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Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Acquires and Will Free Up Science Search Engine Meta (techcrunch.com)
tomhath quotes a report from TechCrunch: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's $45 billion philanthropy organization is making its first acquisition in order to make it easier for scientists to search, read and tie together more than 26 million science research papers. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is acquiring Meta, an AI-powered research search engine startup, and will make its tool free to all in a few months after enhancing the product. Meta's AI recognizes authors and citations between papers so it can surface the most important research instead of just what has the best SEO. It also provides free full-text access to 18,000 journals and literature sources. Meta co-founder and CEO Sam Molyneux writes that "Going forward, our intent is not to profit from Meta's data and capabilities; instead we aim to ensure they get to those who need them most, across sectors and as quickly as possible, for the benefit of the world."
As an old Brit, I admire many of our Victorian philanthropists, some in this list for example: http://londonist.com/2011/10/t... who did a great deal of good.
However the modern version always seems to have some catch, supporting stock prices or products, acquiring (more) big data etc. I'm waiting for simple altruism to come back into fashion. I'll certainly be dead before that, though. All these folks could go down about about $50m and live pretty comfortably too.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
After the recent story about Zuck suing Hawaiians to force them to give up their ancestral land, it's really hard for me to see him as anything other than a complete dickhead.