What Policymakers Need To Know About Foundation Models
IBM News, Monday, May 1,2023
The last few years - even the last few months-have seen artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs come at a dizzying pace. AI that can generate paragraphs of text as well as a human, create realistic imagery and video from text, or perform hundreds of different tasks has captured the public's attention.
People see AI's high level of performance, creative potential and, in some cases, the ability for anyone to use them with little to no technical expertise. This wave of AI is attributable to what are known as foundation models.
What are foundation models?
As the name suggests, foundation models can be the foundation for many kinds of AI systems. Using machine learning techniques, these models apply information learned about one situation to another situation. While the amount of data required is considerably more than the average person needs to transfer understanding from one task to another, the result is relatively similar. For example, once you spend enough time learning how to cook, without too much effort you can figure out how to cook almost any dish, and even invent new ones.