Google-Backed AI Partnership Launches with Over $400M for Open Ecosystem

Another AI partnership is on the horizon, and this one's all about steering AI development towards the greater good. Announced at the French AI Action summit, Current AI is a "public interest" initiative that's starting with a cool $400 million in pledges, with plans to ramp up to $2.5 billion over the next five years. Sure, these numbers might seem like pocket change compared to the massive investments we're seeing in AI, like the French president's recent $112 billion private support package or the U.S.'s whopping $500 billion to speed up tech development. But Current AI isn't about chasing the biggest computing power; it's about making a real impact in areas like healthcare and climate goals with more modest sums.

The details are still pretty broad, but the focus is clear: creating an "enabling environment for public interest AI." This means pushing for wider access to high-quality public and private datasets for AI training, boosting open source infrastructure and tools for better AI transparency and security, and developing systems to measure AI's social and environmental impact.

Martin Tisné, the founder of Current AI, is all about creating a financial vehicle that acts as a "North Star" for public financing of critical efforts. He's particularly excited about using AI to tackle big issues like cancer and long COVID. "We're hitting a data bottleneck in AI because we're running out of useful web data," he told TechCrunch. "We need to unlock innovations to make data more accessible and available."

On the open source front, the goal is to make these tools as user-friendly as their proprietary counterparts. And when it comes to AI accountability, the partnership aims to "unify the field" by getting everyone on board with standards for auditing AI systems, ensuring they're accountable and involve diverse populations and communities.

"There's a lot of focus on the huge AI investments, but that's different," Tisné explained. "We're focused on the public interest, on smaller models, not on chasing AGI. We're looking at high-value specific datasets that can make a real difference in people's lives, like the standardized datasets for Parkinson's disease from the Michael J. Fox Foundation."

Europe and the Global South Chip In

Current AI is backed by a mix of public and private bodies. Governments from France, Germany, Chile, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Finland, Slovenia, and Switzerland are on board, but notably, the U.S. and any Asian countries are missing from the list. On the private side, U.S. tech giants Google and Salesforce are listed as core partners, along with industry research labs, tech companies with a unique open source focus, and startups pushing the boundaries of openness.

The French government, hosting the AI Action Summit, is also a core partner, alongside several philanthropic backers like The Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and AI Collaborative, an Omidyar Group-backed AI governance policy lobby. Tisné, who also heads AI Collaborative, sees a gap for a public-private funding vehicle to drive AI development along public interest lines. "It's not a lack of public interest projects in AI, it's a massive fragmentation in the field," he said. "We aim to drive public and private financing at scale for critical public interest AI projects, like the next AlphaFold."

Public Interest AI Ecosystem Support

Efforts to widen access to health data might focus on developing privacy-preserving technologies to encourage more patients to share their data for AI research. "There isn't another partnership set up to bring the whole field together and to bring together public financing at scale," Tisné claimed.

Current AI's work will span three tracks: providing direct financial support, incubating AI innovations, and aligning funding so different funders can work together towards shared goals. About half of the donated funds will go towards grant awards, with the other half aimed at aligned funding efforts around openness, data, and accountability.

"This isn't about policy or regulation; it's really a building play," Tisné added. The initiative has garnered support from industry figures like Arthur Mensch of Mistral, Brent Hoberman, Reid Hoffman, Clement Delangue of Hugging Face, and Fidji Simo of Instacart, who signed an open letter stating, "To achieve the best out of AI, society must be in charge."

Current AI is looking to announce more supporters and backers in the coming months, with a particular interest in working with the Gates Foundation due to its focus on healthcare. As for the name, Tisné said they wanted something that grounds in the here and now, playing on ideas of electrical current and diversity. "It's important to have more diversity in the AI field," he stressed. "We spend a lot of time worrying about a distant future in AI... This is really an effort to focus on the opportunities and the harms today."