In the world of artificial intelligence, OpenAI has chosen a proprietary approach. However, the interest generated by ChatGPT in favor of generative AI has also energized open source initiatives.
These solutions constitute as many alternatives to the proprietary world for large companies. In terms of AI, the latter are already largely users of open source components. The BPCE group even intends to accelerate in this sector.
A shared carbon footprint monitoring tool in 2023
The financial actor indeed announces the opening of “its expertise to the community of developers. Equipped with “means and tools for sharing code externally”, BPCE published in May its “first Open Source project on the Github platform. »
The code covers API Guidlines Rulesets, which aims to help developers test rules for building an API. The company assures us that this premiere in favor of free software is not an isolated act.
“This initiative is a long-term one with the ambition of publishing between three and five projects annually, including, for example, a tool for monitoring the carbon footprint by the end of 2023,” specifies BPCE.
For Laurent Benatar, General Manager Technologies and Operations, the group is now “a fully-fledged player in the Open Source ecosystem. If he opened the code for the first time, BPCE had not remained inactive.
The French company recalls that it joined TOSIT (The Open Source I Trust) in 2021. Alongside other large groups, private and public (SNCF, Orange, Maif, etc.), it thus collaborates in free and to the promotion of associated licenses.
Open source to attract and keep developers
Laurent Benatar justifies this “active and proactive” approach for three main reasons. By investing in the open source ecosystem, BPCE aims to enhance the expertise of its developers.
This factor is also a lever of attractiveness vis-à-vis developers, but also of retention. For the head of technologies, it is also a question of “contributing to transforming projects for the digital economy and uniting communities around our differentiating projects. »
Other finance and insurance companies are actively participating in open source. This is particularly the case for Maif, due to the particular emphasis placed on internal developments. On the NLP, for example, the insurer has opened up its Melusine tool to the community.
BPCE specifies that its open source strategy will focus on its expertise on themes deemed strategic, including APIs, artificial intelligence, data, responsible digital – therefore via a carbon footprint calculator in 2023. Societe Generale has also designed its own software to measure its emissions.