Mozilla is crowdsourcing voice recognition to make AI work for the people

Data is critical to building great AI — so much so, that researchers in the field compare it to coal during the Industrial Revolution. Those that have it will steam ahead. Those that don’t will be left in the dust. In the current AI boom, it’s obvious who has it: tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Baidu.

That’s worrying news. After all, many of these companies have near monopolies in areas like search and social media. Their position helps them gather data, which helps them build better AI, which helps them stay ahead of rivals. For the firms themselves, it’s a virtuous cycle, but without viable competition, companies can — and do — abuse their dominance.

Now a new project from the Mozilla Foundation (the nonprofit creator of the...

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