The AI Alliance: Shaping Responsible and Ethical AI Policy
A new global initiative known as the AI Alliance has been established with the aim of promoting responsible and ethical artificial intelligence (AI). Comprised of leading companies, universities, research institutions, agencies, and nonprofits, the alliance seeks to foster collaboration, shape governance measures for AI, provide testing and benchmarking tools, advocate for favorable policy positions, enhance education, and cultivate hardware ecosystems.
To facilitate its objectives, the AI Alliance has set up two working groups. The first is the AI Safety and Trust Tooling work group, which will provide valuable information and best practice guidance on AI safety, trust, ethics, and cybersecurity. Notably, this group will be responsible for developing tools, blogs, newsletters, and whitepapers. Its experts will work on enhancing tools that assess sensitive data detection, model quality, alignment, and cybersecurity threats. Additionally, the group will establish benchmarks to test AI models and applications.
The second working group within the AI Alliance is the AI Policy Advocacy work group. This group will leverage the expertise of technical professionals and policymakers to create open forums for discussions on the opportunities and challenges surrounding AI innovation. They will also publish key policy information and opinions to promote open source and open innovation. The overarching objective of this group is to shape policy decisions and advocate for responsible AI practices.
IBM and Meta have taken the lead in initiating the formation of the AI Alliance. The membership roster extends to prominent tech giants, AI providers, and other esteemed institutions, including Intel, Oracle, Cornell, AMD, the National Science Foundation, Dell, Hugging Face, Red Hat, Stability AI, and ServiceNow, among others. Together, this diverse group aims to overcome various challenges in the field of AI governance, address supply chain issues, and address concerns related to privacy.
Strategically, the AI Alliance serves as a collaborative industry-wide response to the market dominance of non-member AI companies such as Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI. As the alliance gains traction within the industry, it will begin exerting influence on regulatory matters. The absence of influential companies that are not part of the AI Alliance could result in the shaping of markets and regulations to align with the objectives of the alliance.
The AI Alliance has ambitious plans, including the establishment of an AI hardware accelerator ecosystem and the development of testing and benchmarking tools for AI deployment with a focus on open AI policies. The alliance is also keen on defining model scaling in terms of size, accuracy, cost, and sustainability, as these aspects play a vital role in achieving a balanced approach to model complexity and utility.
With the establishment of the AI Alliance, the global AI landscape is poised for transformation. The collaborative efforts of industry leaders, research institutions, and nonprofits will pave the way for responsible and ethical advancements in artificial intelligence. As the alliance gains momentum, it is expected to shape policies, influence decision-makers, and ensure the development of AI that benefits society as a whole.
