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documentation.suse.com / Introduction to SUSE AI

Introduction to SUSE AI

Publication Date: 09 Oct 2024
WHAT?

SUSE AI is a locally hosted AI service.

WHY?

To learn more about AI and the benefits of running an AI service inside your company network instead of relying on public cloud AI solutions.

EFFORT

To understand the basics of AI and benefits of using AI service locally requires less than 30 minutes of your time.

GOAL

To make you realize that SUSE AI is the right choice to run local and secure AI workloads.

1 Introduction

This topic describes what SUSE AI (SUSE AI) is, of which components it consists, and what the benefits of using SUSE AI are.

1.1 What is SUSE AI?

The SUSE AI service is a locally hosted generative AI. It provides secure auditable AI capabilities and allows organizations to deploy AI models on their own infrastructure using SUSE Linux Micro. The service ensures complete control over data and compliance with regulatory requirements.

1.2 What are typical scenarios for using SUSE AI

After you deploy and configure SUSE AI inside your company and create a language model based on your documentation, it can:

  • Implement AI-driven chatbots to handle customer inquiries, providing continuous support and reducing the load on human agents.

  • Generate reports and summaries on business performance or sales metrics with minimal manual input.

  • Automate the generation of blog posts or social media content, ensuring consistency and saving time.

  • Generate personalized e-mail content tailored to individual customer segments.

  • Offer personalized product or content recommendations based on customer preferences.

  • Forecast trends, customer behaviors, and market shifts, enabling more informed strategic decisions.

1.3 How does SUSE AI work?

This section describes individual components of SUSE AI and what happens after you query the AI-driven chatbot.

1.3.1 Structure of SUSE AI

SUSE AI is designed to run on a cluster of nodes. It consists of two separate components—the SUSE AI Foundation and the SUSE AI Apps.

The SUSE AI Foundation includes:

  • SUSE Linux Micro as the underlying operating system with the optional NVIDIA driver installed.

  • RKE2 cluster managed by Rancher Manager ensuring container and application lifecycle management.

  • NVIDIA GPU Operator to utilize the aNVIDIA GPU computing power and capabilities for processing AI-related tasks.

  • NeuVector for security and compliance.

  • providing advanced performance and data monitoring.

The SUSE AI Apps collection includes:

Ollama (https://ollama.com)

A platform that simplifies installation and management of large language models (LLM) on local devices.

OpenWebUI (https://openwebui.com)

An extensible Web user interface for the Ollama LLM runner.

Milvus (https://milvus.io)

A vector database built for generative AI applications with minimal performance loss.

Basic schema of SUSE AI
Figure 1: Basic schema of SUSE AI

1.3.2 Processing queries by an AI-driven chatbot

When you ask AI a question, several processes happen in the background to generate a response.

  1. Input processing. The AI first processes the text of your question to understand its meaning. This involves identifying the subject, intent and any details or context provided. This process is called Natural Language Understanding (NLU).

  2. Contextual analysis. If you are interacting with AI in a session where you have already asked previous questions, the AI considers the context of the conversation. This results in more relevant and coherent answers.

  3. Knowledge retrieval. The AI retrieves information from its pre-trained knowledge base. This database includes facts, data and concepts that the AI has been trained on. If the AI has access to real-time data, it can search for the latest information online to provide an up-to-date response.

  4. Response generation. Using natural language generation (NLG) techniques, the AI constructs a coherent and grammatically correct response based on the information it retrieved.

  5. Output. The AI delivers the response to you in a human-readable format. This might be a straightforward answer, a detailed explanation or a step-by-step guide, depending on the complexity of your question.

  6. Feedback Loop (optional). In specific AI systems, your feedback or follow-up questions can help refine future responses, allowing the AI to improve its answers over time.

1.4 Benefits of using SUSE AI

Running the SUSE AI service brings the following benefits:

  • Non-local AI services raise concerns about data security and accessibility. Locally hosted AI, however, increases data privacy, security and compliance with regulatory standards.

  • SUSE AI provides a user-friendly interface for managing and deploying AI models.

  • Pre-built NVIDIA drivers and operator provide increased AI performance.

  • SUSE AI components are dynamically scalable, from the Web user interface to the underlying data store.

  • SUSE AI cares about security—it uses TLS certificates for Web UI and API access. Data stored in a database are encrypted as well.