The National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected a new host for its planned research into a fully open suite of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), a nonprofit based in Seattle, will house NSF’s Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure to Accelerate Science (OMAI) project along with guiding a combined $152 million public-private investment for the advancement of AI technologies and models.
The public-private venture will be a pivotal step in advancing scientific discovery, using an advanced AI model specifically trained on scientific data and literature. To this point, the cost of creating sufficiently powerful AI models has exceeded the typical budgets that conventional laboratories and universities can afford. The widening resource gap limits what topics researchers are able to explore.
The OMAI project is designed to provide researchers in university and laboratory settings with access to specialized, powerful AI tools needed to expand research potential. The system created through OMAI will be an open-source, multimodal large language model designed to facilitate breakthroughs in all scientific fields and AI development. The multimodal design enables the model to process and integrate information across numerous formats, ranging from images to complex datasets.
The fundamental difference between the OMAI project and existing AI models is its open-source design. Traditional AI uses closed data and lacks transparency, making it difficult to ensure that they’re suited for the high-powered operational and research needs demanded by certain environments. Ai2’s models will have all the components needed to be trained from scratch and fine-tuned to provide bespoke solutions.
Supported through the Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure program, the project will work toward creating a national AI-ready workforce, aligning with the administration’s agenda to spur AI-backed science and accelerate the nation’s rise to global leadership in the AI sector. The OMAI project will support AI training programs that go above and beyond what traditional tech hubs offer.
NSF’s announcement aligns with the president’s AI Action Plan, ensuring the nation is prepared to lead open-source and open-weight models that set a global standard for business and academic research. The public-private partnership will advance the AI Action Plan along with the federal government’s efforts to innovate American manufacturing, research and development, according to White House officials.
Ai2’s will start its AI innovation initiative focusing on discovering new materials, enhancing protein function prediction in the biomedical industry and resolving critical weaknesses in existing large language models.
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