Advanced Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally strange. We can think of this “strangeness” in terms of the classic iceberg analogy. At the tip of the iceberg, we do not always know why models behave the way they do. While we see the inputs and outputs in black box AI, the internal reasoning of these models is opaque. One level below the surface, AI is strange because of the culture that surrounds it. There is often an air of inevitability when proponents of AI are asked whether AI development needs to decelerate—a narrative now buttressed by geopolitical rationales: If “we” don’t create this powerful Artificial General Intelligence, “someone else” will. Finally, at the base of the iceberg, is the fact that broad proclamations about the benefits to humanity from AI ignore one crucial fact: AI infrastructure at the scales that we would need to build and deploy models at scale necessitates capital, infrastructure, manpower at a level that only highly centralised entities—tech giants, or well-resourced governments—can marshal. Enter: sovereign AI, an idea defined as “a nation’s capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks.”. At a time when more governments are embracing sovereign AI, this essay examines the varied models of sovereign AI that may emerge based on the type of governance and government, industry role, and institutional capacity.
The Future of AI is Sovereign: How it Evolves is Up to Us (Trisha Ray, Observer Research Foundation)
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