By Michael Scott
IBM and Meta are leading fellow tech titans in a move to establish an alliance aimed at championing open source AI development. The group is raising above the quest for market dominance instead urging membership into the AI Alliance where the companies would work collaboratively.
The companies acknowledged in a Tuesday December 5 joint statement that AI Alliance targets nurturing transparent innovation. Also, the group seeks supporting responsible AI development.
AI Alliance to Prioritize Safety, Diversity and Collaboration
The joint statement portrayed the AI Alliance as a conduit to prioritize safety, collaboration, and diversity without compromising the pursuit of economic opportunity and utilitarian benefits.
The AI Alliance is set to represent members with a combined $80 billion annual allocation towards research and development. Although the majority of the members are supporting open-source AI development, the joint statement indicated that such a model is not mandatory for membership.
The head of global affairs at Meta Nick Clegg hailed the AI Alliance as an assembly of researchers, developers and firms inspired to share knowledge and tools. He expressed confidence that the AI Alliance will help the organizations in progressing regardless of whether they shared the models openly or not.
AI Alliance Members Committed to Responsible Building
Clegg indicated that the members target working collaboratively with partners to advance the nature of AI and facilitate responsible building. Besides IBM and Meta, the AI Alliance draws membership across the AI segment. Its members include Oracle, Red Hat, Hugging Face, Dell Technologies, Sony Group, Stability AI, Dell Technologies, and Linux Foundation.
IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna indicated that the tech sector is witnessing progress in AI as a direct outcome of open innovation. The AI Alliance will advance collaboration of scientists, business leaders, scholars and creators being pivotal to dictating AI’s future.
The IBM chair echoed the joint statement regarding establishing a governing board alongside the creation of a technical oversight committee. The latter is projected to assume a dedicated role to advance AI projects and establish standards.
The technical oversight committee role extends beyond formulating guidelines to establishing viable partnerships with governments, non-government organizations and not-for-profit entities engaged in the AI sector.
AI Alliance Integrates Academic Community
The Tuesday statement disclosed that the AI Alliance seeks the inclusion of the academic community with several educational and research centers taking membership. So far, CERN, Cleveland Clinic, Cornell University and NASA confirmed joining the group.
Other members hail from the scholar community including University of Notre Dame, Yale University, Dartmouth, University of Illinois, The University of Tokyo, University of California Berkeley and Imperial College London.
Kevin Murphy in his role as NASA chief science data labeled open innovation as essential to ensure equitable access and collaboration. The mandate extends to rooting the AI technology in principles that adhere to the extreme standards of ingenuity, trust, and diversity.
Meta membership in the AI Alliance affirms its recent resolve to champion for responsible development and open-source AI models. Nonetheless, Meta had in last month dissolved the responsible AI unit preferring to decentralize the team across the AI development cycle.
The AI Alliance has the notable absence of Microsoft, Google, and Claude AI’s Anthropic who teamed with Sam Altman-led OpenAI behind ChatGPT to establish The Frontier Forum. The group unveiled in July prioritizes responsible AI.
The creation of AI Alliance is an outcome of the Biden Administration meeting with AI developers leaders. The representatives drawn from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Inflection and Anthropic committed to responsible AI development.
IBM and Adobe would lead companies including NVIDIA, Scale AI, Palantir, Salesforce, and Stability AI to endorse the pledge.