Serving the “Public Good”
We were reading a blurb from Mozilla about the their up-and-coming “Ethical AI.” They’ve invest $30 million this past year for AI research that will fit their company mission of “putting people first, while being truly trustworthy and open.”
Later they explain, we suppose, how the “ethical” adjective is earned. “Mozilla is focused on … creat[ing] a new status quo where public good instead of profit defines the next wave of AI.”
Don’t misunderstand where we’re coming from. We’re not ragging on Mozilla; rather we fully support their efforts and wish them all the luck in the world.
What gives us pause, however, is the continuing idea that “public good” and “profit” are at opposite ends of some sort of spectrum. One can pursue one or the other, but not both.
Perhaps its the philosopher somewhere deep inside us that has a visceral reaction to ambiguous phrases like “public good.” Not the least of our concerns is that there exists no metric that allows us to measure the amount of Public Good we receive for some given amount of money spent on it.
Suppose, on some hot, summer day, we drop into a 7/11 or Circle-K and get an ice-cold soda. We leave behind a little money, we walk out with a bit of relief from the heat. Because we are…
