Meta Platforms and IBM have launched the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Alliance, it was revealed on Tuesday.
A leader in AI development for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) solutions, Meta’s latest involvement in the AI Alliance will help facilitate an ethical framework for the emerging technology.
The organisation will rally some of the world’s leading organisations to back “open innovation and open science in AI,” it said in a press release.
Its “action-oriented,” global effort will aim to create opportunities via a diverse network of institutions to “shape the evolution of AI” with methods reflecting the needs and complexities of the modern world.
The group will consist of more than 50 Founding Members and Collaborators from across the world.
Congratulations to @IBM and @Meta in launching the “AI Alliance” this morning.
The development of a broad ecosystem of contributors and implementers of a technology as transformational as #AI requires collaboration and consideration that has to not only put commercial interests,… pic.twitter.com/QNSvgoo0uc
— Daniel Newman (@danielnewmanUV) December 5, 2023
Initial member companies include AMD, CERN, Cleveland Clinic, Dartmouth, Dell Technologies, Hugging Face, Intel, INSAIT, the Linux Foundation, Oracle, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Sony Group, and others.
Also, institutions like Cornell University, Imperial College London, Boston University and Harvard University’s MOC Alliance, University of California Berkeley, University of Notre Dame, University of Illinois, University of Tokyo, Yale University and many more have joined the alliance.
Uniting the XR Community for Best Practices
The announcement comes as global tech enterprises accelerate their research and development (R&D), investment, and scrutiny of AI amid the technology’s meteoric rise.
AI will require “open and transparent innovation” to “empower a broad spectrum of AI researchers, builders, and adopters” with critical information and tools, the organisation explained.
Doing so will also involve methods to “prioritize safety, diversity, economic opportunity and benefits to all,” it added.
The alliance also called on companies, researchers, governments, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to join forces to collaborate and share data on the emerging technology.
Aims and Objective of the AI Alliance
Furthermore, the AI Alliance will meet its criteria by developing projects through a checklist of objectives essential to AI’s development.
For example, companies will need to develop and deploy benchmarks and evaluation standards. Doing so will facilitate the responsible development and use of AI systems worldwide.
This will also include building a catalogue of “vetted safety, security and trust tools” while also empowering them across the developer community,” the organisation explained.
The AI Alliance spearheaded by @IBM and @Meta isn’t a surprise, but I’m surprised it took this long for one to be created.
At AMD, we used to call this the “virtual gorilla”.
The project areas are spot on and I urge you to read between the lines.
It’s an impressive first… pic.twitter.com/5so90Uw6iS
— Patrick Moorhead (@PatrickMoorhead) December 5, 2023
Also, the initiative aims to “responsibly advance the ecosystem of open foundation models with diverse modalities.” These include multilingual, multi-modal, and science models to address global challenges such as climate change, educational needs, and others, it added.
It will also “foster a vibrant AI hardware accelerator ecosystem” by increasing the number of contributions and adoptions of key software technologies.
The initiative plans to back AI skill-building and research by liaising with academics around the world, leading to upskilling and instruction on creating AI models and tools via research projects.
The AI Alliance also aims to create resources to educate people on the risks and benefits linked to developing artificial intelligence.
Finally, the alliance will aim to launch initiatives to encourage the open development of AI in safe, beneficial ways. It will also host events that explore use cases in artificial intelligence, along with how Alliance members will use open technologies according to best practices.
For the AI Alliance, members will form working groups across the organisation’s targeted list of topics. Also, it will put together a board of governors and technical oversight committee to target project areas and outline standards and guidelines for the group’s efforts.
Meta at the Helm of the Metaverse?
The news comes as Meta pivots to developing its catalogue of AI solutions, including its BuilderBot world-building platform, Llama-2 natural language processing (NLP), CAIRoke conversational AI, and object recognition solutions to power the next generation of immersive technologies.
Currently, it has long been a member of the XR Association, a Washington, DC-based organisation piloting numerous initiatives to outline best practices and ethics for XR, AI, and other emerging technologies.
Meta has also joined the Metaverse Standards Forum, which works on building interoperability, standard file formats and hardware. It is also a regular participant in the VR/AR Association, a global collective of XR firms fostering development and growth within the XR sector.
This comes after Meta faced enormous difficulties in building infrastructure for the Metaverse over the last few years, leading to massive R&D costs, regulatory fines, and intense scrutiny from global governments.
The Top Names in AI-Based Immersive Reality
While Meta aims to lead in developing the Metaverse, the next iteration of communications merging spatial computing and the internet, it joins a community of tech companies teeming with innovation.
For example, NVIDIA has long remained associated with AI, namely, as it continues to refresh its portfolio of solutions for immersive collaboration and design. Its CloudXR and Omniverse platforms are empowering companies with tools designed to build the industrial metaverse.
These have included the language learning model (LLM) programme ChatUSD, cloud-based RunUSD for converting OpenUSD files, semantic search engine DeepSearch, and USD-GDN for creating “high-fidelity, OpenUSD-based experiences” for NVIDIA’s Cloud Graphics Delivery Network (GDN).
Unity has also begun exploring the full capabilities of artificial intelligence with its generative AI (GenAI) solutions, Unity Muse and Unity Sentis. The former offers AI-powered assistance features for content creators, and the latter facilitates character development with automated, embeddable neural networks.
Google and Microsoft have also been at the forefront of AI development with their respective OpenAI-based BardAI and Bing AI platforms, but have also contributed significantly to XR development.
For example, Google has begun integrating its AI capabilities for massive LLM tools with its PaLM platform and next-level processing capabilities with TensorFlow, among others.
These tools have become instrumental in the mass adoption of XR by empowering both industries and individual creators with its expansive solutions. This comes as the Mountain View-based company prepares to work on its Project Iris AR smart glasses after a pause in development.
Microsoft has also merged AI with its XR solutions via its HoloLens 2 mixed reality platform, which will soon incorporate its Microsoft Mesh and Dynamics 365 workflow management system. Using AI, Microsoft aims to optimise processes for the enterprise, reducing time, waste, and equipment downtime.
