In our third AI Openness & Equity Policy Leadership Cohort session, we dove deeper into a tough but timely question: how do we design AI that actually serves the public - not just in theory, but in practice? Alek Tarkowski and Zuzanna Warso from the Open Future Foundation joined us for this session, and helped us unpack what “Public AI” means in today’s (hypey) AI landscape.

This is our first in a series of blog posts sharing reflections and learnings from the Openness and Equity Policy Leadership Cohort. In this session, we were joined by Udbhav Tiwari from the Signal Foundation to explore a foundational question: What does “openness” mean in the age of AI, and how can the values of open-source guide AI systems to serve the public good?

In this cohort launched in partnership with Mozilla, we've assembled a diverse mix of practitioners, researchers, and academics to explore what openness and equity can and should mean in AI, and how they can be levers for greater accountability, inclusion, and public interest development across Europe and beyond.

We’re delighted to announce that Nitya Kuthiala has joined the inaugural AI Openness & Equity Policy Leadership Cohort as AI Policy Fellow at Aspiration!
In addition to co-creating the cohort alongside Raegan and cohort members, Nitya will play a key role in synthesising the rich, cross-disciplinary conversations with participants and visiting experts, distilling key insights to help frame the cohort’s final policy recommendations.

Since launching the Policy Leadership Initiative, we have interviewed over 100 individuals in the policy field. We wanted to hear what practitioners had to say about leadership, policy work, power-sharing, and a range of other topics. In this new blog series, we will share some highlights from these interviews, which fundamentally shaped the Policy Leadership Initiative.

In trying to mediate the consequences of Big Tech and EU law on daily life, the Policy Leadership Initiative advocates for the inclusion of voices from those disproportionately affected and/or harmed by technology. But what do we actually mean by leadership?