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UAE's G42 Launches Open Source Arabic Language AI Model

UAE's flag - Reuters
UAE's flag - Reuters
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UAE's G42 Launches Open Source Arabic Language AI Model

UAE's flag - Reuters
UAE's flag - Reuters

A group of engineers, researchers and a Silicon Valley-based chip company collaborated to release advanced Arabic language software that can power generative AI applications.

The new large language model called Jais contains 13 billion parameters that was made from a big batch of data combining Arabic and English, a portion of which is from computer code. The group, which included academics and engineers embarked, on the project in part because they said there are few large language models that are bilingual.

The new language model was created with the help of supercomputers produced by the Silicon Valley-based Cerebras Systems, which designs dinner plate-sized chips that compete with Nvidia's powerful AI hardware. Nvidia's chips are in short supply, which has driven companies around the world to seek alternatives, Reuters reported.

Named after the highest peak in the United Arab Emirates, Jais is a collaboration between Cerebras, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi-based tech conglomerate G42 called Inception, which focuses on AI.

Because there is not enough Arabic data to train a model of Jais' size, the computer code within the English language data helped train the model's ability to reason, according to Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence professor Timothy Baldwin.

"(Code) gives the model a big leg up in terms of reasoning abilities, because it spells out the (logical) steps," Baldwin told Reuters.

Jais will be available via an open source license.

The group trained the Jais model on a Cerebras' supercomputer called a Condor Galaxy. This year Cerebras announced it had sold three such units to G42, with the first scheduled to arrive this year and the remaining units to be delivered in 2024.

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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File

The amount of farmed seafood we consume -- as opposed to that taken wild from our waters -- is soaring every year, making aquaculture an ever-more important source for many diets, and a response to overfishing.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tons of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago.

Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species.

Fast-growing species

The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing

Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle.

Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tons in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed.

"We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said.

Asia main producer
Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tons -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023.

"For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said.

At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly.

"It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said.

He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource".

Seaweed

Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production.

Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tons. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said.

He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants.

"And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said.