Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in the UAE has launched Falcon 180B, an open access large language model with 180 billion parameters trained on 3.5 trillion tokens. Falcon 180B ranks first on the Hugging Face Leaderboard for pretrained LLMs, outperforming Meta's LLaMA 2 and nearing the performance of OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's PaLM 2. The model is available for research and commercial use under the 'Falcon 180B TII License', based upon Apache 2.0. Why it matters: This release strengthens the UAE's position in AI development and promotes open access to advanced AI technology, fostering innovation and collaboration.
MBZUAI, Petuum, and LLM360 have launched K2-65B, an open-source 65B parameter LLM, trained on 1.4T tokens using 480 A100 GPUs. K2-65B outperforms Llama 2 70B while using 35% fewer resources, emphasizing sustainable AI development. The model and its chat variant, K2-Chat, excel in math, coding, medicine, and human-like response generation, with the model available under the Apache 2.0 license. Why it matters: This launch highlights the UAE's increasing capabilities in developing efficient and high-performing LLMs, promoting open-source collaboration and setting new standards for sustainable AI practices in the region.
MBZUAI has launched the Institute of Foundation Models to advance generative AI research and development. The institute will focus on developing large-scale AI models adaptable to various applications, building on MBZUAI's existing work with models like Jais, Llama 2, and Vicuna. It will focus on multi-modal foundation models applicable to areas like healthcare, finance and environmental engineering. Why it matters: This initiative further solidifies the UAE's position as a leader in AI, particularly in the development and application of foundation models for diverse industries.
MBZUAI is a global partner in Meta's release of Llama 2, joining organizations like IBM, AWS, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. MBZUAI will provide early feedback and help build the software as a global community. MBZUAI is working on large language models, developing a sustainable LLM named Vicuna, and strengthening infrastructure for LLM-chat evaluation. Why it matters: MBZUAI's involvement promises to bring about a new generation of UAE-born AI advancements built around the Llama 2 ecosystem and fact-checking capabilities.
MBZUAI has been actively involved in developing AI and generative models, contributing to models like Llama 2, Jais, Vicuna, and LaMini. Professor Preslav Nakov notes Llama 2's improvements in size and carbon footprint over Llama 1. MBZUAI aims to tackle challenges like information accuracy, economic costs, and the scarcity of Arabic online content. Why it matters: MBZUAI's work helps address the limitations of current LLMs, particularly for Arabic, and promotes sustainable AI development in the region.