What is public AI?
Public AI is AI as public infrastructure: AI provisioned like electricity, parks, highways, libraries, or the Internet itself.
- Public AI is publicly accessible: ensuring AI delivers benefits to all.
- Public AI is publicly accountable: ensuring AI reflects society’s values.
- Public AI creates permanent public goods: ensuring AI is a reliable foundation.
- Public AI is being designed and built right now - all around the world.
Learn more about our definition
Why do we need public AI?
- Limited public capacity in AI is stifling our collective capacity to shape the direction of society.
- AI is becoming essential infrastructure, like roads and water pipelines - fitting for the public sector.
- AI systems are growing in power and should reflect society’s values, not the values of shareholders.
- Private companies have a head start - without investment in public capacity now, the gap will grow.
Learn more about the policy case here
Who we are
The Public AI Network is a coalition working to bring about public AI. We aim to:
- Ensure public capacity-building is part of the conversation about AI design, policy, and funding
- Make it easier to build public AI by coordinating research efforts in the ML community
- Support policymakers and technical teams seeking to implement public AI
- Organize the movement for public AI
We host a Slack community which connects together experts from leading public AI projects, thinktanks, and civil society groups. We also host a regular seminar series that shares insights from leaders in the field such as Yoshua Bengio, Diane Coyle, and Lawrence Lessig.
Learn more
- White Paper, currently the best overview
- Wiki Doc, where it all began
- Seminar Notes & Recordings
- Workshop Paper @ NeurIPS 2023 + poster, intended for the ML community
Getting involved
Public AI is a public, collaborative effort.
- For questions about public AI or to get involved, sign up for the newsletter or contact us.
- The original wiki document is publicly-editable. Add a suggestion!
- We’re recruiting!
- To edit this site (e.g. to add an event or document), go to our GitHub.
Events
- Forthcoming events TBA: Brussels and San Francisco.
- April 26, 2025: Public AI Dinner & Salon at ICLR 2025 in Singapore
- April 24-25, 2025: Commercializing Public AI at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Barcelona, Spain
- February 12-15, 2025: AI Action II at Chateau du Fey in Joigny, France
- February 11, 2025: Public AI Congress and Public AI House at AI Action Summit in Paris, France
- October 17-20, 2024: mAIfuture at the Cambridge Innovation Center, Warsaw
- October 2, 2024: Designing Public AI at the Rockefeller Foundation, DC
- August 13-14, 2024: Building a More Public AI Ecosystem at the Library of Congress
- July 24, 2024: Public AI Social #4 (+ Fishing Expedition) at ICML 2024
- July 15-21, 2024: AI Palace 2024 at Bueckeburg Palace
- March 13, 2024: Public Visions for AI Workshop at Newspeak House
- January 2 - February 27, 2024: Public AI Seminar
- January 8, 2024: Public & Civic AI Social #3 at Newspeak House
- December 14, 2023: Public AI Dinner Party at NeurIPS 2023
- November 16, 2023: Public & Civic AI Social #2 at Newspeak House
- October 17, 2023: Public & Civic AI Social #1 at Newspeak House
- September 21, 2023: Talk at AI: Ethical Paths Forward hosted by the Internet Archive
- September 14, 2023: Public AI Seminar at NYU’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy
- July 3-10, 2023: AI Palace 2023 at Bueckeburg Palace
Acknowledgements
A wide range of people have contributed ideas and time to the movement for public AI. We gratefully acknowledge operational support by Metagov, Aspen Digital, Open Future, Public Knowledge, Code for Science and Society, Mozilla, the Internet Archive, Chatham House, and many more organizations.
License
The work in this repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.