IBM announced it will make generally available a data governance toolkit for artificial intelligence (AI) models to provide more transparency into the recommendations generated by AI tools. IBM's watsonx.governance will be available in early December 2023, according to a statement from the company.
The goal is to help businesses shine a light on AI models and eliminate the mystery around the data going in and the answers coming out. Governance solutions offer a great opportunity for managed service providers to help customers better leverage LLMs and generative AI tools.
While generative AI, powered by large language models (LLM) or foundation models, offers many use cases for businesses, it also poses new risks and complexities, including training data scraped from corners of the internet that cannot be validated as fair and accurate, all the way to a lack of explainable outputs, IBM said. Watsonx.governance provides organizations with the toolkit they need to manage risk, embrace transparency, and anticipate compliance with future AI-focused regulation.
As businesses today are looking to innovate with AI, deploying a mix of LLMs from tech providers and open sources communities, watsonx enables them to manage, monitor and govern models from wherever they choose.
"Company boards and CEOs are looking to reap the rewards from today's more powerful AI models, but the risks due to a lack of transparency and inability to govern these models have been holding them back," said Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Growth, IBM Software. "Watsonx.governance is a one-stop-shop for businesses that are struggling to deploy and manage both LLM and ML models, giving businesses the tools, they need to automate AI governance processes, monitor their models, and take corrective action, all with increased visibility. Its ability to translate regulations into enforceable policies will only become more essential for enterprises as new AI regulation takes hold worldwide."
IBM Consulting has also expanded their strategic expertise to help clients scale responsible AI with both automated model governance and organizational governance encompassing people, process and technology from IBM and strategic partners. IBM consultants can help with establishing AI ethics boards, organizational culture and accountability, training, regulatory and risk management, and mitigating cybersecurity threats, all using human-centric design.
Watsonx.governance is one of three software products in the IBM watsonx AI and data platform, along with a set of AI assistants, designed to help enterprises scale and accelerate the impact of AI, IBM said. The platform includes the watsonx.ai next-generation enterprise studio for AI builders and the watsonx.data open, hybrid, and governed data store. The company also recently announced intellectual property protection for its for IBM-developed watsonx models.
