While AI technologies are rapidly expanding, key concerns about its societal impacts are often overlooked for the sake of progress towards an AI future. The AI ecosystem is dominated by a handful of large tech companies, whose incentives misalign with the public interest. Furthermore, AI is often falsely framed as a solution to the world’s biggest challenges, including the climate crisis.
We here at Aspiration and all of the previous recipients of the Dirk Award are happy to announce the 2005 winner of the award: Ungana-Afrika. Here is the official announcement. Congratulations!
David Geilhufe, Jon Lebowsky, Ethan Zuckerman, Donald Lobo, Steven Wright, Kieran Lal and others are coordinating a volunteer effort by open source developers, web designers, online activists and ordinary citizens to create a single database of all the people missing in the aftermath of Katrina that their friends and family can use to connect with them. David writes:
Aspiration board member Michelle Murrain writes on her personal blog about Convio's recent decision to take on an anti-gay marriage organization as a client. She argues:
"I think it's perhaps time for many nonprofit organizations, and the progressive nonprofit community to think carefully about this issue. Few of us think that the ends always justifies the means. Some of us (me included) think that the means by which we work to achieve our mission, affects the mission, sometimes deeply.
More than sixty nonprofit tech staff and open source programmers convened in Toronto on November 20th for the 4th Penguin Day worldwide. Penguin Day Toronto featured spirited discussion about how to bridge language and cultural gaps between open source developers and nonprofits, hands-on sessions on content management systems for organizations, real-life stories of nonprofits using open source tools, and another speed-geek -- a hilarious, fast-paced presentations of different software applications for non-profits.
Today Courtney rocked our world by helping us set up a dynamic web site with infinitely many features and all the technology needed to feed the entire planet. We are grateful.
