The parent company of Facebook, Meta, and IBM created the ‘AI Alliance’ on Tuesday (Dec 5) to advocate for an “open-science” approach to AI development, putting them in conflict with rivals Google, Microsoft, and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. The two opposing factions – open and closed – argued on whether AI should be designed in such a way that the underlying technology is generally available. At the heart of the dispute is safety, as well as who benefits from AI advancements.
The AI Alliance, which is led by IBM and Meta and includes Sony, Dell, Intel, chipmakers AMD, and many universities and AI startups
The strategy that is “not proprietary and closed,” according to IBM senior vice-president Dario Gil, who oversees the company’s research group, is preferred by open supporters. “So it’s not like something is locked in a barrel and no one knows what it is,” he continued, according to The Guardian. The AI Alliance, which is led by IBM and Meta and includes Sony, Dell, Intel, 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 open scientific exchange of ideas and open innovation, including open source and open technologies,” Gil said before the launch.
The alliance will almost certainly lobby regulators to ensure that the new legislation benefits them. Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, wrote on social media that these companies – which he called “massive corporate lobbying” – write the rules in a way that benefits their high-performing AI models and concentrates their power over the technology’s development. The three corporations, along with Microsoft, a key OpenAI member, have formed their own industry body known as the Frontier Model Forum.
Taking to X, LeCun expressed concern that fearmongering from other scientists about AI “doomsday scenarios” has provided a boost to those who wish to prohibit 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.