ETH Zurich and EPFL Collaborate on Swiss AI Initiative to Establish Trustworthy AI Hub
In an effort to position Switzerland as a global leader in transparent and reliable artificial intelligence (AI), ETH Zurich and EPFL have joined forces to launch the Swiss AI Initiative. This groundbreaking collaboration aims to leverage the country’s expertise in AI development and implementation, with the support of the state-of-the-art Alps supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS).
The Alps supercomputer, scheduled to go live in spring 2024, boasts over 10,000 cutting-edge graphics processing units (GPUs) and is considered one of the world’s most powerful computers for AI applications. By providing Swiss scientists with unprecedented computing power, the initiative grants Switzerland a significant competitive advantage over its international counterparts. This advantage is particularly important as the demand for supercomputing infrastructure continues to grow, with few players in the market and most owned by large multinational corporations.
Through this joint initiative, we want to harness our location advantage and ensure Switzerland’s AI expertise benefits society as a whole, explains Christan Wolfrum, ETH Vice President for Research. The goal is to move away from the monopoly of a few corporations and promote independent research, prioritizing Switzerland’s digital sovereignty.
Central to the initiative is the development and training of new large language models (LLMs) that embody transparency, comprehensibility, and conformity to legal, ethical, and scientific standards. Unlike existing LLMs available to the public, the Swiss AI Initiative emphasizes transparency and open-source principles. By enabling everyone to understand the training process, data sources, and result retrieval, the initiative aims to enhance trust and accountability in AI technologies.
To accomplish this, the initiative plans to utilize ten million GPU hours on the Alps supercomputer over the next 12 months, equivalent to 1,100 years of full-load computing power from a single GPU. Switzerland stands out as the first country worldwide to operate a research infrastructure powered by the future-ready NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip.
The increased computing capacity will support the creation of industry-specific AI base models for various sectors, including robotics, medicine, climate sciences, and diagnostics. Additionally, the initiative aims to address fundamental questions surrounding LLM development and usage, such as the nature of human-AI interactions, ethical frameworks, data privacy, and energy-efficient scaling of models.
Joining forces with the Swiss Data Science Center, ETH Zurich and EPFL will collaborate within their own respective AI centers to conduct interdisciplinary AI research at a world-class level. Leveraging the expertise of over 75 professors from Swiss universities, technical institutions, and research centers, the initiative seeks to foster knowledge exchange and collaboration on a national and international scale. Notably, ETH Zurich and EPFL are already part of ELLIS, the European network of AI excellence, which comprises 40 AI hotspots across Europe.
The launch of the Swiss AI Initiative signals Switzerland’s commitment to building a trustworthy AI ecosystem. By prioritizing transparency, accountability, and interdisciplinary collaboration, Swiss universities aim to establish the nation as a global hub for AI development and implementation. With the support of state-of-the-art infrastructure, groundbreaking research, and cross-sector partnerships, Switzerland is poised to shape the future of AI in a manner that aligns with societal, ethical, and scientific values.
