Meta, IBM launch international 'AI Alliance' with 50 organizations to advance open-source AI

Facebook parent Meta and IBM on Tuesday announced the launch of a new coalition aimed at advancing open-source artificial intelligence technologies, with dozens of founding members from across the globe, including other major tech firms, startups, academic institutions and nonprofits.

The group, called the "AI Alliance," is composed of more than fifty organizations, from established firms like Oracle, Dell Technologies and Intel, to prestigious universities including Harvard, Yale and the Imperial College London.

"The AI Alliance is focused on fostering an open community and enabling developers and researchers to accelerate responsible innovation in AI while ensuring scientific rigor, trust, safety, security, diversity and economic competitiveness," Meta and IBM said in a joint press release.

"By bringing together leading developers, scientists, academic institutions, companies, and other innovators, we 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."

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The alliance plans to launch and support open technologies, which are shared for free, enable developers and scientists to understand those models and tools, and to advocate for open innovation with organizational and societal leaders, policy and regulatory bodies, and the public.

Critics of open source AI say making such powerful systems available to the public means bad actors could use the powerful technology to develop systems that do harm. Advocates say open source allows for greater transparency and advancement.

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Closed source AI is an advantage for its developers because the software remains private and proprietary. Microsoft-backed OpenAI's popular ChatGPT tool is closed source. Since the AI chatbot rolled out a year ago, the startup's estimated valuation has grown to around $90 billion, after bringing in revenue of just $28 million in all of 2022, according to The Information.

"We believe it’s better when AI is developed openly — more people can access the benefits, build innovative products and work on safety," Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta said in a statement. 

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"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," Clegg continued. "We’re looking forward to working with partners to advance the state-of-the-art in AI and help everyone build responsibly."