Platform Announces Partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Latimer announces the launch of the newly created platform that represents the evolution of inclusivity in Large Language Models (LLM). Dubbed the Black GPT, Latimer will better serve AI users through a racially inclusive LLM experience where the cultural and historical perspectives of Black and Brown people are deeply embedded within the platform. The LLM is building on Meta’s model by adding African American historical and cultural data. Already in high demand, Latimer has developed a partnership with Miles College along with several additional Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to be announced soon, and The Yard Tour, an on-campus innovation event series servicing several HBCUs across the country.
“We are establishing the building blocks of what the future of AI needs to include, and in doing so, we are working to create an equitable and necessary layer of technology that can be utilized by all demographics,” said John Pasmore, Latimer Founder and CEO. “There is excitement and a willingness to learn and grow with this technology – one that we haven’t seen in decades – and is being shaped by some of the most respected names across various industries.”
Latimer is trained using several tactics to both mitigate the bias that sometimes shows up using these new tools, as well as layering in additional training for Black and Brown histories. Latimer has teamed up with notable American scholar and professor, Molefi Kete Asante to help develop the learning model for the platform. Asante is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies.
The young company has added support from tech/AI industry insider, journalist and Wellville founder Esther Dyson, who joined as the company’s first investor. She characterized her investment saying, “We know Large Language Models are going to become mainstream, if they’re not already, but they reflect an imperfect world. We can’t fix the world, but we can represent the totality of it more accurately, reducing the biases of cultural distortion and history as told by the victors. Latimer is filling a deep void not just for a user base whose history and culture needs to be reflected accurately and completely – but for the rest of the world, that needs to see its full reality, both good and bad, more clearly.”
Currently, Latimer is focused on providing an inclusive AI tool specific to students, agencies and brands, as well as the general public. There is such an immediate need for a more broadly representative level of AI that several HBCUs are signing on to offer it to students immediately, and Latimer has opened the consumer waitlist for the new platform.
“Our students need to be conversant with AI technology and need to understand not only how to use AI, but how to build with it,” said Bobbie Knight, President of Miles College. “By working with Latimer we’re creating important learning opportunities for our students to understand the technology faster than we can create a curriculum around LLMs.”
Consumers looking to experience the new platform can join the waitlist on the Latimer website at www.latimer.ai.
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