by New York (AP) – Technology has driven personal assets behind many philanthropes on the list of the largest American donors last year. But Wendy Schmidt and her husband, the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, are quite unusual that the scientific advances that they finance are widespread and divided for the protection of the planet.
The philanthropies of the Silicon Valley Veterans, guided by Wendy Schmidt, have concentrated in the growing rows since the Schmidt Family Foundation was founded in 2006. With a fortune of net assets that were estimated at over 25 billion US dollars, they exceed this role as a Trump administration in the FundDing Financing -Expert Research in Science Research.
“We are working very hard to ensure that science complies with its place in our society,” Wendy, President and co -founder of the Schmidt Family Foundation and the Schmidt Ocean Institute, told The Associated Press. “So we got where we are. That is why we have the technologies we use today.”
Her most recent philanthropical company is AGOG: the Immersive Media Institute. The establishment of the pioneer pioneer pioneer of Climate Journalism, Chip Giller, was the effort to trigger social change by promoting new connections to the natural world by expanded reality technologies.
The scholarship holders include “Fragile Home”, a project that examines the shift by a mixed reality headset that leads the user through the past, present and future of a Ukrainian house. And Kinfolk Tech, a non -profit organization that should help to make the communities excluded by reorganizing public monuments by overlaping their own digitally rendered installations to real world returns.
The Associated Press recently followed Wendy Schmidt on a tour of the Juneteenth exhibition by Kinfolk Tech in Brooklyn Bridge Park and spoke to her about the financing of scientific research. This interview was processed and compressed out of clarity.
Q: What do you hope with AGOG: to reach the Immersive Media Institute?
A: (Extended Reality) has an enormous amount of power. It has the strength to get into your head. It has the opportunity to move them and remove their ego in a way, and it brings them as a participant from something. You see a story instead of just being an observer. And so it has the potential to move them to act.
We noticed that someone will take it and that they will do it really well. And you will probably use it for entertainment and someone will earn money with it. But maybe there is a better way to use it. As a philanthropic, I think about what can get out of it and how we can use this for social assets and create more empathy in the world, more connection for people.
Q: Why do you support yourself in diversity and inclusion in this tool when other similar philanthropic efforts back?
A: Well, you don’t go away. Because even if you think of AI and how you program a AI, you don’t really serve everyone. And if you have an equally powerful technology and those who are more powerful, you must be included with design. We work with all our scholarship holders to ensure that we listen and that your voices can be heard, and your stories are told in this case.
Q: What does the role of philanthropy play in the further development of climate research when the US government reduces financing for this area?
A: To be honest, we continued to do what we have always done, namely to try to be at the border of research and the efforts to understand our planet openly with more people. Because if you see a little differently, your entire worldview changes. We find things in the ocean that we did not know about existing five years ago. And you should change the way we think about the planet.
And so (which is going on in our country today) is really a shame. There are many important projects that have lost financing and you cannot save everyone. But we do everything we can to support people in our very broad network of scientists and young doctoral students and post-phd people, researchers everywhere. We (also) expand our opportunities for Falkor on the (ocean) research ship. Most people are missing funds. We will help you with the financing so that you can complete your mission. We do not believe that science should stop due to what is going on here. In fact, it is more important than ever.
As always, it is our job as philanthropes to take risks – do what governments and industry will often not do. You can’t do everything, but you can do a lot. Especially when it comes to climate and climate towns. The climate model is very important with regard to public health and the monitoring and reporting of data. If the United States do not do that, there are others who can do this if they expand their architecture. And philanthropy can play a very important role.
Q: How do you restore this belief in science?
A: Experience (media) I think it is important. One of the things that Agog can do is to complain to people realities that they do not see. People accept what they see on the surface. But if, for example, they bring people to a dive that our robot -Subastian (also) makes of Falkor, and they show them a world that no human eye has ever seen and they see what is really on earth. And then they give them science and tell them that this is most of the life on earth and that this function plays this function in their life and well -being.
We can help people make connections when we show them things, attract their attention and reveal the most beautiful things they have ever seen and that are here on this planet.
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Associated press reporting on philanthropy and non -profit organizations is supported by the cooperation of the AP with the conversation, with the financing of Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is only responsible for this content. For the entire philanthropy report from AP can be found at https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
