A new artificial intelligence development laboratory has just been formalized by the boss of Free Xavier Niel and his partners.
Currently, the big names in artificial intelligence are either American or Chinese. Across the Atlantic, in this area we obviously think of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, or of GAFAM Facebook or Google. On the Chinese side, it is giants like Baidu, Alibaba or JD who are seeking to quickly advance in the field.
But it cannot be said that Europe remains static. This is proven by the announcement of the creation in France of a new laboratory dedicated to artificial intelligence: Kyutai.
A 300 million euro launch
The Station F startup campus should continue to be talked about in the coming years. Because it is this location that was chosen to host the very first independent European laboratory for the development of AI.
At its origin, Iliad, Xavier Niel’s group, and the shipping company CMA CGM, who each put 100 million euros on the table for the creation of this laboratory. The laboratory will also benefit from the support of Schmidt Futures, the philanthropic foundation of former Google boss Eric Schmidt.
Kyutai will benefit from the infrastructure of Scaleway, the Iliad subsidiary, in its work. According to the press release, it would be “ to date the greatest computing power deployed in Europe for AI applications. »
Yann Lecun in the scientific council
Kyutai’s goal will be to bring into the world ” large multimodal models (using text, but also sound, images, etc.) and […] invent new algorithms to improve their capabilities, reliability and efficiency. » The laboratory thus puts itself in direct competition with the leader in the field OpenAI, which already makes the GPT-4 multimodal language model available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers.
A very high ambition, which is notably that of a giant like Google. But to support its growth, Kyutai will be able to take advantage of big names, some of whom cut their teeth at Facebook or DeepMind. Furthermore, the Kyutai scientific council will be able to count on the expertise of world leaders in AI. Yejin Choi, Bernhard Schölkopf, and Facebook’s chief AI scientist Yann Lecun make up this body. Hope for the future?
Source : Iliad
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