Comment by niemandhier
9 hours ago
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?
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.
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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.