ROOST.tools

We talked to many organizations and developers when preparing to launch, and one thing we kept hearing was that even finding the open source tools that *already exist* was a challenge. Here's our first baby step - a curated list of open source tools that can be used for online safety: https://lnkd.in/dstMPrSJ This list was initially developed by the Research team at Columbia Institute of Global Politics T&S Tooling Consortium. Thank you Mariel Povolny, Gunnar Wainwright, Jessica Liang, Daniel Siegel, Jen Weedon, and Juliet Shen!

The February crawl archive is now available from our friends at Common Crawl Foundation! While you explore that, hear from their team on how ROOST and Common Crawl's missions align: "AI safety is often discussed in broad theoretical terms, but practical solutions (tools, resources, and frameworks) are often closed off, expensive, or controlled by a few major players. This not only reduces effectiveness of safety interventions, but also creates barriers for smaller organisations and independent developers. ROOST aims to ensure that developers at _all levels_ can implement best practices in safety." https://lnkd.in/en55DXwX

I usually don’t write long, introspective LinkedIn posts, but here goes. Last week was one of the most gratifying of my career. Together with close friends and colleagues, I helped to launch a new non-profit organization at the #ParisAIActionSummit – ROOST.tools. ROOST will democratize access to core safety infrastructure by leveraging the power of #opensource. I’m excited to have raised nearly $30 million to ensure that ROOST has the multi-year runway it needs to drive impact globally in the age of #AI. There are many people and organizations who played critical roles incubating ROOST, helping it hatch, and, this past week, take flight. There are also many different ROOST origin stories all of which are equally valid (including what follows below). The initial focus on the promise of open source safety tools and the need for an institutional hub to house them traces back to the wonderful work of Kat Duffy and Rose Jackson. Check out Annex 2 of their final report – Building Open #TrustandSafety Tools – if you haven’t already. From there, the idea for a “Tooling Hub” slowly picked up steam. Camille Fran?ois led the way, leveraging her perch at Columbia University. Her vision, energy, and collaborative spirit energized everyone, myself included! Dave Willner, Yoel Roth and John R. drew on their combined decades of experience to ask hard questions, refine the concept, and make critical introductions along the way. ROOST would have never launched without Juliet Shen’s PM / product wizardry and passion; or Chris DiBona’s unrivaled open source and technical insights. ROOST’s origin story also turns on the generosity of the Schmidt Entities, especially Eric Schmidt, Maria Sefarian, and Amy Rao, whose support for me and the “Tooling Hub” never wavered. I am deeply indebted to Ylli Bajraktari for welcoming me to Special Competitive Studies Project - SCSP and providing sage advice and guidance along the way; and to Rama G. Elluru for being an amazing colleague. The final and absolutely critical ingredient was Clint Smith and Discord’s resolute support and partnership. From a very early pledge of funding and in-kind support to active outreach to executives across other companies, we could not have asked for a more genuine, knowledgeable, and committed co-founder of ROOST. These ingredients attracted numerous other amazing partners ranging from Vilas Dhar / The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation to John Sands / Knight Foundation to Martin Tisné / AI Collaborative Network; to Paul Ash / Christchurch Call Foundation and Mark Surman and Nabiha Syed / Mozilla; and Laurie Richardson and Amanda Storey / Google to Jason K. and Ryan Beiermeister / OpenAI. Our complete list of Partners is detailed on our website. I’m excited to join ROOST’s Board and remain very involved going forward. We’re always on the lookout for new partners of all kinds, so please don’t hesitate to reach out if you or your organization would like to explore how we can work together!?

"Disinformation is endangering democracies across the world–affecting our civil societies, private companies, and public sector. But we can act to turn the tide.” At the Munich Cyber Security Conference, Vilas Dhar shared insights from our work at PJMF alongside Maia Mazurkiewicz, President of the PZU Foundation, Nicola Hudson OBE, Cybersecurity, Data & Privacy Global Lead at Brunswick Group, Ginny Badanes, General Manager at Democracy Forward, Microsoft and Lisa Kaplan, Founder & CEO, Alethea Group and moderated by Vivian Schiller, Director of Aspen Digital. “The real danger is the weaponization of algorithms by malevolent actors to bring us towards more closeted, more extreme points of view–creating echo chambers that help propagate dangerous ideas.” highlighted Vilas. From social media to online blogs, our private data can be used by malevolent actors to target and send specific content, political, extremist content to our feeds. This could be countered and protected by guardrails implemented by regulation, an ecosystem of trustworthy actors that can help us debunk misinformation, and the capacity at scale to respond to disinformation. At the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we’ve partnered with ecosystems such as ROOST.tools and the CyberPeace Institute, who work to enforce a safer environment for nonprofits and small companies that don’t have the security capacity to respond to ongoing threats. Learn more about our work at mcgovern.org. #TechForGood #AI

"Open source technology not only democratizes access and decentralizes power, but it also creates the nurturing conditions for innovation and collaboration—principles captured in the original spirit of the internet." We are glad to be part of the effort to build accessible digital infrastructure along with Project Liberty. https://lnkd.in/e_srPvVU

Open source is the antidote. "Roost is inspired by the world of cybersecurity, where open source has been the rule for almost thirty years. Rather than each building their own cyber risk detection and correction tools, and therefore constantly reinventing the wheel, companies have pooled their knowledge." https://lnkd.in/evxfRjuE

I was pleased to join some of our members and others at the launch event for this new initiative in Paris this weekend. At the Tech Coalition, we believe that any reduction in barriers to the adoption of child safety tools is a win for children. That is why we support ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools) and its efforts to increase the uptake of safety solutions across the industry. We are committed to strengthening the tech industry ecosystem in the fight against online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA). Through our Pathways program, we provide expert advice, resources, and capacity-building opportunities to help companies enhance their child safety programs. By making effective safety technologies more accessible, initiatives like ROOST can empower more companies to advance their trust and safety efforts.

As Ryan says, the need couldn't be clearer and the stakes couldn't be higher. We are grateful for OpenAI's partnership in making safety tools more accessible at this crucial time.

Well put, Hugging Face! We're so happy we are partnering on this together ?? "Small-scale developers working on specific projects within the broader development chain often lack the resources to create new safety tools from scratch, face disproportionate challenges in adopting off-the-shelf solutions that might not suit their specific needs, and are sometimes even denied access to those tools altogether. By developing open and accessible alternatives that members of the Hugging Face community can leverage when using the platform to curate and leverage datasets, to train, fine-tune, and integrate models, and to develop user-facing apps, ROOST can help minimize or even entirely eliminate those barriers. Further, by featuring tools tailored for every single stage of the development process rather than trying to make AI systems safer primarily at the deployment layer, it can foster much more robust systems overall." https://lnkd.in/eG_TKt76