The Rise of Sovereign AI

Sovereign AI is a hot topic, and for good reason. AI has the power to unleash data and drive human progress across every dimension from economic growth to public welfare to scientific discovery.

But AI has to be trained to understand our laws and regulations, our ethics and morals. Increasingly, nations are looking to capture their language, cultures, and data within their own Sovereign AI models. I’m hearing about Sovereign AI in the public and private sectors, in meetings with our customers and partners, and certainly in the news. Let’s take a step back and ask ourselves what we are talking about when it comes to Sovereign AI.

Sovereign AI refers to a nation’s capability to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure and data.

This calls for a new class of accelerated, AI-enabled infrastructure that feeds enormous amounts of data to incredibly powerful compute engines. Directed by sophisticated software, this new infrastructure creates a neural network capable of learning faster and applying information faster than ever before possible. Nations have realized the potential of AI and will invest to accelerate their own innovation while safeguarding their future.

These investments should focus on five key areas:

1. Infrastructure: Owning and controlling accelerated infrastructure locally to ensure secure, scalable, efficient, and accessible AI operations. 
2. Data: Adapting physical and data infrastructures to a national context. Training models locally for relevant, accurate outcomes across languages with local values and needs in mind.
3. Talent: Nurturing and upskilling a nation’s workforce with AI expertise across sectors. 
4. Operations: Developing the means to operationalize AI infrastructure, data, talent and services locally. 
5. Ecosystems: Growing national AI ecosystems that work together to protect data and IP.

This is a generational opportunity, but it is moving fast. National projects are already underway to build a new class of high-performance computing for scientific discovery; to improve disease detection, medical data analysis, and personalized treatment plans; and to support AI training courses that help prepare a workforce for the next generation of jobs. Across the globe, governments are taking up the challenge.

I have had the privilege of working with government and business leaders for the last 40 years. Together we’ve navigated the major waves of innovation from the PC to the internet to the cloud. I’ve never been more excited for the power of technology than I am right now as we stand at the dawn of the AI era. There’s work to do, problems to solve, and an incredible amount of progress ahead.