Naman Ramachandran Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) is teaming with AI Singapore and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research to launch the S$70 million ($52.3 million) National Multimodal LLM Program (NMLP).
The initiative, funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation, will develop the country’s research and engineering capabilities in multi-modal large language (LLM) models.
It will help to plug a critical gap because current LLM models are heavily Western originated. Singapore’s NMLP is designed to develop the Southeast Asian ecosystem and cater to the region’s diverse culture and languages.
A base model with regional context that can understand Singapore’s and the region’s unique linguistic characteristics and multi-lingual environment, will be developed. “This effort will enhance the nation’s capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI) research and innovation, leveraging high-performance computing resources by the National Supercomputing Centre.
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