Meta and IBM form multi-member AI alliance

According to its founders, the alliance is focused on fostering an open community and enabling developers and researchers to accelerate responsible innovation in AI while ensuring scientific rigour, trust, safety, security, diversity and economic competitiveness are maintained.

As a result, the alliance members will pool resources and knowledge to address safety concerns while providing a platform for sharing and developing solutions that fit the needs of researchers, developers and adopters around the world. 

The 57 members include the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Cornell University, Imperial College London, Yale University, Sony Group, Dell Technologies, Oracle, Linux Foundation and CERN.

Objectives for the alliance include developing and deploying benchmarks and evaluation standards, tools and other resources that support the responsible development and use of AI systems at global scale, including the creation of a catalogue of vetted safety, security and trust tools

The alliance will also seek to introduce multilingual, multi-modal and science models that can help address society-wide challenges in climate, education and beyond, as well as fostering a AI hardware accelerator ecosystem by boosting contributions and adoption of essential enabling software technology.

Other objectives include supporting global AI skills building and exploratory research, engaging with academia, developing educational content and resources to inform the public discourse and policymakers on benefits, risks, solutions and precision regulation for AI, and to launch initiatives that encourage open development of AI in safe and beneficial ways.

The alliance will create a governing board and technical oversight committee, as well as forming project standards and guidelines.

The AI Alliance will also plan to partner with important existing initiatives from governments, non-profit and civil society organisations on AI.

Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman and chief executive, said: “The progress we continue to witness in AI is a testament to open innovation and collaboration across communities of creators, scientists, academics and business leaders.

“This is a pivotal moment in defining the future of AI. IBM is proud to partner with like-minded organisations through the AI Alliance to ensure this open ecosystem drives an innovative AI agenda underpinned by safety, accountability and scientific rigour.”

Nick Clegg, president, global affairs at Meta, added: “We believe it’s better when AI is developed openly – more people can access the benefits, build innovative products and work on safety.

“The AI Alliance brings together researchers, developers and companies to share tools and knowledge that can help us all make progress whether models are shared openly or not. We’re looking forward to working with partners to advance the state-of-the-art in AI and help everyone build responsibly.”