IBM And Meta Spearhead A Global Consortium For Responsible Innovation With AI Alliance

The AI Alliance, launched by IBM and Meta, is in collaboration with over 50 founding members and collaborators globally including AMD, Cleveland Clinic, Cornell University, Dartmouth, Dell Technologies, and Imperial College London, to name a few. The alliance promotes that open and transparent innovation is essential to empower a broad spectrum of AI researchers, builders, and adopters with the information and tools needed to harness these advancements in ways that prioritise safety, diversity, economic opportunity and benefits to all.

The AI alliance is a dynamic assembly of leading organisations spanning industry, startups, academia, research, and government sectors. Its mission is to champion open innovation and science in AI, fostering opportunities globally through diverse institutions that can influence AI's evolution to better align with the complexities and needs of our societies.

Arvind Krishna, the Chairman and CEO of IBM says:

"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 organizations through the AI Alliance to ensure this open ecosystem drives an innovative AI agenda underpinned by safety, accountability and scientific rigor."

AI Alliance: Cultivating responsible innovation through collaboration and initiatives

The AI Alliance is strategically oriented towards creating an open community that empowers developers and researchers to accelerate responsible innovation in AI. It places a premium on scientific rigor, trust, safety, security, diversity, and economic competitiveness. Through the collective efforts of leading developers, scientists, academic institutions, companies, and innovators, the alliance aims to pool resources and knowledge to address safety concerns. The alliance is a collaborative platform for sharing and developing solutions tailored to the diverse needs of researchers, developers, and adopters worldwide.

According to Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs of Meta:

“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.”

To achieve these objectives, the AI Alliance has outlined specific projects, including the development and deployment of benchmarks, evaluation standards, and tools. These initiatives aim to facilitate the responsible development and use of AI systems globally, incorporating a catalog of vetted safety, security, and trust tools. The alliance is also committed to advancing the ecosystem of open foundation models, fostering a vibrant AI hardware accelerator ecosystem, supporting global AI skills building, and engaging in exploratory research. Furthermore, educational content and resources are in the pipeline to inform public discourse and policymakers on the benefits, risks, solutions, and precise regulation for AI. The AI Alliance also plans to launch initiatives encouraging the open development of AI in safe and beneficial ways, showcasing responsible AI use cases through events and collaborations among its members.

The AI Alliance is a collective force for responsible innovation and open AI development

The AI Alliance, a consortium committed to ensuring responsible and open innovation in artificial intelligence, brings together a diverse array of organizations engaged in AI education, research, development, deployment, and governance. Universities like Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, ETH Zurich, Cornell University, and Imperial College London play a vital role in educating and supporting generations of AI scientists and engineers.

Professor Bob Shorten, Head of Dyson School of Engineering, Imperial College London, says:

"We are delighted to be a founding member of the AI Alliance. At Imperial College London, we believe that community engagement is essential for making AI trusted, responsible, transparent, as well as auditable. We look forward to engaging with the Alliance community to realise these objectives."

The AI Alliance also includes a roster of forward-thinking startups. From Aitomatic and Anyscale to Hugging Face and LangChain, these startups bring agility and novel perspectives to the alliance.

MLPerf, Hugging Face, PyTorch, and Kubernetes are just a few examples of the essential tooling and frameworks championed by the alliance. Their contributions drive AI benchmarking, trust, validation metrics, and best practices, ensuring the responsible development and use of AI systems on a global scale.

Partners like the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), CERN, and the National Science Foundation bring valuable perspectives to the table. The alliance's engagement with government and policy makers ensures alignment with existing initiatives, fostering a collective effort to advance AI responsibly and ethically.

The operational blueprint for AI Alliance

The operational framework of the AI Alliance involves the initiation of member-driven working groups spanning various critical domains as mentioned earlier. Simultaneously, the Alliance will institute a governing board and a technical oversight committee committed to propelling the outlined project areas while setting overarching standards and guidelines. Beyond assembling experts, innovators, and leaders from the realms of AI development, academia, and business, the AI Alliance envisions collaboration with key ongoing initiatives by governmental bodies, non-profits, and civil society organizations engaged in impactful and aligned work within the AI landscape.

Says Dr. Sun Sumei, acting Executive Director, A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R):

“As a research institute under A*STAR, I²R spearheads research initiatives and actively strives to enhance the tangible impact of our innovations to address the national needs of Singapore and its people. We are proud to be a founding member of this AI Alliance, which will allow us to play a pivotal role in the ecosystem, contribute to the development of ethical and trustworthy AI innovations with well-regulated AI models for impactful real-world applications. Through the collective efforts with the rest of the members, we believe that the evolution, application and adoption of AI will reach new heights.”