NTT - Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation

10/17/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/16/2024 19:03

Public participation workshop utilizing 'AI Constellation' for discussions between AIs Solving local community issues through the collective knowledge of diverse LLMs with[...]

News Highlights:

  1. ◆In Omuta City, Fukuoka Prefecture, we held a public participation workshop that utilized AI Constellation and gathered local stakeholders and experts to have discussions with AIs.
  2. ◆We examined the effect of discussions between AIs on discussions between the participants, who have various opinions depending on the issues.

TOKYO - October 17, 2024 - NTT Corporation (Headquarters: Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo; Representative Member of the Board and President: Akira Shimada; hereinafter "NTT") held a workshop for citizens to discuss local community issues together with AIs utilizing AI Constellation, which aims to create solutions from diverse perspectives through discussions among AIs. There is a need to promote discussions from multiple perspectives, such as the complexity of issues and differences of opinion depending on one's issue, and we verified whether AI Constellations can deepen discussions among humans. In the future, we will utilize the knowledge gained from this workshop for various applications such as support in local communities and decision-making within companies.
An overview of the AI Constellation initiatives and this event will be exhibited at NTT R&D FORUM 2024, which will be held from November 25 to 29, 2024.※1

Background

NTT is developing "tsuzumi," a lightweight, large-scale language model (LLM) with world-class Japanese processing performance [1]. We are also advocating AI Constellation that aims to solve social problems through the collective knowledge of diverse LLMs with expertise and individuality, rather than just a single giant LLM [2]. In addition to reducing environmental impact, we are working to create new collective knowledge by autonomously coordinating AIs with each other.
This time, we applied the concept of AI Constellation to the complexity of issues in actual community and discussions between citizens whose opinions differ according to their issues. We verified how discussions between AIs confer benefits in the real world.

AI Constellation initiatives

AI Constellation is a large-scale AI collaboration technology that provides various AI models and rules as an environment, allowing AIs to discuss and correct each other and create solutions from multiple perspectives to problems that are difficult for humans to guess. AI Constellation aims to develop diverse values by allowing AI with various expertise to express opinions on complex issues from their perspectives. In addition, by discussing the importance of opinions from diverse perspectives in terms of expertise and future value, we respect minority opinions and raise the level of discussions in the community.
NTT has named this architecture, in which many AI models are connected and operate as an aggregate, "AI Constellation," based on the image of stars connecting and forming constellations.

Figure 1 AI Constellation Overview

Workshop content

"Conference Singularity: Thinking with AIs about the future of Omuta"

  1. ●Date: October 17, 2024
  2. ●Location: UZUUZU MINE 3F (1 -2-1 Shiranuhi-machi, Omuta City, Fukuoka Prefecture)
  3. ●Co-sponsors: Centre for person-centred ningen,Omuta[3], NTT, Co-Designing Institute for Polyphonic Society (NTT WEST Group)[4], Omuta City
  4. ●Objective: To examine whether AIs can deepen discussions among participants by bringing together local stakeholders and experts to discuss social issues that have become apparent in many local cities due to population decline.
  5. ●Participants (invitation only): Approx. 24 people
    1. ▸Theme "SME Support":
      Small and medium-sized enterprise owners, financial institution employees, economic organization employees, labor union employees, administrative employees, etc.
    2. ▸Theme "Care Prevention":
      Physical therapists, occupational therapists, life support coordinators, public health nurses, administrative staff, etc.

Figure 2 Conference Singularity

Outlook

This workshop and an overview of AI Constellation initiatives will be exhibited at NTT R&D FORUM 2024 to be held from November 25 to 29, 2024. Based on the knowledge obtained through gained from the workshop, we will work on realizing AI Constellations that contribute to solving complex problems for which solutions differ depending on the issues. We will consider the application of AI Constellations to use cases that involve various decision-making, such as community support in local communities, regional development, and corporate marketing.

[1]https://www.rd.ntt/e/research/LLM_tsuzumi.html

[2]https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2023/11/13/231113b.html

[3]https://poniponi.or.jp/

[4]https://codips.jp/

About NTT

NTT contributes to a sustainable society through the power of innovation. We are a leading global technology company providing services to consumers and businesses as a mobile operator, infrastructure, networks, applications, and consulting provider. Our offerings include digital business consulting, managed application services, workplace and cloud solutions, data center and edge computing, all supported by our deep global industry expertise. We are over $97B in revenue and 330,000 employees, with $3.6B in annual R&D investments. Our operations span across 80+ countries and regions, allowing us to serve clients in over 190 of them. We serve over 75% of Fortune Global 100 companies, thousands of other enterprise and government clients and millions of consumers.

※1NTT R&D FORUM 2024 ―IOWN INTEGRAL official site https://www.rd.ntt/e/forum/2024/