Digital sovereignty “is not imitating what others are doing”

“ As large companies that are working on artificial intelligence based on the development of systems that require an astronomical amount of data – this way of developing AI – is (...) concentrated at the moment in America and China,” says the director of the AI Policy Lab at the University of Umeå, Sweden.

Now, “soberania is not imitating what others are doing. Sovereignty, I think, is to look at our context, at our capabilities and see what we need,” says Virginia Dignum, who recently released The AI Paradox.

“ Not all the problems we have need an AI solution [artificial intelligence] that is based on these transformers [neural network that learns the context] and LLM [Large Language Models, in English, or large-scale language models] that they are developing, there are alternatives,” points the academic.

The first part of sovereignty, “is to ensure that we have the ability to develop these alternatives and even more important, the ability to understand what kind of tool we need to solve or to solve what kind of problems”.

That is, “what the big tech in America and China are doing is developing bigger screwdrivers. The biggest point for sovereignty is to develop a toolbox with the tools that are needed to attack and solve problems in the European context or in the African context or in the context of where it is,” the researcher continues.

In Europe, digital sovereignty is an issue on the agenda, taking into account the dependence of the American ‘big tech’ region.

“ Understanding sovereignty over ‘we also want to make giant screwdrivers here in Europe’ is one way, but it remains as thin and as poor as what they are doing in America and China’, she considers.

“ If we really want to be sovereign, we have to start diversifying and understanding that it is not just the amount of data that will provide us with a more appropriate artificial intelligence for the systems and for the issues we have to develop here in Europe,” says Virginia Dignum, who has been working with AI for several decades.

Asked about the AI system Amália, the academic points out that “it is to make a screwdriver that speaks Portuguese, it is not to develop a toolbox with saws and hammers and screwdrivers and anything else that is already inside the toolbox”.

Of course, “it is important to have language systems that speak Portuguese, so I do not doubt the importance of developing a system like Amália, but a system like Amália is not the solution for everyone, for national sovereignty over artificial intelligence”, he points out.

“National sovereignty, both Portugal and any other country, is exactly to begin by realizing what tools we need in the toolbox and how we will develop alternatives to the screwdriver,” says Virginia Dignum.