I think at the moment the main thing a sovereign AI model needs to be good at is auditing the results of other models.
Right now one could run an open model for most government applications and it would be good enough, you just cannot trust any of these.
So having a sovereign controlled model audit the first one would basically act like a “trust adapter”.
If the second model is cheap and fast enough, there is a business model.
You don’t even need to audit all the intermediate steps, just tool calls and end results.
The issue with 'sovereign' is not about sneaky things a foreign entity might put in there, it's about control of the stack.
Since no individual buyer cares that much about geostrategic issues, it's almost impossible to get some random European company to think about buying anything other than 'whatever US or China' are making.
There has to be very concerted push to make a difference.
Legal mandates around sovereignty (be very careful here) could make a difference.
But there will also be market reaction: US/China companies will bend on some level and provide things like 100% EU hosted and even comply with some data source stuff.
The only real path is to be more competitive as a continent.
If you self-host an open model on a sovereign hoster? They can only influence the responses correct? We are not talking about extracting information.
Or are we worried that open models send secret telemetry?
We're talking about owning the stack - who gets to use what text, for what reasons, under what circumstances etc. Competitors, other nations, Russia / China, the 'global south', military contractors etc. etc..
The EU AI act isn't primarily about "geostrategy". It's about protecting society.
AI models act as a force multiplier for intelligence, in particular for generating information according to someone's wishes.
I.e. deepfakes and social media mis-/disinformation campaigns are a thing and having powerful AI allows you to do those at scales that can overwhelm society's resilience.
In general, even if you have "aligned" AI: aligned with whom or what?
Whom are you comfortable with lording as a some demi-god over you, dictating what to believe?
> In general, even if you have "aligned" AI: aligned with whom or what? > Whom are you comfortable with lording as a some demi-god over you, dictating what to believe?
This is why each country needs to educate and maintain their own researchers across as broad a spectrum of disciplines as possible. Also why there needs to be healthy locally financed (through taxes and grants in addition to consumer spending) ecosystem of reporters and media, so that social media (and LLMs) can be easily discarded as sources of social truth and information like other entertainment products in favour of the trusted ones.
As for technical truths, I don't think using informal social media like the stackexchanges or LLMs to explain how camera lenses or checksums work yields materially worse outcomes than consulting Wikipedia or Knuth. For most things, where it doesn't matter, the blind copy/pasters will prevail. Where it does matter, the organization of the work itself has to set out with establishing accountability that encourages the appropriate amount of diligence anyways. And also the point above about having some local expertise.
European regulations are 100% geostrategy and they are defending against external interests.
Those laws would not exist if European champions were leading the world.
"are you comfortable with lording as a some demi-god over you, dictating what to believe?"
Yes, Europe handed over all of the decisions about everything to foreign powers, now they have to enact regulations to try to constrain it.
Zuck et. al. make the investments decisions for Europe, by virtue of you all giving him the money and power to do that.
Stop giving him the money/power, then this regulation won't exist
> Since no individual buyer cares that much about geostrategic issues
You clearly haven’t worked in enterprise in the EU. Location of data processor is the first thing they check. That’s why every major cloud has regions with different offerings, not just for HA and redundancy
They care because the are 'required to', otherwise those 'offerings' wouldn't even exist. It's mostly the result of regulatory action.
I’m working with clients (big companies) that care a lot - but not because they have to. They care because they lost trust in non EU players.
They also care because it's becoming increasingly risky to rely on US companies given the current political situation
nope, that no longer holds any water. was true though couple of years ago…
The argument holds most of the water.
Yes - security concerns are now very real, but do not fall for this idea that anyone really cares about structural concerns.
Tons of EU companies are still selling crap to Russia, happy to look the other way wile the bear devours a neighbour, as long as profits are there.
What has happened is that Trump has given a face to the reality, and so companies are adjusting on some level.
But 1) it will be nominal 2) Trump will be gone and the impetus will fade 3) the conglomerates will react 4) modest legislation will mean ...
The can will get kicked down the road.
The invasion of E. Europe by Russia has not even caused defence spending or the size of Armies to change, doctrine is barely changing.
Nothing will make those beheamoths change other than other forms of structural concern.
The 'Riet of the Right' - partly due to collapse of Auto / China (among many other things) might cause some change. But the change won't happen until well after the damage has been done.
Brexit should have been an opportunity for institutional reform of the EU, but no - they blamed it all on populism.
Certain governing entities in Europe will try to move away from Microsoft, they will be pulled back.
There is hope, and certain champions can rise and causes pieces to collapse.
If SUSE had any true entrepreneurial whereiwthal - they would create a true consumer / prosumer / enterprise-user friendly variation and brand their flavour of Unix - and make sure that all Euopean governments us it exclusively, which would cascade into widespread use.
There are variations of insta, youtube, netflix that should all be Europe based that could 'theoretically happen' but it needs some structural impetus.
Things usually don't change. Usually there needs to be a collapse and re-order of the system for that to happne.
The people in charge just want to keep their jobs, their very high salaries, and protect their retirement, and will be happy to 'sell out' whatever other imperatives along the way.
Ending with a positive not - I would say current conditions mean the change is now 'plausible, it not likely' whereas before it was 'not very plausible'. So there's a candle, a bit of wind, but not a lot of tinder or dry wood.
That is a very good idea and there is a market for that, especially if a company manages to source the hardware and then install the stack on a german or EU customer site
It depends on the use case, but I believe SLMs can do great with smaller tasks. People got so attached to 'general purpose' that they forgot software can be designed for specific, smaller use cases.