Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Google stresses safety with Gemma open models

news
Feb 21, 20241 min

Gemma open models are free to be used, altered, and redistributed by developers and researchers who agree to do so responsibly.

Google has unveiled Gemma, a family of open models designed to assist developers and researchers enganged in responsible AI development. Google said the Gemma models were created from the same research and technology used to create its Gemini models.

Described as a new generation of models, Gemma is a family of lightweight models developed by Google DeepMind and other teams across Google. Gemma model weights come in two sizes, Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, both with pre-trained and instruction-tuned variants.

Gemma models can run directly on a developer laptop or desktop computer. Guides on Gemma open models are being provided on google.dev. Gemma outperforms larger models on key benchmarks while adhering to Google standards for safe, responsible outputs, Google said. Google has integrated Gemma with tools such as Hugging Face, MaxTex, Nvidia NeMo, and TensorRT-LLM.

Google also released a Responsible Generative AI Toolkit that provides guidance and tools for creating safer AI applications. The toolkit includes safety classification, debugging, and guidance. Also provided are reference implementations for inference and supervised fine-tuning across major frameworks including Keras, PyTorch, JAX, and TensorFlow/Keras.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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