OpenAI Academy to help train developers, offer free credits

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is launching a new global program, named OpenAI Academy, to help train developers working in the field of AI and generative AI, the company said on Monday.

“OpenAI is launching the OpenAI Academy, which will invest in developers and organizations leveraging AI to help solve hard problems and catalyze economic growth in their communities,” the company wrote in a blog post.

The rationale behind the launch of the program, according to the company, is that it feels that developers around the world, especially in developing countries as well as countries that are seeing a surge in their technology sector, don’t have access to advanced training and technical resources.

In order to help developers globally understand large language models (LLMs) better, the company has funded and published a professional translation of the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark in 14 languages via Hugging Face.  

“Supporting those who (developers) understand the unique cultures, economies, and social dynamics of their communities will help ensure that AI applications are tailored to meet local needs,” the company explained.

The MMLU benchmark is available in several languages, including Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, and Yoruba.

MMLU is a benchmark to evaluate whether a model can understand and process human language, or, in other words, evaluate a model’s general intelligence.

As part of the program, the company will also offer training, technical guidance, and free API credits to help developers with their generative AI projects.  

While developers will be able to get support from OpenAI experts for their projects, the company said it will be distributing an initial $1 million in API credits to expand access to OpenAI’s LLMs.

However, it has not yet been revealed how developers can access these resources. Further, OpenAI said that the program is designed to create a network for developers to collaborate and share their learning. The company also plans to partner with philanthropists to launch incubators as part of the network.