They're talking about us... Le Figaro Tech & Web

They're talking about us... Le Figaro Tech & Web

Since Saturday evening, LUCIE, the entirely Opensource LLM developed jointly with the OpenLLM France community and based 100% on transparent data, has found itself at the heart of fierce criticism and controversy, but is also benefiting from strong and massive support from those in the Tech community who know what is involved in the development and deployment of AI technology.

The media also echo these exchanges, and each time LINAGORA has the opportunity to explain the history, the challenges and, above all, the future of LUCIE.

THANK YOU to everyone who has given us their support since Saturday 25 January and helped us in this much-needed exercise in communication and education. You are wonderful...

Selected excerpts:

• ‘In order to avoid ‘any unnecessary controversy’, the designers of LUCIE were keen to point out that, for the time being, their creature is merely an ‘academic research project aimed at demonstrating the ability to develop generative AI digital commons’. ‘Aware that the training phase was only partial, we mistakenly thought that putting the lucie.chat platform online was nonetheless possible,’ LINAGORA continues, explaining that the deployment of this test version was also aimed at enriching LUCIE through the “collection of training data”, explaining that unlike Big Tech players working on English-speaking robots, LUCIE is more limited as it only has access to French-language and open source data. ’
   ‘In reality, LUCIE is the fruit of a joint effort by several players, including public bodies (such as the CNRS) brought together in a consortium of French tech players, OpenLLM France, who are committed to developing innovative projects that comply with the French and European regulatory framework, and are committed to the sovereignty and transparency of their algorithms. In addition, as part of the funding allocated to this AI project under the France 2030 plan, the government has given instructions to adapt LUCIE for educational purposes. However, for the time being, LUCIE's developers have made it clear that the French Ministry of Education is not yet involved in the project, even though LINAGORA has been instructed to focus on ‘use cases related to the field of education’. ’ 
   
• The name LUCIE was chosen in a nod to ‘Lucy’, the name given to the three-million-year-old australopithecus found as fossils in Ethiopia and considered to be the oldest known ancestor of humankind. And to Lucy Miller, the character in Luc Besson's film of the same name, played by Scarlett Johansson, who develops extraordinary cognitive abilities.