Google Cloud seeks to improve access to public sector innovation with open AI

Google Cloud has partnered with the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) to deliver open AI models for the public sector.

Google Cloud argues that despite AI being high on the agenda, the public sector and highly regulated industries continue to face barriers to adoption due to a lack of model transparency and data privacy concerns.

With Ai2’s open source AI models leveraging Google Cloud’s infrastructure and AI deployment platform, the companies say they can provide improved access to customisable AI solutions and enable public sector organisations to innovate faster.

“While AI reshapes industries and enterprises at an unprecedented pace, there remains a persistent gap in its adoption and impact due to the lack of model transparency and data privacy concerns. Open source AI models provide another option to unlock this untapped potential and enable both the public sector and highly regulated industries to meaningfully benefit from AI,” Google Cloud said in a statement.

“This partnership is a reflection of our shared vision with Google Cloud to address the current limitations in AI deployment by building the next generation of truly open and trustworthy AI,” said Ali Farhadi, CEO, Ai2.

“While openness is key to building trust and advancing the development of AI, accessibility and data privacy are similarly fundamental to the acceleration of innovation across industries. By providing access to its AI-enabled infrastructure to support advanced and efficient model training, Google Cloud is critical to ensuring we can deliver state-of-the-art, transparent AI solutions while adhering to the strictest privacy standards, paving the way for a more secure and impactful future with AI. This will ultimately empower entire industries and even regulated sectors like government, health, sciences and more to do something they simply can’t today: transform their domains with truly open AI.”

“In the public sector, trust is paramount. Transparency and accessibility are not just ideals; they are the foundation for deploying AI that improves citizen services,” said Karen Dahut, CEO, Google Public Sector.

“True openness, particularly in the creation and validation of AI models, is crucial for building that trust. Ai2’s commitment to fully open training code, evaluation methods, and data aligns perfectly with our mission to drive responsible and effective AI innovation within government. We are proud to partner with Ai2 to deliver AI solutions directly to researchers, government agencies, and other public sector leaders to ensure widespread benefits to citizens.”

Ai2 will make its portfolio of open AI models available in Google Cloud’s Model Garden on Vertex AI. This includes the recently released OLMo 32B, Ai2’s new, fully-open language model trained on Google Vertex AI.