Tech giants are investing in 'sovereign AI' to help Europe cut its dependence on the U.S.
Tech giants are investing in the development of "sovereign" AI models in Europe to reduce the region's dependence on largely U.S.-controlled infrastructure.
Data sovereignty refers to the idea that people's data should be stored on infrastructure within the country or continent they reside in.
"Sovereign AI is a relatively new term that's emerged in the last year or so," Chris Gow, IT networking giant Cisco's Brussels-based EU public policy lead, told CNBC.
Currently, many of the biggest large language models (LLMs), like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, use data centers based in the U.S. to store data and process requests via the cloud.
This has led to concern from politicians and regulators in Europe, who see dependence on U.S. technology as harmful to the continent's competitiveness — and, more worryingly, technological resilience.
Where did 'AI sovereignty' come from?
The notion of data and technological sovereignty is something that has previously been on Europe's agenda. It came about, in part, as a result of businesses reacting to new regulations.
The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, for example, requires companies to handle user data in a secure, compliant way that respects their right to privacy. High-profile cases in the EU have also raised doubts over whether data on European citizens can be transferred across borders safely.
The European Court of Justice in 2020 invalidated an EU-U.S. data-sharing framework, on the grounds that the pact did not afford the same level of protection as guaranteed within the EU by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Last year the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework was formed to ensure that data can flow safely between the EU and U.S.
These political development have ultimately resulted in a push toward localization of cloud infrastructure, where data is stored and processed for many online services.
Great plan for Europe I think they were anticipating more US control with AI and that wouldn't be good for them at all if AI controls everything.
I like the concept it's similar to saying we want Decentralization in AI for countries