Is AI technology the next step for humanity, or is it a step ON humanity? That’s a question that most of us are waiting to be answered. However, some of us aren’t waiting and are, rather, looking to find a favorable answer. Meta, IBM, and other companies have banned together to establish an open-source AI Alliance. This will help create AI tools that everyone has access to.
The issue with most of the AI LLMs on the market is that they’re all held privately behind major companies like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and so on. These are the companies developing and training these AIs, so it’s their right to own the AI, but this poses a problem in Meta’s eye.
Meta partnered with IBM to establish an open-source AI Alliance
Meta has openly been in favor of open-source AI, and this alliance is only further proof of that. “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.” Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg said in a statement, “We believe it’s better when AI is developed openly”.
The company has been looking toward some big names in technology including Intel, IBM, and NASA. Yale University is also on this list. The list of companies stretches to over 50, and we won’t be surprised to see it grow over time.
The thinking behind the AI Alliance is that AI development shouldn’t be kept behind a gate and it should be open to other companies. This is the best way to ensure safe innovation. It’s “a group of leading organizations across industry, startup, academia, research and government coming together to support open innovation and open science in AI.”
The alliance will provide openly available tools for developers so that they can develop AI safely. Along with that, it will prioritize transparency so that potential threats can be identified and addressed. With privately owned AI, threats can be held from the public. We’re still waiting on information about Q*, the OpenAI breakthrough that could “potentially be a threat for humanity“, reports state.
One aim of the alliance is to craft tools that will inform the public and policymakers about potential risks and other information about AI. This will make it easier for everyone to understand what to do regarding the technology.
This is something that AI needs
This alliance is a major boon for AI safety. We can’t have all of the primary innovations in AI tech be held behind major companies. The thing is that we’re talking about large multi-billion dollar and trillion-dollar companies like Google and Microsoft. OpenAI is in a weird gray area because it’s technically a non-profit company. However, it should be on this list, as it stands to gain from companies using its chatbot.
AI is, among other things, a business venture to these companies, especially for Google and Microsoft. Their AI tools will boost the attractiveness of their for-profit products, and so they also stand to gain from AI. So, rather than being in a race to create beneficial AI that will help the world, we can’t deny that they’re also chasing the all-mighty dollar. We can’t have companies pushing AI for the sake of profit, because it turns into a large push to beat out the competition.
Pushing to have more transparency and publicly available tools to help develop AI safely will be extremely beneficial going forward.
2023-12-05 15:04:35