Meta, IBM join AI race, launch ‘AI Alliance' with 'open-science' approach

The parent company of Facebook, Meta, and IBM on Tuesday (Dec 5) launched a new group named 'AI Alliance' which advocates for an “open-science” approach to the development of AI which has now placed them at odds with rivals Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

The two opposing camps – the open and the closed – disagreed about whether AI should be built in a way which makes the underlying technology widely accessible. At the heart of the debate remains safety and also who gets profit from the advances of AI.

IBM senior vice-president Dario Gil, who directs the company's research division, said that the approach which is “not proprietary and closed” is favoured by the open advocates. “So it’s not like a thing that is locked in a barrel and no one knows what they are,” he added, as per The Guardian.

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AI Alliance to restructure future of AI?

The AI Alliance, which is headed by IBM and Meta and includes Sony, Dell, Intel, the chipmakers AMD and many universities and AI startups – is “coming together to articulate, simply put, that the future of AI is going to be built fundamentally on top of the open scientific exchange of ideas and open innovation, including open source and open technologies," said Gil, while speaking to Associated Press before the launch.

The alliance will most probably lobby regulators to ensure that the new legislation works in their favour.

Taking aim at Google, OpenAI and startup Anthropic, Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun wrote on social media that these companies – which he called the “massive corporate lobbying” - write the rules in a way so as to benefit their high-performing AI models and concentrate their power over the development of the technology.

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The three companies, along with Microsoft – a key partner of OpenAI, have constituted their own industry group called the Frontier Model Forum.

Taking to X, LeCun said that he was worried that fearmongering from fellow scientists regarding AI “doomsday scenarios” has given a push to those people who want to ban open-source research and development.

“In a future where AI systems are poised to constitute the repository of all human knowledge and culture, we need the platforms to be open source and freely available so that everyone can contribute to them,” wrote LeCun. “Openness is the only way to make AI platforms reflect the entirety of human knowledge and culture,” he added.

(With inputs from agencies)