Swiss initiative aims for global leadership in AI

In February 2024, the new "Alps" supercomputer will be put into operation at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Lugano. According to the universities, this will be one of the most powerful computers in the world. © Keystone / Martial Trezzini

The Federal Institutes of Technology in Lausanne and Zurich want to position Switzerland as a leading global centre for artificial intelligence (AI). With this aim in mind, they launched an initiative called "Swiss AI" on Monday.

As part of the initiative, new large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT are to be developed and trained, the two universities (federal technology institute ETH Zurich and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)) announced on Monday. Unlike the large language models currently available to the public, however, the initiative is based on transparency.

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“It must be clear to everyone how and on which data the models were trained and how they arrive at their results,” emphasised Jan Hesthaven, Academic Vice President of EPFL, in the press release.

Swiss supercomputer

In February 2024, the new “Alps” supercomputer will be put into operation at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Lugano. According to the universities, this will be one of the most powerful computers in the world.

According to the press release, this will give Switzerland a major competitive advantage. This is because supercomputing infrastructure is in short supply worldwide due to the rapid development of generative AI and is also mostly owned by a few large companies.

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In the “Swiss AI” initiative (AI for Artificial Intelligence), the two Federal Institutes of Technology want to pool the expertise of around a dozen Swiss universities, universities of applied sciences and research institutions. According to the universities, more than 75 professors have already been recruited.

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