With Microsoft investing heavily in ChatGPT developers OpenAI and planning to integrate the company’s conversational AI models into its products, Google has reportedly been working behind the scenes to keep pace. That work now includes a partnership with Anthropic, an AI startup focused on safety and research.
According to a Google Cloud announcement, Anthropic has selected Google Cloud as its preferred cloud partner to build “reliable and trustworthy AI systems,” while Google says it intends to build large-scale, next generation TPU and GPU clusters” that Anthropic will use to train and deploy its AI systems.
Google says Anthropic selected the cloud provider for its deep expertise in large-scale systems for machine learning, as well as their shared vision for developing “safe and beneficial” AI tools.
“By leveraging Google’s custom-developed machine learning systems designed to run computationally-intensive workloads, Anthropic will continue to conduct breakthrough AI research on the same infrastructure that powers Google Search and YouTube,” Google’s announcement says.
While the announcement didn’t include terms of the deal, Financial Times reports that Google is investing $300 million in the AI startup company in a cash-for-computing deal. According to the publication, citing anonymous sources familiar with the deal, Google is taking a stake of about 10%, and Anthropic will use the money to buy computing resources from Google’s cloud divison.
The timing is convenient, as the announcement comes shortly after Microsoft began announcing integrations with OpenAI’s tools, including an integration between Microsoft Teams and GPT-3.5, an OpenAI language model from which ChatGPT is trained.
Anthropic, meanwhile, was actually founded three years ago by the team behind GPT-3 and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), according to the announcement.
Anthropic began deploying its technology publicly this year, starting with a language model assistant named Claude. The company is now working with a broad range of early partners on deploying Claude and will be expanding access to the assistant in the coming months, per the announcement.
According to the companies, Claude pairs RLHF with a variety of safety techniques built by Anthropic to make AI systems that are predictable, steerable and easier to interpret. Claude runs on Google Cloud as will other systems developed by Anthropic.
“We’re thrilled to be able to partner with Google Cloud on training and deploying useful AI systems,” says Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. “We’ve been impressed with Google Cloud’s open and flexible infrastructure. We are excited to partner with Google to scale-up our systems in the coming months.”
“At Google, we believe it is imperative to pursue AI boldly and responsibly,” says James Manyika, senior vice president of technology and society at Google. “We are committed to developing and delivering useful and beneficial applications, applying responsible principles grounded in human values and safety, and evolving our approaches as we learn from research, experience, users, and the wider community. Our partnership with Anthropic is aligned with that philosophy.”
“AI has evolved from academic research to become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, creating new opportunities for growth and improved services across all industries,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Google Cloud is providing open infrastructure for the next generation of AI startups, and our partnership with Anthropic is a great example of how we’re helping users and businesses tap into the power of reliable and responsible AI.”
If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!
Leave a Reply