01 May 2024

Press release: Advai and EPCC announce High Performance Compute Partnership

Edinburgh Parallel Compute Centre (EPCC)

Words by
Alex Carruthers
Epcc

https://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/whats-happening/articles/advai-and-epcc-announce-high-powered-compute-partnership-power-ai-safety

Advai and EPCC announce high powered compute partnership to power AI safety tests needed to secure generative AI models

1 May 2024

EPCC’s world-leading hardware to power Advai’s world-leading AI safety technology.

Advai Limited, a global leader in the simple adoption of safe and secure artificial intelligence (AI), is working with EPCC to explore the limitations of the world’s most complex generative AI systems, further establishing the UK as a leader in AI safety and trustworthy AI.

Advai, a UK AI success story, has grown out of UK Ministry of Defence contracts and now applies its proprietary technology to overcome safety challenges in commercial AI adoption. Its ‘Adversarial AI’ technology attacks AI systems, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), to discover vulnerabilities. AI safety testing methods need enormous compute to keep up with today’s leading generative AI models. 

EPCC’s AI infrastructure, as part of the £110m investment in the Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF) over ten years, is supported by the Edinburgh & South-East Scotland City Region Deal as an element of the Data-Driven Innovation initiative. Advai is an early commercial user and has been providing valuable feedback to the EIDF support team.

Evaluating AI systems

Advai’s Testing and Evaluation technology can have intensive compute requirements, especially when evaluating modern foundational AI models. The partnership enables researchers at both organisations to conduct breakthrough research that explores the limits of AI systems and why they fail.

“This is an exciting opportunity for Advai to demonstrate our assurance technology at the centre of one of the most important technological advances of our lifetime. The latest generation of generative AI models demands the latest generation of compute to analyse and stress-test them effectively. We are proud of what we hope will be an enduring partnership with EPCC to accelerate the global adoption of trustworthy AI.”

David SullyCEO and co-founder of Advai

“EPCC has built a unique AI infrastructure as part of the Edinburgh International Data Facility. It combines the latest GPU technologies and also novel approaches such as our Cerebras AI supercomputers. Everything we do is driven by our users and we look forward to enabling Advai to demonstrate its world-leading technology on ours.”

Professor Mark ParsonsEPCC Director

Contact

For further information on this partnership, please contact:
Advai: david.sully@advai.com 
EPCC: m.parsons@epcc.ed.ac.uk

Advai Limited 

Advai was established in 2020 to create a UK Deep Tech capability focussed on AI safety and security. Advai is one of the most successful companies to have come through the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), and works with the UK Ministry of Defence, leading AI Researchers, and safety-conscious AI companies. Its technology sits at the heart of deploying AI safely and securely, by testing, evaluating and assuring state of the art AI systems.

www.advai.com

Industry solutions at EPCC

To discuss how EPCC's supercomputing and data services can support your business goals, please contact our Commercial Manager Julien Sindt at: commercial@epcc.ed.ac.uk

Who are Advai?

Established in 2020, Advai is a leading UK Deep Tech specialist focussed on AI Safety and Security. We test and evaluate Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems, enabling our customers to assure their Large Language Models, Computer Vision and other AI-enabled technologies for deployment in business-critical or regulated environments. 

Our tooling stress-tests, measures and improves AI robustness and real world performance, finding reliable operating boundaries and creating early warning systems to predict natural or adversarial issues. As one of the most successful companies to have come through the Defence and Security Accelerator, we work with both the UK Ministry of Defence and a range of safety-conscious enterprises.

Advai is a proud partner of the UK Government’s Frontier AI Taskforce, the research unit behind the world's first global AI Safety Summit.

If you would like to discuss this in more detail, please reach out to contact@advai.co.uk