Dive Brief:
- IBM announced that its proprietary artificial intelligence program known as SystemML will soon be freely available to share and modify through the Apache Software Foundation.
- Experts say the release of SystemML could give IBM an edge against companies which haven’t open-sourced their artificial intelligence software.
- Programmers of artificial intelligence software can potentially use SystemML to create customized machine learning software.
Dive Insight:
IBM decided to open SystemML’s source code through the Apache Foundation to attract a wider community of programmers and accelerate its development, said IBM Vice President of Development Rob Thomas.
“It’s about speed and innovation,” he said. “Right now, my [research and development] is limited to my R&D budget, unless we’re doing work in open source.”
SystemML could be used for things like developing risk-modeling software that could provide a bank early warnings of fraudulent activity.
IBM is one of the three companies to make proprietary machine-learning technology available under an open-source license this year. In February, Facebook released portions of its Torch Software, and earlier this month, Alphabet Inc.’s Google division open-sourced parts of its TensorFlow system.
Thomas said IBM has another reason to open-source its machine learning code – it helps the company recruit new AI experts, which are currently in great demand.
