IBM, Meta Lead Tech Giants in AI Alliance

A group of leading technology companies, including IBM and Meta, formed the AI Alliance in the midst of the battle for market supremacy among artificial intelligence (AI)-focused businesses.

These organizations prioritize collaboration over competition, placing great emphasis on their dedication to promoting transparent innovation and responsible advancements in the field of artificial intelligence.

IBM and Meta, in a joint statement, delineated the objectives of the AI Alliance, placing particular emphasis on a dedication to mutual benefits, economic opportunity, safety, collaboration, and diversity.

They noted that the alliance comprises a combined annual investment in research and development that surpasses $80 billion. Although many members express support for open-source development, membership does not require strict adherence to this framework.

Alongside IBM and Meta, more than fifty technology companies have become members of the AI Alliance, including AMD, Dell Technologies, Red Hat, Sony Group, Hugging Face, Stability AI, Oracle, and the Linux Foundation.

“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.”

The AI Alliance will establish a technical oversight committee and governing council, according to Meta and IBM, with the primary objectives of promoting AI initiatives and establishing benchmarks and guidelines.

“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,”

The purpose of the alliance is to foster partnerships with non-governmental organizations, governments, and nonprofits that operate in the AI industry.

In an effort to foster scholarly involvement, the AI Alliance comprises a number of research and academic institutions, such as Yale University, Cern, NASA, the Cleveland Clinic, Cornell University, Dartmouth, Imperial College London, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Illinois, and the University of Notre Dame.

Although Meta has previously supported open-source AI models and responsible development, in November, the company decided to streamline and decentralize AI development by disbanding its responsible AI team.

Conspicuously absent from the AI Alliance are prominent AI developers such as Microsoft, Google, OpenAI (the developer of ChatGPT), and Anthropic (Claude AI). On July 1st, they instead founded The Frontier Forum, an organization committed to the development of responsible AI.

The Biden Administration initiated dialogues with prominent AI developers in early 2023, seeking their commitment to the responsible development of AI. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, Meta, and Inflection were among the signatories.

Following that, NVIDIA, IBM, Scale AI, Adobe, Palantir, Salesforce, and Stability AI all became signatories to the pledge in September.