- Watsonx is a new platform to be released for foundation
models and generative AI, offering a studio, data store, and
governance toolkit
- New Watson products infused with foundation models and
generative AI to be launched for code, AIOps, digital labor,
security, and sustainability
- New collaboration with Hugging Face will work to bring the
best of open-source AI models to the enterprise on the
watsonx platform
- IBM Consulting announces a Center of Excellence for
generative AI with over 1000 AI experts ready to implement clients'
business transformation with enterprise-grade AI
ARMONK, N.Y., May 9, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, IBM (NYSE:
IBM) at its annual Think conference, announced IBM watsonx, a new
AI and data platform to be released that will enable enterprises to
scale and accelerate the impact of the most advanced AI with
trusted data. Enterprises turning to AI today need access to a full
technology stack that enables them to train, tune and deploy AI
models, including foundation models and machine learning
capabilities, across their organization with trusted data, speed,
and governance - all in one place and to run across any cloud
environment.
Also at Think, IBM is announcing further planned advancements,
including a GPU-as-a-service infrastructure offering designed to
support AI-intensive workloads, an AI-powered dashboard to measure,
track, manage, and help report on cloud carbon emissions, and a new
practice for watsonx and generative AI from IBM Consulting that
will support client deployment of AI.
With watsonx, IBM is offering an AI development studio with
access to IBM-curated and trained foundation models and open-source
models, access to a data store to enable the gathering and
cleansing of training and tuning data, and a toolkit for governance
of AI into the hands of businesses that will provide a seamless
end-to-end AI workflow that will make AI easier to adapt and
scale.
"With the development of foundation models, AI for business is
more powerful than ever," said Arvind
Krishna, IBM Chairman and CEO. "Foundation models make
deploying AI significantly more scalable, affordable, and
efficient. We built IBM watsonx for the needs of enterprises,
so that clients can be more than just users, they can become AI
advantaged. With IBM watsonx, clients can quickly train and deploy
custom AI capabilities across their entire business, all while
retaining full control of their data."
Clients will have access to the toolset, technology,
infrastructure, and consulting expertise to build their own — or
fine-tune and adapt available AI models — on their own data and
deploy them at scale in a more trustworthy and open environment to
drive business success. Competitive differentiation and unique
business value will be able to be increasingly derived from how
adaptable an AI model can be to an enterprise's unique data and
domain knowledge.
The IBM watsonx platform consists of three unique product sets
to address these needs:
IBM watsonx.ai: A next generation enterprise studio,
expected to be generally available in July
2023, for AI builders to train, test, tune, and deploy both
traditional machine learning and new generative AI capabilities
powered by foundation models through an open and intuitive user
interface.
- The AI studio provides a range of foundation models, training
and tuning tools, and cost-effective infrastructure that facilitate
the entire data and AI lifecycle, from data preparation to model
development, deployment, and monitoring.
- The studio also includes a foundation model library that gives
users easy access to IBM curated and trained foundation models. The
IBM foundation models use a large, curated set of enterprise data
backed by a robust filtering and cleansing process and auditable
data lineage. These models are being trained not just on language,
but on a variety of modalities, including code, time-series data,
tabular data, geospatial data, and IT events data. An initial set
of foundation models will be made available in beta tech preview to
select clients. Examples of model categories include:
-
- fm.code: Models built to automatically generate code for
developers through a natural-language interface to boost developer
productivity and enable the automation of many IT tasks.
- fm.NLP: A collection of large language models (LLMs) for
specific or industry-specific domains that utilize curated data
where bias can be mitigated more easily and can be quickly
customized using client data.
- fm.geospatial: Model built on climate and remote sensing
data to help organizations understand and plan for changes in
natural disaster patterns, biodiversity, land use, and other
geophysical processes that could impact their businesses.
- As part of a new collaboration between IBM and Hugging Face,
the watsonx.ai studio will build upon Hugging Face's open-source
libraries and offer thousands of Hugging Face open models and
datasets. This is part of IBM's commitment to delivering to clients
an open ecosystem approach that allows them to leverage the best
models and architecture for their unique business needs.
IBM watsonx.data: A fit-for-purpose data store built
on open lakehouse architecture that is optimized for governed data
and AI workloads, supported by querying, governance, and open data
formats to access and share data. The solution is expected to be
generally available in July 2023
and:
- The solution can manage workloads both on-premise and across
multi-cloud environments.
- Through workload optimization, with this solution, an
organization can reduce data warehouse costs by up to 50
percent.1
- Watsonx.data will allow users to access their increasingly
robust data through a single point of entry while applying multiple
fit-for-purpose query engines to uncover valuable insights.
- It will also provide built-in governance tools, automation and
integrations with an organization's existing databases and tools to
simplify set-up and user experience.
IBM watsonx.governance: An AI governance toolkit to
enable trusted AI workflows. The solution, expected to be generally
available later this year:
- Operationalizes governance to help mitigate the risk, time and
cost associated with manual processes and provides the
documentation necessary to drive transparent and explainable
outcomes.
- Provides the mechanisms to protect customer privacy,
proactively detect model bias and drift, and help organizations
meet their ethics standards.
With the watsonx platform, clients are enabled to meet the needs
of their organization in five key areas of their business:
interacting and conversing with customers and employees; automating
business workflows and internal processes; automating IT processes;
protecting against threats; and tackling sustainability goals.
IBM also plans to infuse watsonx.ai foundation models
throughout all its major software products going forward, for
example:
- Watson Code Assistant: A solution, expected later this
year, that taps generative AI to allow developers to generate code
with a straightforward English language command.
- AIOps Insights: AI Operations (AIOps) capabilities
enhanced with foundation models expected for code and NLP to
provide greater visibility into performance across IT environments,
helping IT operations (ITOps) managers and Site Reliability
Engineers (SREs) resolve incidents in a more expedient and
cost-efficient way.
- Watson Assistant and Watson Orchestrate: IBM's digital
labor products are expected to be combined with an NLP foundation
model to enable enhanced employee productivity and customer service
experiences.
- Environmental Intelligence Suite: IBM EIS Builder
Edition is planned to be enabled by the geospatial foundation model
and available in preview later this year, allowing organizations to
create tailored solutions that address and mitigate environmental
risks based on their unique goals and needs.
Also at Think 2023, IBM will announce a number of additional
upcoming offerings that are planned to help drive AI adoption,
including:
- New GPU offering on IBM Cloud: Addressing the
global need for foundation models, IBM is announcing new GPU
offerings on IBM Cloud, an AI-tailored infrastructure designed to
support enterprise compute-intensive workloads. Later this year,
IBM is expected to offer full stack high-performance, flexible,
AI-optimized infrastructure, delivered as a service on IBM Cloud,
for both training and serving foundation models.
- IBM Consulting Center of Excellence for Generative AI:
IBM Consulting announces a Center of Excellence for generative AI
with over 1,000 generative AI experts and plans to build a
watsonx-focused practice which will actively build and deploy
watsonx for clients. IBM Consulting has completed dozens of client
engagements infusing generative AI with IBM Watson and a portfolio
of ecosystem partners through its proven IBM Garage method.
- IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator: An AI-informed
dashboard to enable clients to measure, track, manage and help
report their carbon emissions associated with their hybrid
multi-cloud journey. Based on technology from IBM Research, IBM
Cloud Carbon Calculator is expected to be generally available later
this year. The dashboard complements IBM's existing sustainability
solutions with a comprehensive portfolio of technology and
expertise, including the IBM Envizi ESG Suite, IBM Turbonomic, IBM
Planning Analytics and IBM LinuxONE, that help organizations
accelerate their sustainability and business objectives.
- New study revealing generative AI is among seven trends
shaping business: A new report from the IBM Institute
for Business Value, titled Seven Bets, shares seven trends
impacting business today and describes the seven bets worth making
to enhance their business, including insights on why businesses
should adopt an "AI-first" mindset and how leaders can most
effectively capitalize on AI's opportunities now and in the future,
as well as manage the enhanced risks across their
organizations.
The Think 2023 broadcast can be accessed at
www.ibm.com/events/think. During his keynote airing Tuesday, May 9, 8:30 a.m.
- 9:15 a.m. EDT, IBM CEO and Chairman Arvind Krishna will be joined on stage by
leaders from Delta Airlines, Citi, and Red Hat to discuss their
visions for creatively turning challenges into opportunities with
hybrid cloud and AI. On Wednesday, May
10, 4:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. EDT,
Darío Gil, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research, will
give a keynote on how generative AI can be applied for business use
cases.
Following the flagship event in Orlando, Think on Tour will travel to more
than a dozen cities around the world. For updates on confirmed
cities, please visit:
https://www.ibm.com/events/think/on-tour/.
About IBM
IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI,
and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175
countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline
business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in
their industries. Nearly 4,000 government and corporate entities in
critical infrastructure areas such as financial services,
telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud
platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital
transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's
breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing,
industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver
open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by
IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility,
inclusivity and service. For more information, visit
www.ibm.com.
Hugging Face and IBM to partner to help democratize access to
foundation models
"To benefit from the latest AI capabilities, enterprises want to
build on open-source machine learning: open-source models trained
on accessible datasets that can run within a secure environment
with compliance and proper data governance," said Clem Delangue,
co-founder and CEO, Hugging Face. "We are excited to partner with
IBM to deliver a top-tier developer experience based on Hugging
Face open-source and community-driven machine learning, within the
new watsonx platform offering the enterprise-readiness and
trustworthiness of IBM."
Meta's PyTorch team and IBM change one line of code to
massively improve AI model training
"Businesses today cannot get the most from their AI and cloud
technologies unless these innovations are equipped to succeed at
scale," Damien Sereni, Engineering
Director, Meta. "Meta has enjoyed a multi-year collaboration with
IBM to address this key challenge. And, with the release of IBM
watsonx, the PyTorch team at Meta and IBM are collaborating further
to build a production-ready software stack for end-to-end training,
fine-tuning and inference of large-scale foundation models."
How IBM and NASA's AI foundation model can help track and
adapt to climate change
"NASA is committed to the full, free and open sharing of over
100 PB of scientific data and information. This is the first-time
foundation models have been applied to the immense archive of Earth
science data and we are working with IBM to evaluate the foundation
model stack within NASA's Science Managed Cloud Environment," said
Kevin Murphy, Chief Science Data
Officer at NASA. "Next-generation AI technology can expedite our
analysis and discovery of mission-critical insights pertaining to
Earth and climate-related issues, enabling scientists to gain
insights that can help us protect our planet."
WIX leverages IBM large language models to improve customer
care
"Wix is proud to leverage state-of-the-art IBM large language
models to uncover novel insights from vast amounts of PII-stripped
customer care data and thereby increase our support of more than
243 million clients across the globe," said Yoav Abrahami, Chief Architect at Wix and Head
of Velo.
IBM's plans, directions, and intentions may change or be
withdrawn at any time at IBM's discretion without notice.
Information about potential future products and improvements is
provided to give a general idea of IBM's goals and objectives and
should not be used in making a purchase decision. IBM is not
obligated to provide any material, code, or functionality based on
this information.
_________________________________
|
1 When
comparing published 2023 list prices normalized for VPC hours of
watsonx.data to several major cloud data warehouse vendors. Savings
may vary depending on configurations, workloads and
vendors.
|
Media Contact:
Caitlin O'Neill
caitlin.oneill@IBM.com
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