A new consortium, led by Meta and IBM, has been formed to support open-source AI. The AI Alliance comprises numerous organizations from various sectors, including software, hardware, nonprofit, public, and academic, with the goal of collaboratively developing tools and programs to facilitate open development.
The AI Alliance's 57 founding members include a range of entities, from established companies like AMD, Intel, Oracle, and Sony, to startups such as Cerebras and Stability AI, as well as nonprofits like Hugging Face and the Linux Foundation. Public institutes like the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) and U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), along with universities in Asia, Europe, and North America, are also part of the initiative. The group aims to undertake various projects, including the development of open foundation models, provision of free benchmarks and standards, and advocacy for responsible AI system development.
Super happy to support the AI alliance. We need more openness, transparency & collaboration in AI! said Clem Delangue, CEO at Hugging Face on his X account.
The spectrum of openness, especially in large language models, varies from closed offerings like GPT-4 and Gemini to semi-open models like Llama 2, which necessitates a special license for widespread applications. Projects licensed under recognized open source terms, such as Apache and MIT, are included, permitting anyone to use, modify, and distribute the licensed code. The alliance's objective is to encourage more openness, fostering faster knowledge sharing and innovation.
With an emphasis on building a library of validated safety tools and encouraging developer community participation, the AI Alliance intends to design and implement benchmarks, evaluation standards, and tools for responsible global AI system use.
The alliance aims to develop open foundation models for a variety of applications by addressing societal concerns in the fields of education and the environment. Additional efforts will concentrate on enhancing the ecosystem of AI hardware accelerators and enabling global AI research and expertise growth. Open and responsible AI development will be pushed through initiatives and events, and the public and politicians will be educated on the benefits and risks of AI.
If you think the future of AI is going to be determined by two, three or five institutions, you’re mistaken, said Dario Gil, IBM's senior vice president and director of Research. I hope that it gives more clarity and confidence that the world of open innovation is a world to bet in.
The significance of this initiative lies in the potential for the AI Alliance to leverage substantial resources and broad influence to support openness. This could serve as a counterweight against well-financed commercial interests that may perceive open source development as a threat.