IBM and Meta launch the AI Alliance

This diverse group includes AMD, Anyscale, CERN, Cerebras, Cleveland Clinic, Cornell University, Dartmouth, Dell Technologies, EPFL, ETH, Hugging Face, Imperial College London, Intel, INSAIT, Linux Foundation, MLCommons, MOC Alliance operated by Boston University and Harvard University, NASA, NSF, Oracle, Partnership on AI, Red Hat, Roadzen, ServiceNow, Sony Group, Stability AI, University of California Berkeley, University of Illinois, University of Notre Dame, The University of Tokyo, Yale University, and others.

The rapid advancements in AI are opening new avenues to enhance how we work, live, learn, and interact. Recognising the need for open and transparent innovation, the Alliance aims to empower a wide spectrum of AI researchers, builders, and adopters. The focus is on harnessing these advancements while prioritising safety, diversity, economic opportunities, and benefits for all.

While numerous individual entities, including companies, startups, researchers, and governments, are committed to open science and technologies, the Alliance recognises the need for more collaboration and information sharing. Such synergy is key to fostering faster, more inclusive innovation and identifying and mitigating specific risks before products are introduced to the market.

Objectives of the AI Alliance

The AI Alliance, an action-oriented and internationally focused group, is committed to supporting open innovation and science in AI. The Alliance's vision includes:

Developing benchmarks and standards: creating and deploying benchmarks, evaluation standards, tools, and resources for responsible AI development and use at a global scale. This includes a catalogue of vetted safety, security, and trust tools.

Advancing ecosystem of open foundation models: responsibly advancing diverse modalities in open foundation models, aiding in addressing global challenges in areas like climate and education.

Boosting the AI hardware accelerator ecosystem: encouraging contributions and adoption of essential software technology for AI hardware accelerators.

Supporting global AI skills and research: engaging the academic community for supporting researchers and students in AI model and tool research projects.

Educating and informing: developing content and resources to inform public discourse and policymakers about AI's benefits, risks, and regulatory solutions.

Promoting safe and beneficial AI development: initiating projects that foster open and responsible AI development and hosting events to explore AI use cases.

The AI Alliance encompasses a wide range of organisations involved in various aspects of AI, including education, research, development, deployment, and governance. Members are integral in driving AI benchmarking, creating educational tools, building hardware and infrastructure for AI applications, and championing frameworks that drive platform software.

Future plans and structure

The Alliance will establish member-driven working groups across all major topical areas, along with a governing board and technical oversight committee. This structure aims to advance project areas and establish overall standards and guidelines. In its quest, the AI Alliance will also collaborate with existing initiatives from governments, non-profit, and civil society organisations.

Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and CEO: "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 rigor."

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.”