印度农村的一位农民拍摄了一株濒死植物的照片。她想在网上研究它，但她不会说英语。她不应该非得如此。
这就是一个名为 Current AI 的非营利组织（https://www.currentai.org/）尝试解决的问题，他们正在构建开放的公共 AI 基础设施。今年二月，在印度 AI 峰会上，它与印度政府的 AI 语言部门 Bhashini（https://www.currentai.org/prototype）合作。结果诞生了 Suno Sutra，印地语意为“倾听编年史”，这是一款口袋大小的离线设备，可用 22 种印度语言运行 AI，无需互联网。“在印度，有数百种不同的语言和方言，而 AI 目前并未覆盖它们，”Current AI 首席执行官 Ayah Bdeir 在接受 TechCrunch 采访时说。该设备是开源的，供开发者社区构建使用。
该非营利组织由 Martin Tisne 于 2025 年二月创立（https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/10/google-backed-public-interest-ai-partnership-launches-with-400m-pledged-for-open-ecosystem-building/），发展迅速。上个月，它向四个组织的项目拨款 320 万美元；最近（上周）在日内瓦的 AI for Good 峰会上推出了一个开源 AI 聊天机器人（https://unitac.un.org/en/events/ai-good-global-summit-2026-geneva-switzerland）。
Bdeir 于一月加入，此前她负责 Mozilla 的 AI 战略。她曾创办了 littleBits，这是一家 STEM 教育公司，在出售给 Sphero 之前已触及数百万孩子（https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/23/sphero-is-buying-littlebits/）。
Bdeir 告诉 TechCrunch，Current AI 作为“公私合作伙伴关系”运营，汇集政府、公司和慈善机构为公共利益技术提供资金。法国政府向 Current AI 提供了 1 亿美元启动资金，并有福特基金会、麦克阿瑟基金会、DeepMind 和 Salesforce 加入，使承诺的总资金达到 4 亿美元。“他们不是投资者；他们是资助者，”Bdeir 说。
它旨在解决的问题很简单：今天的每一个主要 AI 系统，从 OpenAI 到 Google 再到 Anthropic，都是属于私营公司的。“如果 AI 真的是一种变革性的技术，如果它将改变每个人生活的方方面面，那么必须有一个公共的选择，”Bdeir 说。“就像万维网一样，任何人都可以免费使用。”
全世界一半的口语语言面临灭绝：https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/international-decade-of-indigenous-languages-2022-2032。“而随着英语主导最大语言模型和 AI 系统，世界上大部分语言，因此也包括文化和社区都被遗落在后，”Bdeir 说道。
当被问及大科技公司在多语言方面的推动时，Bdeir 做出了明确的区分：“大科技公司构建多语言模型是为了扩大他们的市场，”她说，“不论是否同意或是否有情境考虑。”其后果是具体的。“对于土著语言而言，传教士的圣经翻译在社区制定任何规则之前就已经成为训练数据，”她说道。
AI 会说一种语言只是它需要学习的一部分。“语言是知识、传统、记忆和身份从一代传到下一代的方式。所以当一项技术不能说你的语言时，它也不能承载你的文化，”她说。
她对 Current AI 的愿景是一个开放系统，以早期网络为模型，改进能惠及每个人，没人会被排除在外，社区能保有自己的数据控制权。
Current 上个月宣布的第一轮群体资助，包括向分布在肯尼亚、黎巴嫩和巴西亚马逊的四个组织拨出 320 万美元。
在肯尼亚 Masakhane 的项目涉及为健康、农业和教育建立超过 50 种非洲语言的 AI 数据集；黎巴嫩世界制造研究所正在将阿拉伯文化历史和当代实践数字化为机器可读数据库，由社区（而非科技公司）控制。巴西的 Portal sem Porteiras 正与亚马逊土著社区一起开发离线 AI 工具，使数据保留在本地。而肯尼亚的非洲互联网权利联盟正在开发审计工具，以追踪全大陆 AI 系统的责任。
关于数据所有权问题，Bdeir 直言不讳。她对 TechCrunch 说：“不同社区对于谁拥有数据有不同的模式和提议，但有一点是确定的：不应该是硅谷的一家公司去让少数几千人变得更富有。”
该非营利组织的方法是将模型和数据存储在本地，在建立任何东西之前引入社区专家，或者在流程中编写同意协议，以便社区在任何时候都能停止该过程。
Current AI 的资助者们还没有完全解决这个问题。但 Bdeir 认为这正是重点。她说：“他们每一个人都把这个问题融入了自己的工作，而不是接受通常的默认方式，即让复杂性成为让政府或科技公司为所有人做决定的借口。”
至于以 320 万美元的预算分给四个组织能够取得多少进展，Bdeir 说：“规模并不总是衡量标准。这才是大科技的范式。”她说，“这可能看起来像是巴西亚马逊的土著长老使用在肯尼亚建立的工具，以便用自己的语言传承生态知识。”
本月早些时候，在日内瓦，Current 推出了 Alpha Chat：https://chat.publicai.co/auth?redirect=/，一个开源聊天机器人：https://www.aipotluck.org/，由十个组织组成的联盟在七周内组装完成，包括 Hugging Face、Mozilla 和 MIT 媒体实验室。每个贡献者提供了技术栈的一部分，包括语言模型、安全工具和计算能力。
Current AI 还与东京初创公司 Sakana AI：https://www.linkedin.com/posts/were-thrilled-to-share-our-collaboration-share-7445159358428205057-WW_N/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAA0hvkgBC34QbNCa_nUf-M-BUJ_VANCg4jo 签署了协议，该公司以其所谓“主权 AI”工作而闻名。两家组织计划建立一个共享的开源 AI 技术栈，旨在支持日语和日本文化，同时也覆盖主流 AI 系统在很大程度上忽视的全球南方社区。
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A farmer in rural India takes a photo of a dying plant. She wants to research it on the internet but she doesn’t speak English. She shouldn’t have to.
That’s the type of problem a nonprofit called Current AI：https://www.currentai.org/ is trying to solve by building open, public AI infrastructure. In February at the India AI Summit, it teamed up with Bhashini：https://www.currentai.org/prototype, the Indian government’s AI language division. The result became Suno Sutra, Hindi for “listening chronicles,” a pocket-sized, offline device that runs AI in 22 Indian languages, no internet required. “In India, there are hundreds of different languages and dialects, and right now AI is not representing them,” Current AI CEO Ayah Bdeir said in an interview with TechCrunch. The device is open-sourced, available for developer communities to build on.
The nonprofit, founded in February 2025：https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/10/google-backed-public-interest-ai-partnership-launches-with-400m-pledged-for-open-ecosystem-building/ by Martin Tisne, is moving fast. Last month, it allocated $3.2 million in grants to projects across four organizations; most recently (last week) it launched an open-source AI chatbot at the AI for Good Summit in Geneva：https://unitac.un.org/en/events/ai-good-global-summit-2026-geneva-switzerland.
Bdeir, joined in January after leading Mozilla’s AI strategy. She previously founded littleBits, the STEM education company that reached millions of kids before selling to Sphero in 2019：https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/23/sphero-is-buying-littlebits/.
Current AI operates as a “public-private partnership” bringing together governments, companies, and philanthropies to fund public interest tech, she told TechCrunch. The French government seeded Current AI with $100 million, joined by the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, DeepMind, and Salesforce — bringing total committed funding to $400 million. “They’re not investors; they’re funders,” Bdeir said .
The problem it aims to solve is straightforward: every major AI system today, from OpenAI to Google to Anthropic, belongs to a private company. “If AI is truly a transformative technology, if it’s going to change every aspect of everyone’s life, there has to be a public alternative,” Bdeir said. “Like the World Wide Web, available to anyone, for free.”
Half the world’s spoken languages face extinction：https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/international-decade-of-indigenous-languages-2022-2032. “And with English driving the largest language models and AI systems, a bulk of the world’s languages and, consequently, cultures and communities are left behind,” Bdeir said.
When asked about Big Tech’s multilingual push, Bdeir drew a sharp distinction. “Big tech builds multilingual models to expand their market,” she said, “regardless of consent or context.” The consequences are concrete. “For Indigenous languages, missionary Bible translations become training data before communities have set any rules,” she said.
An AI’s ability to speak a language is only part of what it needs to learn. “Language is how knowledge, tradition, memory and identity get carried from one generation to the next. So when a technology can’t speak your language, it can’t hold your culture either,” she said.
Her vision for Current AI is an open system modeled on the early web, where improvements benefit everyone, no one gets locked out, and communities keep control of their own data.
Current’s first cohort grant round, announced last month, involved deploying $3.2 million to four organizations across Kenya, Lebanon, and the Brazilian Amazon.
The project in Masakhane, Kenya, involves building AI datasets across more than 50 African languages for health, farming, and education; Lebanon’s Institute for Worldmaking is digitizing Arab cultural history and contemporary practice into machine-readable databases that communities (not tech companies) control. Brazil’s Portal sem Porteiras is building offline AI tools with Indigenous Amazon communities, keeping data within the territory. And Kenya’s African Internet Rights Alliance is developing audit tools to hold AI systems accountable across the continent.
On the question of data ownership, Bdeir didn’t mince words. “There are different models and proposals for who owns data in various communities, but one thing is sure: it shouldn’t be a company in Silicon Valley trying to make a select few thousand people wealthier,” she told TechCrunch.
The nonprofit’s approach is to store models and data locally, bringing in community experts before anything is built, or writing consent protocols into the pipeline so communities can halt the process at any point.
None of Current AI’s grantees have fully solved it yet. But Bdeir sees that as the point. “Every one of them has built the question into their work,” she said, “rather than accepting the usual default, where complexity becomes the excuse to let a government or a tech company decide for everyone.”
As for how much progress can be made with a $3.2 million budget split across four organizations, Bdeir says, “Scale is not always the measure. That is the Big Tech paradigm,” she said. “This could look like an Indigenous elder in the Brazilian Amazon using a tool built in Kenya to be able to pass down ecological knowledge in their own language.”
Earlier this month in Geneva, Current launched Alpha Chat：https://chat.publicai.co/auth?redirect=%2F, an open-source chatbot：https://www.aipotluck.org/ assembled in seven weeks by a coalition of ten organizations, including Hugging Face, Mozilla, and MIT Media Lab. Each contributor brought a piece of the stack, including a language model, safety tooling, and computing power.
Current AI also struck a deal with Sakana AI：https://www.linkedin.com/posts/were-thrilled-to-share-our-collaboration-share-7445159358428205057-WW_N/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAA0hvkgBC34QbNCa_nUf-M-BUJ_VANCg4jo, a Tokyo-based startup known for its work on what it calls Sovereign AI. The two organizations plan to build a shared open-source AI stack, one designed to support the Japanese language and culture, but also communities across the Global South that dominant AI systems have largely ignored.
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Kate Park is a reporter at TechCrunch, with a focus on technology, startups and venture capital in Asia. She previously was a financial journalist at Mergermarket covering M&A, private equity and venture capital.
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