Article by John Letzing: “Denmark unveiled its own artificial intelligence supercomputer last month, funded by the proceeds of wildly popular Danish weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. It’s now one of several sovereign AI initiatives underway, which one CEO believes can “codify” a country’s culture, history, and collective intelligence – and become “the bedrock of modern economies.”
That particular CEO, Jensen Huang, happens to run a company selling the sort of chips needed to pursue sovereign AI – that is, to construct a domestic vintage of the technology, informed by troves of homegrown data and powered by the computing infrastructure necessary to turn that data into a strategic reserve of intellect…
It’s not surprising that countries are forging expansive plans to put their own stamp on AI. But big-ticket supercomputers and other costly resources aren’t feasible everywhere.
Training a large language model has gotten a lot more expensive lately; the funds required for the necessary hardware, energy, and staff may soon top $1 billion. Meanwhile, geopolitical friction over access to the advanced chips necessary for powerful AI systems could further warp the global playing field.
Even for countries with abundant resources and access, there are “sovereignty traps” to consider. Governments pushing ahead on sovereign AI could risk undermining global cooperation meant to ensure the technology is put to use in transparent and equitable ways. That might make it a lot less safe for everyone.
An example: a place using AI systems trained on a local set of values for its security may readily flag behaviour out of sync with those values as a threat…(More)”.