He Government of Spain has announced the launch of the Open Source AI Communitywith the aim of democratizing access to Artificial Intelligence and promoting the technological sovereignty of Spain. The announcement was made by María González Veracruz, Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligencewithin the framework of the presentation day of the second edition of Talent Arena in Madrid.
According to González Veracruz, the community has been formed to «democratize access to AI, encourage collective innovation and prevent the digital future from being left in the hands of a few. We make AI more accessible, for everyone and at the service of the public interest«.
The purpose of the Open Source AI Community is to act as a meeting point for the AI ecosystem in Spain. It will bring together developers, researchers, companies and Public Administration. It has three notable objectives: promote practical AI solutions for economic and social challenges, channel Spanish leadership in the adaptation and integration of AI solutions, and create a pool of AI talent.
On the other hand, it will take as a starting point the scientific, technological and talent capacity that Spain has already built around ALIA. It will also connect, coordinate and amplify that knowledge so that it benefits more people and companies. The entry will be on the website of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service, although it will be supported by existing open source communities.
To promote participation in the initiative, three consultation processes have been opened. The first process will consist of understanding the economic and social challenges that could be solved with AI, as well as knowing the technological tools that could be useful for this community.
The second process seeks to create a network of ambassadors of the Open Source AI Community, to help organize meetings and challenges, and collaborate to advance towards meeting the community’s objectives. Finally, the third process will focus on the commitments that public and private entities are willing to make to support the effective deployment of the community.
From this space, the community will offer open access to open source AI models, such as those from ALIA; automatic and multilingual translation models; and datasets offering text, speech and machine translation corpora. Also integration tools for text, speech and translation models, with annotated data and resources for evaluation and training.
The community will explore the possibility of offering public computing capabilities, based on existing open source networks (the BSC, the EDIH Network (European Digital Innovation Hubs) in Spain or TEF). On the other hand, it will have a live repository of technical documentation, use cases and practical guides, which will include a checklist for SMEs based on the AI Regulation. Finally, it will deploy a network of ambassadors and local nodes, for which it will integrate universities, innovation hubs and business associations.
At the same time, the community will take care of launching hackathons, applied training programs and university roadshows; and will promote networking sessions to connect talent with companies looking for advanced digital profiles.
The first community activity will be prompt-a-thon ALIA Challenge: Creating an AI community in Spainwithin the framework of the National Green Algorithms Program. The challenge, which will take place in Madrid on December 17, will focus on innovation and sustainability in AI.
The event will propose its participants to experiment, learn and contribute to the development of ‘prompts’ for a more efficient AI thanks to the ALIA-40B model; as well as solving real sustainability and efficiency challenges, with a view to developing a more planet-conscious AI. The registration period will be open until November 30.
