{"id":199237,"date":"2025-10-09T02:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/199237\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T02:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:13:10","slug":"governments-are-spending-billions-on-their-own-sovereign-ai-technologies-is-it-a-big-waste-of-money-artificial-intelligence-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/199237\/","title":{"rendered":"Governments are spending billions on their own \u2018sovereign\u2019 AI technologies \u2013 is it a big waste of money? | Artificial intelligence (AI)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Singapore, a government-funded artificial intelligence model can converse in 11 languages<\/a>, from Bahasa Indonesia to Lao. In Malaysia, ILMUchat<\/a>, built by a local construction conglomerate, boasts that it \u201cknows which Georgetown you\u2019re referring to\u201d \u2013 that is, the capital of Penang and not the private university in the US. Meanwhile, Switzerland\u2019s Apertus, unveiled in September<\/a>, understands when to use the Swiss German \u201css\u201d and not the German-language character \u201c\u00df\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.\u00a0Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Around the world, language models like these are part of an AI arms race worth hundreds of billions of dollars<\/a> mostly driven by a few powerful companies in the US and China. As giants such as OpenAI, Meta and Alibaba<\/a> plough vast sums into developing increasingly powerful models, middle powers and developing countries are watching the landscape carefully, and sometimes placing their own, expensive bets.<\/p>\n

Those bets are all part of a trend loosely called \u201csovereign AI\u201d, in which governments around the world, from the UK<\/a> to India to Canada, are developing their own AI technologies and attempting to define their place in the emerging ecosystem.<\/p>\n

But with hundreds of billions of dollars in play globally, can smaller investments secure meaningful gains?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile US-based companies and the US government and China are able to essentially blitzkrieg their way into AI dominance, it\u2019s harder for smaller powers, middle powers,\u201d says Trisha Ray, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a US strategy thinktank.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you\u2019re a rich government or a big company, it\u2019s quite a burden to build an LLM from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defence concerns<\/p>\n

But many countries are unwilling to rely on foreign AI to supply their needs.<\/p>\n

The second-largest market for OpenAI users globally, India has registered over a hundred million downloads of ChatGPT in the past few years. But, says Abhishek Upperwal, founder of Indian developer Soket AI<\/a>, there are numerous examples of US-built AI systems falling short. An AI agent deployed to teach students in a remote village in the state of Telangana speaks English in a strong, nearly-incomprehensible US accent, while an Indian legal startup recently tried to adapt Meta\u2019s LLaMa AI model for its clients, only to find the model delivered a useless hash of hybridised US-Indian legal advice, says Upperwal.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the national security issue. For India\u2019s defence ministry, the Chinese model DeepSeek, says Upperwal, is off the table: \u201cIt could have some random training dataset that might say that, oh, Ladakh is not part of India \u2026 Utilising that particular model in a defence setup is a big no-no.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have spoken to people who are in defence,\u201d says Upperwal. \u201cThey want to use AI, but, forget about DeepSeek, they don\u2019t even want to rely on [US] OpenAI-type systems because data might go outside the country, and that is absolutely not OK with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soket AI is one of a handful of companies attempting to build a national LLM for India with the support of India\u2019s government-funded IndiaAI Mission, which has committed roughly $1.25bn to AI development<\/a>. Upperwal envisions a model significantly smaller than leading models from US and Chinese tech companies, one roughly the size of some releases from French AI company Mistral<\/a>.<\/p>\n

AI researchers have long argued that significant resource investment \u2013 including in chips and computing power \u2013 is necessary to push the frontier of the technology and achieve AGI \u2013 artificial general intelligence \u2013 the elusive endpoint of the AI arms race. Upperwal says India will have to make up for the funding gap with talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in India, we don\u2019t have the luxury of pouring billions of dollars into it,\u201d he says. \u201cHow do we compete versus say the $100 or $300 or $500bn US dollars that the US is pumping in? I think that is where the core expertise and the brain game comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Singapore, AI Singapore is the government initiative that backs SEA-LION, the family of language models trained in south-east Asia\u2019s regional languages, which are often poorly represented in US and Chinese LLMs, including Malay, Thai, Lao, Bahasa Indonesia, Khmer and others.<\/p>\n

I wish the people who are building these [sovereign] AI models were aware of just how far and just how fast the frontier is movingTzu Kit Chan<\/p>\n

Leslie Teo, senior director of AI Singapore<\/a>, says these models are designed to complement larger models, as opposed to replacing them. Systems such as ChatGPT and Gemini, he says, often struggle with regional languages and culture \u2013 speaking in stilted, overly-formal Khmer, for example, or recommending pork-based recipes to Malaysian users. Building regional-language LLMs allows local governments to code in cultural nuance \u2013 and at least be \u201csmart consumers\u201d of a powerful technology developed elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very careful with the word sovereign. I think what we\u2019re trying to say is we want to be better represented and we want to understand the capabilities\u201d of AI systems, he says.<\/p>\n

Multinational cooperation<\/p>\n

For countries trying to find their place in an intensifying global market, there\u2019s another possibility: team up. Researchers affiliated with the Bennett School for Public Policy<\/a> at Cambridge recently proposed a public AI company distributed among a consortium of middle-income countries.<\/p>\n

They call the initiative Airbus for AI<\/a>, in reference to Europe\u2019s successful play to build a rival to Boeing in the 1960s. Their proposal would see the creation of a public AI company that would combine the resources of different countries\u2019 AI initiatives \u2013 it names the UK, Spain, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, France, Switzerland and Sweden \u2013 to create a competitive rival to the US and Chinese giants.<\/p>\n

Joshua Tan, the lead author of a paper setting out the initiative, says the idea has attracted the attention of AI ministers of at least three countries so far, along with several sovereign AI companies. While it is now focused on \u201cmiddle powers\u201d, developing countries \u2013 Mongolia and Rwanda among them \u2013 have also expressed interest, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays, I think it\u2019s just a fact there\u2019s less trust in the promises of this current US administration. People are asking like, can I still depend on any of this tech? What if they decide to turn it off?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Tan\u2019s proposal is optimistic about the potential for multinational cooperation. But others say that even a coordinated, multi country strategy risks wasting valuable taxpayer money on an initiative that will ultimately fall short.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish the people who are building these [sovereign] AI models were aware of just how far and just how fast the frontier is moving,\u201d says Tzu Kit Chan, an AI strategist who advises the government of Malaysia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the cost? The cost to governments having a bad strategy of building this roadmap for their own sovereign AI models is that they waste a ton of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

A better strategy, says Chan, would be for governments like Malaysia to spend the same money on developing stronger regulations around AI safety \u2013 as opposed to competing with international products that have already won the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalk the streets of Malaysia, go to Kuala Lumpur, find a finance-bro-looking-person, ask them what model they\u2019re using,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cEight out of 10, I bet they\u2019re not using the sovereign AI models. They\u2019re saying, ChatGPT or Gemini.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Singapore, a government-funded artificial intelligence model can converse in 11 languages, from Bahasa Indonesia to Lao. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-199237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}