Red Hat Inc. is meeting the wave of artificial intelligence innovation with enthusiasm, buoyed by its ethos around open-source technology.

Red Hat Summit 2024, co-located with AnsibleFest for the second year running, gathered together partners and members of the Red Hat ecosystem to explore the intersection of AI and automation.

“AI is the running theme, and it seems as though Red Hat is approaching its AI product strategy pretty much the way it … has approached every single product it’s ever launched with this ethos of openness, flexibility, choice, democratization, demystification,” said Rebecca Knight, host for theCUBE (pictured, left).

Knight and Rob Strechay (right), principal analyst for theCUBE, opened the event coverage with a keynote analysis, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Red Hat’s unique approach to AI and partnership. (* Disclosure below.)

Rebecca Knight and Rob Strechay discuss AI, automation and open source on the set of theCUBE.

How Red Hat is winning AI with open source

Red Hat announced two new products: InstructLab, an open-source project for improving large language model outputs, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI, a foundation model platform for developing and running IBM’s Granite family of LLMs.

“The use case is about … taking your data, using InstructLab, RHEL AI, running it on OpenShift AI to help a customer service agent provide a better customer experience to that end user who calls in,” Strechay said. “They can quickly not only find the answer, but they don’t get hallucinations.”

Both agreed that Red Hat’s commitment to open source and maintaining its partner relationships is crucial to its ongoing success.

“The partner ecosystem is such a huge part for all of these companies, but especially for Red Hat,” said Knight, who, with Strechay, emphasized the need for AI democratization. “The thing about OpenAI is it’s not open and they’re really trying to demystify it and create more of an openness, choice, flexibility around AI.” 

An open-source approach could also be an advantage when companies are faced with new regulations, according to Strechay. Having open-source models and platforms makes it easier to address security concerns, since there is nothing to hide.

“Open source in general wins,” Strechay said. “Open can lead to trust. It can lead to better security. It can lead to better governance.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Red Hat Summit:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE