IBM to check Southeast Asian LLM and facilitate localization efforts

IBM has inked an settlement with AI Singapore (AISG) to check the latter’s Southeast Asian massive language mannequin (LLM) and make it obtainable for builders to construct personalized synthetic intelligence (AI) purposes. 

Beneath the partnership, IBM will check the Southeast Asian Languages in One Community (SEA-LION) mannequin utilizing Massive Blue’s AI expertise and knowledge platform, Watsonx, and work with AISG to fine-tune the LLM. The objective is to assist organizations select appropriate AI fashions for his or her enterprise necessities, IBM and AISG stated in a joint assertion on Tuesday. 

Additionally: Google joins collaborative efforts to construct localized massive language fashions

IBM may even make SEA-LION obtainable in its AI use case library, dubbed Digital Self-Serve Co-Create Expertise (DSCE), enabling builders and knowledge scientists to construct localized generative AI (GenAI) purposes. 

An open-source LLM developed by AISG, SEA-LION is designed to be smaller, extra versatile, and sooner than different LLMs, in response to AISG. Its present iteration runs on two base fashions: a 3-billion-parameter mannequin and a 7-billion-parameter mannequin. The LLM’s coaching knowledge consists of 981 billion language tokens, which AISG defines as fragments of phrases created from breaking down textual content through the tokenization course of. These fragments embrace 623 billion English tokens, 128 billion Southeast Asia tokens, and 91 billion Chinese language tokens.

With SEA-LION, Singapore goals to drive the event of LLMs that higher replicate Southeast Asia’s societal combine and exhibit stronger contextual understanding of the area’s cultures and languages. 

The partnership goals to push ahead a “custom-made basis mannequin” for Southeast Asia and made by Southeast Asians, in response to Leslie Teo, AISG’s senior director of AI merchandise. The 2 organizations may even look to construct use circumstances, gasoline SEA-LION’s adoption, and assist organizations “scale AI safely and responsibly,” Teo stated. 

The collaboration encompasses efforts to include AI governance into SEA-LION, so companies can higher navigate compliance, threat administration, and mannequin lifecycle administration, at the same time as authorities rules on AI proceed to evolve. 

“[IBM] believes additional progress of GenAI will convey higher efficiency in smaller language fashions, with customers given the chance to personalize fashions based mostly on their enterprise and business necessities,” Catherine Lian, IBM Asean’s normal supervisor and expertise chief, stated in an announcement. 

Additionally: Generative AI could also be creating extra work than it saves

“Nobody mannequin is a one-size-fits-all for companies, and organizations should be empowered with a selection to make use of their fashions based mostly on their wants,” Lian stated. “[The] SEA-LION LLM is a giant step ahead in creating an open AI system and addressing the Asean language challenges that corporations and governments face when working with AI.”

In March, AISG additionally introduced a partnership with Google to boost datasets used to coach, fine-tune, and assess AI fashions in languages particular to Southeast Asia. Known as Undertaking Southeast Asian Languages in One Community Information, the initiative goals to “enhance cultural context consciousness” in LLMs constructed for the area.

Initially, the undertaking will concentrate on Indonesian, Thai, Tamil, Filipino, and Burmese — languages for which AISG and Google will develop translocalization and translation fashions. They may even construct instruments to assist scale translocalization capabilities, share greatest practices for tuning datasets, and publish pre-training guides for Southeast Asian languages.