Open Euro LLM Is Europe's Bold Move Towards AI Independence

Though it doesn't seem so, Europe has not stood by and watched countries like the United States and China make big strides in AI. They, too, have taken many steps to oversee the development and use of such systems by introducing things like the AI Act, which is the world's first comprehensive regulatory framework for AI.

Yet, they have been significantly outperformed by others who have invested far more resources into the field of AI, breaking past the limits of what was thought to be theoretical a few years back.

In that regard, the Open Euro LLM initiative was introduced that aims to build a truly open (including training data) family of foundation models for promoting transparent AI in Europe.

Open Euro LLM: What To Expect?

As a collaborative undertaking between 20 of Europe's AI-focused companies, EuroHPC centers, and research institutions, the Open Euro LLM initiative is tasked with developing a family of powerful, multilingual, large language foundation models for public, commercial, and industrial use cases.

These models are meant to be compliant with EU regulations, with a focus on being truly open, allowing access to its training data, training methods, documentation, evaluation metrics and more. They also intend to establish an active and engaging community of developers and stakeholders from both the public and private sectors to support this.

To make this happen, a sizeable €52 million budget has been allocated by the European Commission under The Digital Europe Programme, with official recognition being granted via the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) seal.

As for exactly which organizations are involved, you can refer to the table above. It includes the likes of: Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Helsinki, University of Oslo, ALEPH ALPHA, ellamind, SURF, and more.

This initiative will be spearheaded by Jan Hajič of Charles University, Czechia, and co-led by Peter Sarlin of AMD Silo AI, Finland.

Is This A Step In The Right Direction?

At first glance, it certainly does look like it. Europe's push towards more independence in key areas such as AI is a stark reminder of how, even with increased globalization, we are seeing countries go their own way, not wanting to depend on others to realize their needs.

Open Euro LLM sets the stage for collaboration on a massive scale, and the outcomes could be quite promising. However, I can't help but think that the funds used for this initiative will most likely eat into the budget of the other programs related to healthcare and education that could be more useful for EU citizens.

Anyhow, you can go through the launch press release or AMD Silo AI's announcement blog to learn more.

💬 Your thoughts on this? Do you think the money could be used elsewhere?