Soket AI Labs, a Bengaluru-based AI research lab, has made waves in the tech world as India’s pioneering force in the quest for ethical Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) development. Founded in 2019, the company has set ambitious goals to develop AI systems capable of human-level intelligence while catering to India’s diverse linguistic landscape.
The company’s journey towards AGI began with a focus on building a decentralized data exchange for smart cities. However, Soket AI Labs pivoted towards advanced AI systems after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s visit to India.
Inspired by this interaction, founder and CEO Abhishek Upperwal and his team set out to create India’s first open-source multilingual model, Pragna-1B, designed to address the country’s unique linguistic challenges.
A pivotal milestone in Soket AI Labs’ journey was the development of Pragna-1B, India’s first open-source multilingual model tailored to the country’s linguistic diversity, comprising 1.25 billion parameters, supports Hindi, Gujarati, Bangla, and English, with a context length of 2048 tokens.
The model’s development wasn’t without challenges; Upperwal noted the scarcity of data for Indic languages, prompting the team to create Bhasha-Wiki, a translation of 6.3 million Wikipedia articles into six languages, ensuring a robust training dataset.
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Partnering with industry giants like NVIDIA through its Inception Programme and AWS Activate for training computer access, Soket AI Labs is harnessing cutting-edge technology to propel its AGI aspirations.
The company also collaborates with Nasscom’s GenAI Founder Programme and CDAC’s GPU cluster in Pune, demonstrating its dedication to building ethical and advanced AI solutions.
Towards AGI and beyond
Beyond its enterprise-focused offerings, Soket AI Labs aims to break barriers in AGI development. The company’s GenAI Studio, a unified stack for fine-tuning and building AI models in-house, exemplifies its full-stack approach to AI development. Upperwal emphasizes the importance of building sovereign technology, challenging the notion that India should focus solely on AI services.
As Soket AI Labs continues its journey towards AGI, it serves as a testament to India’s growing presence in the global AI landscape. With a commitment to ethical development and a focus on indigenous languages, the company is poised to make significant strides in the field of artificial intelligence.
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