In a significant stride towards enhancing technological capability, AI developer Anthropic recently secured an investment worth $100 million from the heavyweight South Korean telecommunication corporation, SK Telecom. Following this development, the two companies are keen on creating a multilingual large language model (LLM) specifically designed for the Telco AI platform. This upcoming model, available in diverse languages including Korean, English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Spanish, aims at the manifestation of tailor-made AI services worldwide to benefit telecom service providers.
Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is buoyant about SK Telecom’s lofty aspirations of leveraging AI to revolutionize the telco industry. “We perceive LLMs tailored for specific sectors as having immense potential to facilitate safer, more trustworthy deployments of AI technology,” he stated. In tandem with this, both companies intend to collectively refine Anthropic’s latest model, Claude 2.
This move arrives as South Korean territory is being spotlighted by AI industry moguls as a fertile market ripe for growth, predominantly in the domain of chip development. Anthropic, established by ex-members of the top-ranking AI development firm OpenAI, had earlier amassed $450 million in its Series C funding round. Their investors were none other than Google, Salesforce Ventures and Zoom Ventures. Complementing this, Google was the first major investor for Anthropic, investing through Google Cloud in February 2023.
However, this triumphant tale has its chequered parts. The now-insolvent cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, had also poured funds into Anthropic. At the time of its bankruptcy declaration, the defunct exchange’s stake was worth an estimated $500 million, potentially a substantial loss for Anthropic.
The recent involvement of Anthropic in the Biden Administration’s AI cybersecurity challenge, designed to safeguard the USA’s cybersecurity landscape, and its association with the ‘Frontier Model Forum’ along with Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft signal its commitment to ethical AI development.
Certainly, the steps taken by Anthropic appear promising. It will be intriguing to observe if other AI developers rise to the occasion, embracing regulatory practices while pushing the boundaries of AI innovation. Ultimately, the efficacy of AI and its future role within various industries such as telecommunications hinges on a delicate balance between innovation and governance. While we move towards a future intertwined with AI, ensuring security without stifling growth will be a challenge that companies like Anthropic must navigate.
Source: Cointelegraph
