Foundation Model Engineering: Engineering Foundation Models Just as Engineering Software

By treating data and models as source code, Foundation Models (FMs) become a new type of software. Mirroring the concept of software crisis, the increasing complexity of FMs makes FM crisis a tangible concern in the coming decade, appealing for new theories and methodologies from the field of software engineering. In this article, we outline our vision of introducing FM engineering, a strategic response to the anticipated FM crisis with principled engineering methodologies. FM engineering aims to mitigate potential issues in FM development and application through the introduction of declarative, automated, and unified programming interfaces for both data and model management, reducing the complexities involved in working with FMs by providing a more structured and intuitive process for developers. Through the establishment of FM engineering, we aim to provide a robust, automated, and extensible framework that addresses the imminent challenges, and discover new research opportunities for the software engineering field.