Tokyo (SCCIJ) – The Swiss start-up AlpineAI together with leading academic experts from the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has launched a “Swiss GPT”. This new platform aims to serve Swiss companies to use generative AI more effectively and safely.
Leading AI experts in Switzerland joined to create a secure and trustworthy support for Swiss companies with a Swiss GPT (© AlpineAI).
Trustworthy AI
AlpineAI was founded this summer in Davos in the canton of Graubünden. Its mission is to enable businesses and society to more easily reap the benefits of AI-related technologies and to sustainably strengthen Switzerland as a location for AI expertise.
Several artificial intelligence research laboratories, including the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and its Lausanne counter-part (EPFL), are collaborating with the start-up AlpineAI to develop trustworthy Artificial Intelligence applications for businesses in the form of SwissGPT.
“ChatGPT and Large Language Models will radically change the world. We have a chance to build a global alternative to the American system,” Pascal Kaufmann, AlpineAI’s board member and founder, said at a press conference.
Well-known Large Language Models (LLM) include Google’s PaLM, Meta’s LLaMA, and, most prominently, Microsoft’s OpenAI with GPT-4. AlpineAI will not develop its own LLM due to the high costs of training and running the models. Instead, the Swiss GPT aims to score points primarily with trust and data security while being based on other AI models.
The data will remain within Swiss borders at all times, while companies are already testing pilot installations, Kaufmann promised according to this report. A software anonymizes the communication between the end user and the respective Large Language Model such as ChatGPT so as not to hand over potentially sensitive data to US corporations.
Email applications are also available via SwissGPT Mail, which allows the user to formulate response options, for example. In the future, the system will most likely be able to perform specific actions such as automated restaurant reservations. With these developments, AlpineAI strives to be at the forefront of current developments.
This grand ambition is supported by an alliance of various Swiss research institutions. For example, co-founder Benjamin Grewe is a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and the University of Zurich (UZH). He is responsible for coordinating the research with experts from the AI foundation Mindfire and the Center for AI at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).
This center is headed by Thilo Stadelmann, who is also a co-founder and board member of AlpineAI. Swiss IT companies such as Abraxas Informatik and isolutions have been brought on board as strategic partners.
Text: Martin Fritz for SCCIJ
