by Fintechnews Switzerland
December 7, 2023
ETH Zurich and EPFL are launching the “Swiss AI Initiative”, whose function is to place Switzerland as a number one international hub for the event and implementation of clear and dependable synthetic intelligence (AI).
The brand new Alps supercomputer based mostly on the Swiss Nationwide Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) gives the supporting world-class infrastructure.
In spring 2024 the brand new Alps supercomputer goes reside on the Swiss Nationwide Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) of ETH Zurich in Lugano. Boasting the subsequent era of greater than 10,000 graphics processing items (GPUs), Alps is without doubt one of the world’s strongest computer systems for purposes within the area of synthetic intelligence (AI). This new laptop offers Swiss scientists entry to the form of computing energy solely out there to the world’s largest tech firms.
The AI-supported photomontage reveals the “Rolex Studying Middle” of EPFL and the primary constructing of ETH Zurich. (Picture: ETH Zurich)
Technological edge to guard Switzerland’s digital sovereignty
The brand new supercomputer due to this fact offers Switzerland a big aggressive benefit over worldwide rivals. It’s because the infrastructure for supercomputing is in brief provide worldwide as a result of speedy growth of generative AI and – the place out there – is usually owned by a handful of huge multinationals.
Christian Wolfrum
“By means of this joint initiative we wish to exploit our benefit as a location and make Switzerland’s experience in synthetic intelligence transferrable to society as a complete,”
explains Christan Wolfrum, ETH Vice President for Analysis.
“Science should assume a pioneering position in such a forward-wanting area, fairly than leaving it to some multinational companies. Solely on this means can we assure impartial analysis and Switzerland’s digital sovereignty.”
Transparency and Open Supply
The goal of the initiative is to develop and prepare new massive language fashions (LLM). These have to be clear, ship understandable outcomes and guarantee authorized, moral and scientific standards are met. “Not like the massive language fashions which can be normally out there within the public area in the present day, the Swiss AI Initiative strongly emphasised transparency and Open Supply. Everybody should be capable to perceive how the fashions had been educated, the form of information used, and the way outcomes are recovered,” stresses Jan Hesthaven, Provost and Vice President for Tutorial Affairs at EPFL.
To develop such fashions, the Swiss AI Initiative will use ten million GPU hours on the brand new Alps laptop over the subsequent 12 months, equal to the computing energy of a single GPU working at full load for over 1,100 years. Switzerland is due to this fact the primary nation on the planet to function a analysis infrastructure on the next-era NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip.
Swiss AI Initiative already up and working
This extra computing capability might be used to develop new, industry-particular AI base fashions to be used in numerous areas similar to robotics, drugs, local weather sciences or diagnostics. As well as, the Initiative may also discover basic questions within the growth and use of LLM fashions, similar to: What type will future interplay between people and AI take? What’s the applicable moral framework? How can we handle safety and information privateness? What new approaches can be utilized to scale up fashions and make them extra vitality environment friendly?
ETH Zurich and EPFL function their very own AI centres that may work intently collectively in future, together with the Swiss Information Science Middle, to conduct world-class interdisciplinary AI analysis. This initiative goals to pool the specialist data of round a dozen Swiss universities, technical universities and analysis institutes. Over the previous few months over 75 professors from throughout Switzerland have signed as much as the initiative. As well as, different worldwide researchers have additionally been invited to work collectively on the event of multilingual, cross-border open supply LLMs. ETH Zurich and EPFL are already members of ELLIS, the European community of AI excellence, which incudes some 40 AI sizzling spots in Europe.
