Data Factory allows partners to experiment with AI – Sweden

• August 14, 2023
• Andrew

AI Swedens Data Factory helps to accelerate innovation and use of AI in Sweden, and offers exciting opportunities for its partners. They can include their own challenges, or participate in existing projects or experiments in a production-like environment. For example, in the Edge learning lab, which is a pioneering example of how partners create value in Data Factory. Edge Learning Lab enables AI Sweden’s partners to position themselves at the forefront by designing the scope of projects together, and rapidly building a working environment for experimentation.

Get and test your projects

Data Factory also offers infrastructure, storage, expertise and knowledge to its partners.

Here, partners can use Data Factory:

• Develop and test solutions in a production-like environment
• Join existing TESBAN initiatives such as Edge learning lab
• Identify your own unique AI challenge and test solutions in Data Factory
• Bring your own data or use available datasets in the Data Factory to develop your solutions
• Create a hackathon to explore ways to solve a specific AI challenge
• Test the latest hardware
• Participate in legal and strategic expert groups
• Get involved in research and masters projects

Expert groups

A crucial part of the Data Factory is the expertise it can mobilise. Apart from breakthrough infrastructure and computing power, each successful project depends on technical and legal know-how.

The data factory provides expertise on how to set up data factories, as well as legal and strategic knowledge and frameworks.

Legal expertise

The ongoing work on Data Factory shows a growing need for expertise on how to deal with the legal aspects of data sharing and model training. To meet this need, AI Sweden set up a group of legal experts to explore legal issues related to AI, data sharing and the GDPR.

The Legal Expert Group is composed of a number of legal experts from our partners who discuss legal issues related to AI and data. They work together in an attempt to develop, for example, white papers, guidelines and/or common interpretations and solutions on legal issues that could benefit all AI partners in Sweden.

Infrastructure Expert Group

AI-Sweden’s expert group on infrastructure know-how among Swedish AI computing centres is very active. Membership is accessible to all stakeholders in the public sector and academia. The network shares knowledge and experience in building and operating larger, multi-user AI centres, in research and development.

The focus is on identifying common challenges, needs and interests. On this basis, the group builds knowledge within this relatively unexplored domain, in order to speed up the learning and implementation of safe and efficient activities. The group enables contacts between key decision-makers in the public and academic spheres. This increases opportunities for cooperation and links key resources across Sweden.

Capacity

Data Factory is currently in a pilot phase and is constantly evolving. Data Factory offers storage and computation to enable our partners and projects to explore AI algorithm training, and serves as a place for partners to explore data factory solutions.

Since 2019, Data Factory has operated a pilot data factory in the Gothenburg area. Initially, it consisted of a DGX-1 donation from our partner CGit. This allowed us to provide 1 PetaFLOPS capacity (40 000 + core) to our partners. In August 2020, AI Sweden upgraded the capacity to the new DGX A100 platform and has access to 5 PetaFLOPS capacity (over 55 000 CUDA-core).

Why is this a good example?

Data Factory, which is part of AI Sweden, is an excellent example of how innovation and research in AI can be promoted. It serves as a collaborative platform offering a production-like environment for partners to work together on different projects. With state-of-the-art tools and a capacity of 5 petaflops, it provides access to advanced technologies for AI development. Data Factory also supports legal and technical expertise, contributing to secure and responsible data management. In addition, Data Factory promotes research, training and national cooperation, making it a key player in driving forward Sweden’s AI development.