Newsletter of National Science and Technology Council (NSTC)
Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, has risen rapidly recently and exerted huge and far-reaching influence. In response, Wu Tsung-Tsong, Minister without Portfolio and Minister of National Science and Technology Council of the Executive Yuan recently announced that his agency will integrate domestic academic research and collaborate with the industry to develop a trustworthy generative AI dialogue engine in the country. To show the preliminary results of that effort, the National Science and Technology Council held the "TAIDE Program Phase 1 Results Presentation Conference" today (14th) to explain the program architecture and direction, and display the "Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine" (TAIDE) 7B model.
A generative AI dialogue engine tailored made for Taiwan
Minister without Portfolio Wu Tsung-Tsong indicated that the application value of generative AI has been proven in many fields with potential that is beyond imagination. He hopes that the model can perform within ethical guidelines, and the model can generate content that conforms to the idiom of most Taiwanese. Therefore, TAIDE will build on Taiwanese culture to integrate local language, values, customs, and other elements and build an engine that can understand and respond to the needs of local users. And gradually it will import trusted Chinese Traditional texts in different subject areas in the future, establish field-specific application samples, and improve the performance of the model in different subject matters.
Inter-ministerial and inter-organizational collaboration
To build TAIDE, the National Science and Technology Council will assemble a team of professors in the country who are the best in relevant fields to direct the development of the core model and dialogue learning techniques. Additionally, the legal-person entities under the National Science and Technology Council, such as the NCHC of Narlabs, will be responsible for building a new generation of supercomputers to provide increased computing power and resources and provide application services. While the STPI of Narlabs, is responsible for the collection and processing of training materials. Furthermore, the Ministry of Digital Affairs is responsible for examining the development of the environmental architecture and evaluating the models produced by the project to build its trustworthiness.
The progress of the TAIDE development and the performance of the first-stage 7B model
The 7B is the first medium model produced by TAIDE. Based on the LLaMA original model, 7B has been further developed, trained, and fine-tuned by those academic experts. Up to now, under the constraints of project startup, limited time, and limited data, TAIDE 7B has performed well in four aspects, including field-tested automatic summary, translated text, letter writing, and article writing. Its capacity to handle traditional Chinese and answer is particularly stable and accurate.
Minister without Portfolio Wu Tsung-Tsong pointed out that it will take some time for the legal acquisition and collation of high-quality data in the nation and that it will launch larger models and more diversified functions in the future. For the next phase, he expected that specific tasks could be demonstrated in the second half of the year, other functions would be developed in collaboration with TAIDE partners using the medium model. The large model (13B) and its ability to block inappropriate responses would be demonstrated by the end of 2023, and the large model would be released to TAIDE partners.
Public-private partnerships to advance the development and application of AI technologies
Minister without Portfolio Wu Tsung-Tsong mentioned that it is hoped that the development of TAIDE will enable the government or the private sector to continue developing their own internal application system or value-added services. In other words, these entities can subsequently choose a model appropriate for its needs, computing power needed, and cost to add value to the model in order to speed up their self-determination.
According to the National Science and Technology Council, in addition to the cooperation between the academic and research communities, the early participation of the development collaboration with the industry is an important part of the subsequent promotion of the transformation of technology application and the popularization and progress of AI technology. This press conference also invited information services, financial holding companies, start-ups, and other industries to attend; they expressed interest in the development and application of TAIDE basic model, and also shared the demand for generative AI and the existing energy mastery at the meeting.
Minister without Portfolio Wu Tsung-Tsong emphasized that talent cultivation is key to ensuring sustained technological development and elevated competitiveness. The TAIDE project has established a good collaboration model and set a good example for talent cultivation.
The National Science and Technology Council will continue to support AI research, the cultivation of talented scientific research teams, and professionals with innovative thinking and practical capabilities. It will also continue to uphold the principles of scientific ethics and social responsibility, and work with relevant units to establish normative and regulatory mechanisms to ensure the fairness, transparency, reliability of technology, make reasonable use of models and comply with relevant laws and regulations.
Date: 2023-06-14 Source: National Center for High-performance Computing