Philanthropist Wendy Schmidt insists science and immersive media can inspire action for the planet

The Hill

5 days ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Technology drove the personal wealth behind many philanthropists atop the list of last year's biggest American donors. But Wendy Schmidt and her husband, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, are fairly unusual in their insistence that the scientific advancements they fund be shared widely and for the planet's protection.
The Silicon Valley veterans' philanthropies, led by Wendy Schmidt, have joined the growing ranks focused on marine conservation since the Schmidt Family Foundation's inception in 2006. With a net worth estimated to exceed $25 billion, they're embracing that role as the Trump administration cuts billions in federal funding to scientific research.
'We work really hard to make sure science holds its place in our society,' Wendy, the president and co-founder of the Schmidt Family Foundation and Schmidt Ocean Institute, told The Associated Press. 'It's how we got where we are. It's why we have these technologies that we're using today.'
Her latest philanthropic venture is Agog: The Immersive Media Institute. Co-founded last year with climate journalism pioneer Chip Giller, the effort attempts to spark social change by fostering new connections with the natural world through extended reality technologies.
Grantees include 'Fragile Home,' a project exploring displacement through a mixed reality headset that takes users through the past, present and future of a Ukrainian home; and Kinfolk Tech, a nonprofit that aims to help excluded communities reshape public monuments by superimposing their own digitally rendered installations onto real world spaces.
The Associated Press recently followed Wendy Schmidt on a tour of Kinfolk Tech's Juneteenth exhibit in Brooklyn Bridge Park and spoke with her about funding scientific research. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What do you hope to accomplish with Agog: The Immersive Media Institute?
A: (Extended reality) has an enormous amount of power. It has a power to get inside your head. It has a power to move you and remove your ego in a way, and it puts you inside as a participant of something. You're seeing a story rather than just being an observer. And so, it has a potential for stirring you to action.
We realized someone's going to take this and they're going to make it really good. And they'll probably use it for entertainment and someone will make money with it. But maybe there's a better way to use it. As a philanthropist, I'm thinking about what good can come out of this and how can we use this for social good and to create more empathy in the world, more connection for people.
Q: Why are you leaning into diversity and inclusion with this tool when others are rolling back similar philanthropic efforts?
A: Well, they're not going away. Because even when you think about AI and how you program an AI, if you're not inclusive, you're not really serving everybody. And when you have a technology just as powerful as this one is, and those that are more powerful, they must be inclusive by design. We work with all of our grantees to make sure that we're listening and that their voices are heard and their stories, in this case, get told by them.
Q: What is philanthropy's role in advancing climate research when the U.S. government is reducing funding for that area?
A: We've frankly continued to do what we've always done, which is to try to be on the frontier of research and efforts to understand our planet, to share that understanding openly with more people. Because when you see something differently, your whole worldview changes. We're finding things in the ocean we didn't know existed at all, even five years ago. And they should change the way we think about the planet.
And so (what's going on today in our country) is really a shame. There are many important projects that have lost funding, and you can't save all of them. But we are doing everything we can to shore up people in our very broad network of scientists and young PhD students and post-PhD folks, researchers everywhere. We're expanding our opportunities on Falkor (too), on the (ocean) research vessel. Most people are lacking funding. We're helping them to have funding so they can complete their mission. We don't think science should stop because of what's going on here. In fact, it's more important than ever.
As always, it's our job as philanthropists to take risks — to do what governments and industry often won't do anyway. You can't do everything, but you can do a lot. Particularly when it comes to climate and climate science. Climate modeling is super important in terms of public health and the surveillance and reporting of data. When the United States isn't doing that, there are others who can do that if you build out their architecture. And philanthropy can play a very big role in doing that.
Q: How do you restore that faith in science?
A: Experiential (media) I think is important. One of the things that Agog can do is expose people to realities that they don't see. People accept what they see on the surface. But when you, for example, bring people along on a dive that our robot SuBastian does off of Falkor (too), and you show them a world no human eye has ever seen, and they witness what is really on the earth. And then you give them the science and tell them this is most of life on earth and that this plays this function in your life and your well-being.
We can help people make connections when we can show them things, get their attention, and reveal the most wonderful things they've ever seen that are here on this planet.
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.