What is sovereign AI and why is it an issue the telecoms industry should care about? Let’s find out…
Not surprisingly, there was much talk at the Connected Britain event about AI, not least generative and agentic AI, a topic we wrote about in a recent blog (which you can read here) and which, among other things. can be used to set up networks that are self-managing (self-detecting, self-heating, self-running, etc.), hence in part its appeal.
But as AI continues to dominate the telco industry conversation, another sub-domain is starting to get considerable attention and is likely to get even more. That domain is what’s known as “sovereign AI” and we’ll unpick what it means in this blog. It’s a term increasingly linked with another term, “deglobalization”. Let’s find out why.
To be clear, sovereign AI has already arrived even if what it actually encompasses isn’t entirely clear yet. For one example, the recent £400 million sovereign cloud contract awarded to Google by the (UK’s) Ministry of Defense underlines it’s arrival and also the importance of engaging in the discussion.
What exactly is it?
In a broad sense, sovereign AI features when AI is applied to issues of national security and digital independence. It thus has four hallmarks, as follows:
1. National Control of AI
Sovereign AI exists where AI systems, infrastructure, and data are all developed and managed within a country’s own borders, rather than relying entirely on foreign companies or platforms. The benefit here is self-sufficiency and it involves countries building domestic cloud infrastructure, compute resources (like GPUs), and training large language models locally, plus setting rules for their use. The attractions and importance of doing so in an increasingly tempestuous geopolitical landscape are obvious.
2. Data Sovereignty
The issue of data security runs continuously, and the question of ensuring that sensitive national or citizen data stays under local legal frameworks is one that obviously must be answered. Thus, it’s logical that a government may want to train AI models on healthcare, defence, or education data without exposing it to foreign entities.
3. Policy & Governance
Again, there are obvious attractions to setting domestic regulations and ethical standards for AI, rather than simply using whatever rules are created by other countries or multinational corporations. Sovereign AI underlines the creation of an AI that reflects a countries own laws, values, and culture.
4. Strategic/Geopolitical Importance
Anyone who follows the daily news (hopefully all of us) knows that countries increasingly see AI as a strategic resource (in much the same way as energy or defence tech). “Sovereign AI” means not being dependent on, for example, U.S. hyperscalers (like Microsoft, Google, OpenAI) or Chinese platforms and instead investing in local compute clusters, chip production, and national AI models.
In summary, think of Sovereign AI as AI that is developed, trained, and governed in a way that keeps control, data, and strategic benefits within a country or region, rather than outsourcing them to foreign powers. But is it all, at present, vapourware?
Is it real?
The answer to that question is “no”. Examples of sovereign AI already abound. To name just a handful:
- France’s Mistral AI: building open-source LLMs (like Mistral 7B) as a European alternative to U.S.-dominated AI.
- The “IndiaAI Mission”, launched with billions in funding to create domestic compute clusters, indigenous models, and datasets.
- In the UAE, Falcon LLM, a large open-source language model developed by TII (Technology Innovation Institute) in Abu Dhabi.
- In China, large scale state investment in domestic AI platforms (e.g., Baidu’s ERNIE, Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen) allied to data localization laws that ensure Chinese data cannot leave the country.
In the telecoms industry, the issue of sovereign AI matters. That’s because the bottom line is that the telecoms industry now provides the foundation stone on which modern economies are built, and the central role of AI in the industry is no longer a technological advance that can be ignored.
E-Contact Services are the leader in Telco Lead Generation. To find out more about how we work and what we can do for you get in touch.
The next step? Sovereign AI
What is sovereign AI and why is it an issue the telecoms industry should care about? Let’s find out…
Not surprisingly, there was much talk at the Connected Britain event about AI, not least generative and agentic AI, a topic we wrote about in a recent blog (which you can read here) and which, among other things. can be used to set up networks that are self-managing (self-detecting, self-heating, self-running, etc.), hence in part its appeal.
But as AI continues to dominate the telco industry conversation, another sub-domain is starting to get considerable attention and is likely to get even more. That domain is what’s known as “sovereign AI” and we’ll unpick what it means in this blog. It’s a term increasingly linked with another term, “deglobalization”. Let’s find out why.
To be clear, sovereign AI has already arrived even if what it actually encompasses isn’t entirely clear yet. For one example, the recent £400 million sovereign cloud contract awarded to Google by the (UK’s) Ministry of Defense underlines it’s arrival and also the importance of engaging in the discussion.
What exactly is it?
In a broad sense, sovereign AI features when AI is applied to issues of national security and digital independence. It thus has four hallmarks, as follows:
1. National Control of AI
Sovereign AI exists where AI systems, infrastructure, and data are all developed and managed within a country’s own borders, rather than relying entirely on foreign companies or platforms. The benefit here is self-sufficiency and it involves countries building domestic cloud infrastructure, compute resources (like GPUs), and training large language models locally, plus setting rules for their use. The attractions and importance of doing so in an increasingly tempestuous geopolitical landscape are obvious.
2. Data Sovereignty
The issue of data security runs continuously, and the question of ensuring that sensitive national or citizen data stays under local legal frameworks is one that obviously must be answered. Thus, it’s logical that a government may want to train AI models on healthcare, defence, or education data without exposing it to foreign entities.
3. Policy & Governance
Again, there are obvious attractions to setting domestic regulations and ethical standards for AI, rather than simply using whatever rules are created by other countries or multinational corporations. Sovereign AI underlines the creation of an AI that reflects a countries own laws, values, and culture.
4. Strategic/Geopolitical Importance
Anyone who follows the daily news (hopefully all of us) knows that countries increasingly see AI as a strategic resource (in much the same way as energy or defence tech). “Sovereign AI” means not being dependent on, for example, U.S. hyperscalers (like Microsoft, Google, OpenAI) or Chinese platforms and instead investing in local compute clusters, chip production, and national AI models.
In summary, think of Sovereign AI as AI that is developed, trained, and governed in a way that keeps control, data, and strategic benefits within a country or region, rather than outsourcing them to foreign powers. But is it all, at present, vapourware?
Is it real?
The answer to that question is “no”. Examples of sovereign AI already abound. To name just a handful:
In the telecoms industry, the issue of sovereign AI matters. That’s because the bottom line is that the telecoms industry now provides the foundation stone on which modern economies are built, and the central role of AI in the industry is no longer a technological advance that can be ignored.
E-Contact Services are the leader in Telco Lead Generation. To find out more about how we work and what we can do for you get in touch.
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