Falcon 2: UAE Institute of Technological Innovation unveils new family of AI models that outperform Meta's new Llama 3

The next-generation Falcon 2 series introduces an open-source, multi-language, multi-modal AI model, and is the only AI model with vision-to-language capabilities

The new Falcon 2 11B outperforms Meta's Llama 3 8B in performance and is on par with the leading Google Gemma 7B model, which has been independently verified by the Hugging Face leaderboard.

Near-term plans include exploring "hybrid experts" to enhance machine learning capabilities

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the world's leading scientific research centre and the applied research pillar of the Advanced Technology Research Council ("ATRC"), The second version of its well-known large language model (LLM), Falcon 2, was released today. In this series, two groundbreaking versions were introduced: the Falcon 2 11B, a more efficient and easy-to-use LLM trained on 5.5 trillion tokens and 11 billion parameters, and the Falcon 2 11B VLM, known for its vision-to-language model (VLM) capabilities, which seamlessly translate visual input into text output. Although both models support multiple languages, it is worth mentioning that the Falcon 2 11B VLM, as TII's first multimodal model, is unique in the current top market with image-to-text capabilities, which represents a major breakthrough in AI innovation.

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After comparative testing with several well-known pre-trained AI models in its category, the Falcon 2 11B outperforms Meta's newly released Llama 3 with 8 billion parameters (8B) and is neck-and-neck with the top-ranked Google Gemma 7B (Falcon 2 11B: 64.28 vs. Gemma 7B: 64.29), a result that has been independently verified by the US-based platform Hugging Face. Hugging Face is a platform that provides an objective assessment tool and a global leaderboard for open LLMs. What's more, the Falcon 2 11B and 11B VLMs are open source, providing unlimited access to developers around the world. In the future, the plan will expand the Falcon 2 next-generation model to launch a variety of models of different sizes. These models will be further enhanced with advanced machine learning capabilities such as Hybrid Expert (MoE) to improve their performance to a more granular level.

All AI models released by TII to date are consistently ranked among the best in the world and are known as the most powerful open source large language models (LLMs). The new, more compact and versatile Falcon 2 11B model is expected to enable wider market adoption of TII in the rapidly changing world of generative AI.

The multi-language capability of the Falcon 2 11B model enhances its versatility and performance in different scenarios by being able to handle tasks in multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. As a visual-to-language model, the Falcon 2 11B VLM can recognize and interpret images and visual information in the surrounding environment, providing a range of applications in various industries such as healthcare, finance, e-commerce, education, and law. This includes applications ranging from file management, digital archiving and contextual indexing, to helping the visually impaired. What's more, these models can operate efficiently with just one graphics processing unit (GPU), making them highly scalable, easy to deploy, and easy to integrate into lightweight infrastructure such as laptops and other devices.

H.E. H.E., Adviser to the President of the UAE on Strategic Research and Advanced Technology Matters, Secretary General of the ATRC Faisal Al Bannai said: "With the advent of the Falcon 2 11B, we bring the first model to the Falcon 2 series. Not only did the Falcon 2 11B show great performance, but it also reaffirmed our strong commitment to the open source movement and our support for the Falcon Foundation. With other multimodal models of all sizes coming to market, we want to ensure that privacy-conscious developers and entities have access to best-in-class AI models to realize their AI journey. ”

When talking about this model, Dr. Murphy, Executive Director and Acting Principal Investigator of TII's Artificial Intelligence Cross-Center Unit. Hakim Hacid shared, "As AI technology continues to advance, developers are becoming aware of the benefits of smaller, more efficient models. In addition to reducing the need for computing power and meeting sustainability goals, these models offer exceptional flexibility and ease of integration with edge AI infrastructure – the next big trend on the rise. In addition, Falcon 2's visual-to-speech capabilities break new ground for AI ease of use, bringing innovative image-to-text interactions to users. ”

The diversity of the Falcon 2 11B also encourages TII to consider investing in more exciting GenAI innovation projects. Among them, a new machine learning technique called "hybrid expert" will be adopted. This approach blends small networks with different expertise, ensuring that the most specialized areas work together to provide highly granular and customized responses – as if they had a smart assistant in a team, each with a different area of expertise, and working together to make predictions or make decisions when needed. This approach not only enhances accuracy, but also speeds up the decision-making process, paving the way for the development of more intelligent and efficient AI systems.

Falcon 2 11B is licensed under the TII Falcon License 2.0, a permissive software license based on Apache 2.0 that includes an acceptable use policy that promotes the responsible use of AI. For more information on the new model, please visit the FalconLLM.TII.ae.

资料来源：AETOSWire

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CONTACT:

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Falcon Image Caption Generator (Photo credit: AETOSWire)