just needs not to be from one of the nation states, China being one of the four, that are actually named in American law as adversarial nations.”

Young chimed in shortly after Warner: “Though I have not authored a bill on this particular topic, I’ve been deeply involved, for several years running now, in this effort to harden ourselves against a country, China, that has weaponized our economic interdependence in various ways.”

The fate of the measure now heads to the Senate, which is not scheduled to vote on it soon.

3. Deep Media AI is fighting against fake media content.

AI to fight against AI? Yes, it’s possible!

AI being able to alter how we perceive reality through deepfakes — in other words, synthetic media — is another danger of the emerging technology. Deep Media AI founder Rijul Gupta is countering that AI problem with AI of his own.

In a video demonstration alongside tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, Gupta showcased how Deep Media AI scans and detects deepfakes in photos, videos and audio files to combat the issue.

For example, Deep Media AI can determine if a photo is fake by looking at wrinkles, reflections and things humans typically don’t pay attention to. In the audio space, which Gupta described as “uniquely dangerous,” the technology analyzes the waves and patterns. It can detect video deepfakes by tracking motion of the face — how it moves, the shape and movement of lips — and changes in lighting.

A good sign: Audience members were asked to identify a deepfake between two video clips (one real, one AI generated by OpenAI) at the start of Gupta’s presentation. The majority of people in attendance guessed correctly. Even better: Deep Media AI detected it was fake and scored a 100/100 in its detection system. In other words, it got it right perfectly.

“Generative AI is going to be awesome; it’s going to make us all rich; it’s going to be great,” Gupta said. “But in order for that to happen, we need to make it safe. We’re part of that, but we need militaries and governments. We need buy-in from the generative AI companies. We need buy-in from the tech ecosystem. We need detectors. And we need journalists to tell us what’s real, and what’s fake from a trusted source, right? I think it’s possible. We’re here to help, but we’re not the only ones here. We’re hoping to provide solutions that people use.”

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">VP of Global Policy at Mozilla, Linda Griffin, interviewed by The Washington Post’s Kathleen Koch.</figcaption>

4. Mozilla’s push for trustworthy AI

As we continue to shift towards a world with AI that’s helpful, it’s important we involve human beings in that process as much as possible. It’s concerning if companies are making AI while only thinking about profit and not the public. That hurts public trust and faith in big tech.

This work is urgent, and Mozilla has been delivering the trustworthy AI report — which had a 2020 status update in February — to aid in aligning with our vision of creating a healthy internet where openness, competition and accountability are the norms.

“We want to know what you think,” Mozilla VP of Global Policy Linda Griffin said. “We’re trying to map and guide where we think these conversations are. What is the point of AI unless more people can benefit from it more broadly? What is the point of this technology if it’s just in the hands of the handful of companies thinking about their bottom line?

“They do important and really interesting things with the technology; that’s great. But we need more; we need the public counterpoint. So, for us, trustworthy AI, it’s about accountability, transparency, and having humans in the loop thinking about people wanting to use these products and feeling safe and understanding that they have recourse if something goes wrong.”

5. AI’s ability to change rules in the NFL (yes!).

While the NFL is early in the process of incorporating AI into the game of football, the league has found ways to get the ball rolling (pun intended) on using its tools to make the game smarter and better.

One area is with health and safety, a major priority for the NFL. The league uses AI and machine learning tools on the field to grab predictive analysis to identify plays and body positions that most likely lead to players getting injured. Then, they can adjust rules and strategies accordingly, if they want.

For example, kickoffs. Concussions sustained on kickoffs dropped by 60 percent in the NFL last season, from 20 to eight. That is because kickoffs were returned less frequently after the league adjusted the rules governing kickoff returns during the previous offseason, so that a returner could signal for a fair catch no matter where the ball was kicked, and the ball would be placed on the 25-yard line. This change came after the NFL used AI tools to gather injury data on those plays.

“The insight to change that rule had come from a lot of the data we had collected with chips on the shoulder pads of our players of capturing data, using machine learning, and trying to figure out what is the safest way to play the game,” Brian Rolapp, Chief Media & Business Officer for the NFL, told media reporter Ben Strauss, “which led to an impact of rule change.”

While kickoff injuries have gone down, making this tweak to one of the most exciting plays in football is tough. So this year, the NFL is working on a compromise and exploring new ideas that can strike a balance to satisfy both safety and excitement. There will be a vote at league meetings this week in front of coaches, general managers and ownership about it.

6. Don’t forget about tech for accessibility.

With the new chapter of AI, the possibilities of investing and creating tools for those with disabilities is endless. For those who are blind, have low vision or have trouble hearing, AI offers an entire new slate of capabilities.

Apple has been one of the companies at the forefront creating features for those with disabilities that use their products. For example, on iPhones, Apple has implemented live captions, sound recognition and voice control on devices to assist.

Sarah Herrlinger, Senior Director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives at Apple, gave insight into how the tech giant decides what features to add and which ones to update. In doing so, she delivered one of the best talking points of the day.

“I think the key to that is really engagement with the communities,” Herrlinger said. “We believe very strongly in the disability mantra of, nothing about us without us, and so it starts with first off employing members of these communities within our ranks. We never build for a community. We build with them.”

Herrlinger was joined on stage alongside retired Judge David S. Tatel, Mike Buckley, the Chair & CEO of Be My Eyes and Disability reporter for The Post Amanda Morris. When asked about the future of accessibility for those that are blind, Patel shared a touching sentiment many in the disability space resonate with.

“It’s anything that improves and enhances my independence, and enhances it seamlessly is with what I look for,” Tatel said. “That’s it. Independence, independence, independence.”

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