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Make AI Usage Better

The manifesto

We judge AI the way we judge any tool: by what it is used for. These are the five questions we ask every project before listing it, and that we ask ourselves too.

  1. Useful

    The project meets a real need of society or of the living world: climate, biodiversity, health, knowledge, solidarity. The need comes first, the technology second.

  2. Transparent

    It says what the AI does, and what it does not do. The people who use it know its limits. A decision that affects people stays with a human and can be challenged.

  3. Frugal

    It picks the tool that is enough. A small, well-tuned model beats a huge one, and AI only does what a simple rule could not. When AI helped build the project, we know what for, and what it cost.

  4. Open

    Part of the project goes back to the commons: its code, its data or what it has learned. We favour open projects. A closed project can be listed here if it explains why.

  5. Shared

    People beyond the team take part: volunteers, or users who correct the tool when it gets things wrong.

What MAUB holds itself to

The site has no advertising and no trackers, and no page depends on JavaScript: only the audience measurement script uses it, and everything works without it. It only sets a cookie when you ask it to: to stay signed in, or to keep the light or dark theme. Audience measurement is anonymous, hosted by us, and never leaves the domain. There is no password to remember: a code sent by email is enough. The directory's data can be reused through the API. Articles are signed and dated, and any entry can be corrected with a simple email.

MAUB is written in French. The English version translates the site, the listed projects and the articles; needs posted by visitors appear as their authors wrote them.

The watch

Rather than wait for projects to be reported, MAUB looks for them itself. Once a day, a program reads a few public sources: GitHub search on topics such as civic tech, climate or biodiversity, the French government's digital services on beta.gouv.fr, reuses listed on data.gouv.fr, and announcements from the NLnet foundation. It identifies itself as MAUB-veille.

It only queries APIs and feeds meant for this purpose, never scraped pages, and it keeps no contact details. Nothing it finds is published as is: someone on the team reads it, then either sets it aside or writes it up like any other suggestion.