Maria Ressa

All week at UNGA, we heard a lot about building AI for the public interest together. But together, how? Who builds what? Who pays for it? Who brings the compute, models, data, and local knowledge? And how do we stop everyone from building the same thing 20 times? So last Thursday, we decided to set the table. We brought together governments, foundations, technical organizations, and multilateral institutions around one table. We added colorful flowers, good food, strong coffee, a beautiful view over New York, and one question: What will you bring? The point of AI Potluck is simple: nobody needs to build the whole AI stack alone. Bring what you do best, take what you need, and together we build public AI infrastructure that everyone can use. Amandeep Gill helped us ground the conversation in a question we kept coming back to: how do we turn global cooperation on AI into something practical? Maria Ressa brought the urgency. We need to defend against the harms already here, yes, but we also need to build the alternatives. And for anyone who thinks distributed communities can’t compete with the resources behind today's AI giants, Mitchell Baker reminded us we've been here before. Firefox took on Internet Explorer. Linux now runs most of the world's servers. What looks impossible can change when you give people a way to build and contribute together. And it’s already happening. 🇮🇳 India, BHASHINI - (Digital India BHASHINI Division) and Kalpa Impact brought multilingual infrastructure and local knowledge to Suno Sutra. 🇨🇭 Switzerland's open Apertus model and 🇫🇮 Finland's @LUMI compute became part of Alpha, our working public AI assistant. 🇫🇷 France is funding community builders working on cultural preservation in AI, and 🇩🇪 Germany's Recoding Medicine challenge is using public procurement to produce open health datasets, tools, and benchmarks. Different countries. Different capabilities. One shared stack. But a Potluck only works if everyone gets something back. One organization brought a community of builders across an entire continent. Another, a language model built across a region. Others came looking for regulatory support, infrastructure, or technical capacity. Who brought what? Nice try. Chatham House rules! You’ll have to come to the next Potluck. Ayah Bdeir showed how the Gap Map helps organize the work. It maps 80,000+ open-source components across the stack: what exists, what’s missing, and where the next contribution can strengthen existing work instead of duplicating it. A big thank you to Adrien ABECASSIS, le Ministère des Affaires étrangères français , Martin Tisné, Robert Opp, UNDP, and everyone who came ready to contribute. The table is getting bigger. Join us: aipotluck.org

We need to make our democracy support as resilient as the people we support! One of my messages when speaking at the Nobel Peace Center conference - ‘Democracy on the Brink’ - last week in #Oslo. Funding must be flexible and based on demands and trust. This is how we developed the approach at European Endowment for Democracy (EED) Lots on concerns was raised but also hope. From individuals like Nobel Laureate and journalist Maria Ressa and from the Gen Z representatives from Kenya, Nepal, US, Serbia and Brazil. People standing up for their rights and mobilising is a strong tool against authoritarian rulers. Keep going. Kudos to Kjersti Fløgstad Ingvill Bryn Rambøl Helena Boyden Lamb and the rest of the hardworking team at Nobel Peace Center.

I've added the #OpenToWork badge to my profile here as the Information Integrity Initiative actively seeks new commissions for research, storytelling and advocacy work in the areas of gender, democracy, disinformation, Big Tech accountability, and public interest media. I'm also seeking new individual consultancy opportunities in these fields to complement my roles as an independent expert with experience and recognition at the level of United Nations, OSCE and Council of Europe; professor at City St George’s, University of London; and Board Member at the International Fund for Public Interest Media. Please inbox me if you're a funder interested in collaborating with an internationally-recognised, cutting-edge team of expert practitioners and academic researchers, or if you're with an organisation looking for an independent consultant in the fields I mentioned above.

What an honor to receive the Tell award from Switzerland on the Swiss National Day from Ambassador Guillaume Scheurer in Ankara. Thank you Ambassador for the "greatest" laudatio and Happy Birthday to Switzerland ! Thanks to Deputy Minister Mehmet Kemal Bozay and Babatunde A. Ahonsi for their kind remarks, to Corinna Seiberth for her organization, to Ali Cirpan, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Bağcı, Mecit Halil Oztop from METU and to my friends Hülya Kasapoğlu Çengel, Meryem Şahin Tütüncü, Hatice Çelik, Ambassador Fatma Ceren Yazgan for joining the celebrations. My remarks on this great day: It is an honor to be here tonight with you to receive the William Tell award from Switzerland. Now, I am not Swiss -- but sort of Genevan. You may wonder how that works… What defines Geneva are three things: global diplomacy, humanitarian legacy and the view of the Mont Blanc. Every time I land in Geneva, I am moved when I see the Mont Blanc, not just any view, but the North face, because that’s what we, Genevans, look at while discussing questions of the mind and soul or just chilling with friends – as the sun goes down. If anyone shows this photo to a Genevan, we can identify it immediately. So the Mont Blanc, like me, is not Swiss, but sort of Genevan, I’d like to think. Now you may wonder where I am leading with this. I do too! ... But the truth is, looking at Mont Blanc from that specific angle defines where we stand. And just like Mont Blanc, it is our view on the future that defines where we stand in science and AI. It was from that Genevan perspective that I worked to help Türkiye become an associate member state of CERN. Convincing physicists and diplomats to align is no small feat—physicists look for invisible particles, diplomats look for invisible compromises! But CERN proved that when we share a common view of the future, borders on maps simply dissolve into the background. Today, serving on the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, that lesson is more critical than ever. The leap from subatomic particles to Artificial Intelligence isn't as huge as it seems. In particle physics, we study what happens when matter collides at high speed. On the UN AI Panel, we are navigating what happens when technology moves at hyper-speed and collides with human values. Once again, where we stand depends entirely on where we choose to look. Science diplomacy isn't about letting technology dictate our direction—it is about ensuring human values, curiosity, and international cooperation define our view of the horizon. And that brings me back to Switzerland’s most famous archer... I would like to imagine that William Tell would agree too. That we shall bow to no governor’s hat or to no techno-autocrat and that we shall always try shoot the apple and never, never the messenger!   Thank you all for being here to share this moment, thank you Ambassador for this very kind award, and thank you Mont Blanc for the inspiration – great since 20 million years.  

Here are the lessons we learned in standing up to dictators: 100 steps any citizen can take to protect their democracies. 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa's new book, "THE FIGHT BACK," breaks down into 3 sections: Understand. Defend. Build. It releases the week of October 12. Pre-order here: https://lnkd.in/gxazuHsr HarperCollins Publishers Penguin Random House

Here are the lessons we learned in standing up to dictators: 100 steps any citizen can take to protect their democracies. 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa's new book, "THE FIGHT BACK," breaks down into 3 sections: Understand. Defend. Build. It releases the week of October 12. Pre-order here: https://lnkd.in/gxazuHsr HarperCollins Publishers Penguin Random House