The Institute of Technological Innovation, affiliated with the Council of Advanced Technology Research in Abu Dhabi, announced the launch of the first distinguished platform for large Arabic linguistic models in collaboration with the leading Hugging Face platform for evaluating artificial intelligence models and the Arab Artificial Intelligence Initiative 2A2I.
The (Hugging Face) center will host the new platform under the name: The Leading Platform for Large Open Arabic Language Models (OALL).
The goal of (OALL) is to establish a leading platform dedicated to evaluating and comparing the performance of large linguistic models for the Arabic language, and to enhance research and development capabilities in the field of Arabic natural language processing.
The Arabic platform plays a fundamental role in developing models and applications tailored carefully to align with the subtle differences in Arabic language, culture, and heritage, providing researchers and developers with a neutral, transparent, comprehensive, and open platform for the entire community of Arabic natural language processing.
In his comment on this achievement, Dr. Hakim Hassid, Executive Director and Acting Head of Research at the Artificial Intelligence Unit at the Institute of Technological Innovation, stated: “Evaluation is fundamentally essential for any progress made in the field of artificial intelligence, and based on this, we offer our leading platform to support innovation in the Arab world and contribute to enhancing the integration of Arabic language in artificial intelligence models as a top-notch language.”
He added: “This initiative leads to a radical change in the Arab large linguistic models community, elevating it to a new level. This platform will also provide a unified standard and reference for collaborative work and innovation across the community as a whole.”
On his part, Ali El Filali, head of the Arab Artificial Intelligence Initiative 2A2I, expressed his enthusiasm for the launch of the leading open platform for large Arabic linguistic models OALL. He explained that this initiative plays a crucial role in enabling users to evaluate their linguistic models and other releases easily, in addition to providing a wide range of tasks that could be very costly, by granting direct access to evaluations.
He said: “We look forward to this platform contributing to increasing the production of large Arabic linguistic models, and stimulating more innovators to develop versions that meet their tasks and specific needs, which will improve generative artificial intelligence products for all Arabic speakers worldwide, enriching the global scene of natural language processing using diverse and comprehensive tools.”
Clementine Fourie, the researcher responsible for leading platforms and evaluations at Hugging Face platform, stated: “Over the past few months, we have been working with the Institute of Technological Innovation and with the Arab Artificial Intelligence Initiative A2I2 to create a leading open platform for large Arabic linguistic models. We believe that supporting research in non-English natural language processing is of utmost importance, as most research focuses on the English language. Our goal is to develop useful evaluation tools for a wider audience.”
