Ben Moskowitz. Applied AI in the public interest

Work

I’m an optimist working at the intersection of emerging technology, rights, and public policy. I specialize in launching new initiatives, securing resources, and building high-performing teams.

Over my career, I’ve raised more than $175M in funding across Mozilla, the International Rescue Committee, and Consumer Reports — strengthening institutions and turning new ideas into impact at scale.

Two Planets

Two Planets is my independent strategy practice and a home for new ventures in public-interest technology.

I work with leaders in nonprofits, philanthropy, government, research, and other mission-driven institutions to figure out new ways of thinking and working with AI.

Current clients

  • The Jed Foundation

    A national nonprofit protecting the emotional health of teens and young adults and working to prevent suicide.

  • Pro-Human AI Coalition

    The broad, cross-partisan coalition behind the Pro-Human AI Declaration, which holds that AI should serve humanity, not replace it.

  • NASA CoECI

    NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, which helps federal agencies solve hard problems through prizes, challenges, and crowdsourcing.

I’m available for a small number of advisory, consulting, and collaborative engagements.

Email ben@twoplanets.org

Consumer Reports

Built pro-consumer AI at Consumer Reports, which has given people independent, objective information before they buy since the 1930s.

AI agents are starting to search, shop, and negotiate on people’s behalf. The open question is whether those agents work for consumers or on them. Our work was about agents with a real duty of loyalty to the people they serve, and how to shape the market through standards and exemplars in running code.

  • Permission Slip

    An authorized agent app that gets companies to stop selling or delete people’s data. Launched free in 2022, added a paid tier in 2024, and has since joined DeleteMe.

  • Data Rights Protocol

    Open tooling that helps companies process consumer data rights requests.

  • AskCR

    A chatbot that answers questions using only CR’s own published reporting, deployed to CR’s 3 million digital members.

  • Loyalty by design

    With Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, a framework of legal, technical, and design guarantees for agentic systems that serve the consumer’s interests above all others.

  • Conscious Commerce

    With industry partners, designing open standards for AI shopping agents that stay loyal to the user, not the platform.

International Rescue Committee

IRC provides relief to refugees and victims of armed conflict around the world. The Airbel Center at IRC designs and tests life-changing, scalable solutions for people affected by crisis. I was a founding member, building our fundraising strategy, knowledge management and R&D pipeline approach.

We innovated new approaches to delivering cash, nutrition and education during humanitarian crises, and partnered with Sesame Workshop to win the inaugural $100m grant in the MacArthur 100&Change competition.

Mozilla

Joined the newly constituted Mozilla Foundation as employee number six. Ran media and open video R&D with newsrooms, universities, and industry, then helped build the fundraising that paid for it.

  • Fundraising, $250K to $14M a year

    Founding member of Mozilla's first fundraising program, which grew from $250,000 a year in 2009 to about $14 million by 2014. Designed programs with the Ford and Gates foundations, the National Science Foundation, USAID, Telefónica, GSMA, and UN Women.

  • Popcorn.js

    Co-led development of the open-source engine that made web video scriptable and linkable, and Popcorn Maker, the editor built on top of it.

  • Knight-Mozilla news fellows

    Ran the design challenges that picked the first cohort of open-web developers embedded in newsrooms for a year.

  • The TV News Archive

    With the Internet Archive, made three years of broadcast news searchable and quotable by anyone.

  • Webmaker in Brazil, Bangladesh and Kenya

    Took Mozilla's digital literacy program to people meeting the internet for the first time on a cheap phone, with local partners, staff, and volunteers.

Teaching

I taught at the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program and its sister program at NYU Shanghai: Video and the Open Web, The Connected Documentary, Flying Robotic Journalism, Unmanned Aerial Storytelling, Faking the News.

Previously, I created and facilitated a course called The Politics of Piracy at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, and volunteered at San Quentin State Prison helping inmates earn high school equivalency.

US Ignite

As part of the US Ignite gigabit apps initiative, I helped create a culture of experimentation around the future Internet. I managed and served as Principal Investigator on a Mozilla–NSF project to bootstrap and build applications that show off what’s possible on next generation networks. Formerly sat on the board of directors of the US Ignite organization.

Open Video Alliance

Co-founder and leader of a coalition dedicated to promoting free and open technologies, policies and practices in online video. Built the open video movement through initiatives like Let’s Get Video on Wikipedia and the Open Video Conference, a two-day summit of thought leaders exploring the future of video on the web, held in 2009, 2010, and 2011.