Start for the European AI language model Open GPT-X
In a consortium of 10 German organizations, AI company Aleph Alpha is developing the European answer to GPT-3 from the USA. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection is funding the Open GPT-X project with around 15 million euros.
Heidelberg, Germany, January 26, 2022, under the leadership of the Fraunhofer Institutes for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS and for Integrated Circuits IIS, the OpenGPT-X project is launched. It is one of the winners of the Gaia-X funding competition. The goal of the project is to develop a large-scale AI language model for Europe. “For business, industry and society, the disruptive potential of AI language technologies is enormous, and international competitors have already recognized this. A European AI language model like OpenGPT-X is therefore imperative to ensure Europe’s digital sovereignty and market independence,” says Dr. Nicolas Flores-Herr, head of the project at Fraunhofer IAIS. Particular emphasis is being placed on data protection as well as European language diversity during development.
Due to the high technical requirements, such as computing power, such powerful language models can so far only be implemented by large companies or consortia. For this reason, the project was able to win a variety of well-known partners. For example, Fraunhofer IAIS, together with DFKI and Aleph Alpha, will develop the highly complex AI models. In addition, the Jülich Research Center and TU Dresden are making their high-performance computing capacities available. 1&1 IONOS SE will oversee the integration into the Gaia-X structure. Domain-specific data for the development of the models will be provided to the project by ControlExpert and WDR, among others. Both partners are developing a use case in the project. The KI Bundesverband is responsible for the communication of the project.
The accessibility, usability and integration of large-scale, European AI models along the lines of GPT-3 can only happen by driving innovation for explainability, adaptation and integration,” said Jonas Andrulis, CEO and founder of Aleph Alpha. “The project will bring the latest generation of AI into use, helping to secure Europe’s digital sovereignty.”
Note: The American company OpenAI revolutionized the artificial intelligence market about two years ago with its GPT-3 language model. The model has been trained with over 175 billion parameters, outperforming previous models by a factor of ten. More than 300 applications already use the language model. These applications do not have free access to the model, but can only access an interface.
