Artificial intelligence continues to dominate the headlines, almost three years after ChatGPT exploded on to the tech scene, stoking interest in the technology. But while there has been much talk about the possibilities that the next generation of AI can bring, it has not been without controversy.
Fears over the impact of jobs, the limitations of the technology and the concerns over data use have become topics for debate as the tech industry and wider society gets to grip with how AI could possibly change our society.
While tech executives such as Mark Zuckerberg have emphasised the importance of tapping the data of European online users to train models and make them more relevant, there is another movement gathering pace: sovereign AI.
Sovereign AI has one overarching theme: control. Specifically, building a system that is under the control of the state rather than farming it out to a private third party that may have its own priorities.
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Countries such as Sweden and France have already made moves on sovereign AI. The big question is whether Ireland should follow.
“Sovereign AI in its most simple form is countries and regions having the ability to manage AI with their own proprietary data in their own environment and borders,” says Dell Technologies’ Jason Ward.
That means using storage, servers and networking in a data centre controlled within the region and borders of Ireland.
Control over data seems to be the overriding benefit to sovereign AI. That could be data from Revenue, healthcare records, public sector information or social welfare information. And in the debate over the use of generative AI in the past couple of years, it is the one aspect that has raised concerns: what happens to our data?
“If you’re going to work with large language models and inference against those with your proprietary data, having control of your data in your region is critically important,” says Ward. “Having all of that data reside in Ireland in a Government private data centre protects all of our IP, all of our data. And then, if we want to commercialise that or gain benefit from it, retaining control of that data in a sovereign AI platform gives us much better control of our own data.”
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There is a concerted move towards gaining control over vital AI infrastructure in countries around the world. Australia is already making plans for its own sovereign AI, an alternative to ChatGPT and others, with a large language model that is owned, operated and trained by and for the country. The model will be hosted in Australian-based data centres, meaning the data will stay under the firm control of Australian interests.
In the UK, a sovereign AI model that has been trained on its supercomputer, Isambard-AI, is now capable of reasoning in Welsh, something that might not have been a priority for the big AI companies worldwide.
Sweden and France have also been working on sovereign AI capabilities. Earlier this month, it emerged that Dutch company ASML had taken a stake in French AI company Mistral, investing €1.3 billion. That had a dual benefit: giving Mistral more financial firepower to continue developing its technology while also ensuring that the company remained European owned.
That could be an important step in the future. US companies have a large share of the European cloud market, and with Big Tech spending on AI continuing to soar, gaining some sort of independence from US multinationals is viewed as a positive thing – not least as recent geopolitical upheaval has highlighted the dangers of being overly dependent on one state.
Questions around the value of generative AI persist, even as the companies behind the development of the technology continue to pour vast amounts of money into it to bring their systems to the next stage of development.
But in the tech industry, there is little doubt that there will eventually be a pay-off. Reports claim that AI can add billions to Ireland’s economy. But there may be more to it than simple economic benefits, with AI potentially driving more digitalisation of society.
The data centre conversation is one that gets kicked around as a political football, but the fact of the matter is AI is here. It’s here to stay
— Dell Technologies’ Jason Ward
That may not be welcomed by everyone, but there has been a concerted effort to digitise society in recent years, with the Covid-19 pandemic and associated shutdowns accelerating that process for companies and industries that had previously resisted.
That provides new opportunities for businesses, and for the economy as a whole, proponents argue. A sort of digital Field of Dreams – if you build it, they will come, and bring their investment with them.
“Countries like the UK, Sweden, Norway – they are building sovereign AI infrastructure to expedite digital transformation in their countries and to embrace investment in the country,” says Ward. “If you’ve got big AI infrastructure in your country, it means companies are going to come and innovate in your region – new start-ups, new AI ecosystem providers.”
There is, as always, a sense of urgency around this. Many in the industry believe Ireland needs to act now to ensure that we can carve out a niche for ourselves as an AI-focused country.
Dell is already working with public sector customers on how AI can be used effectively, including utilising it in healthcare settings such as oncology to diagnose future risk.
“At the moment, you can perform AI activity and inference against large language models by hosting this data in a very confined space, and you’re not pushing it out on to the wider web,” explains Ward. “We’re still doing AI and benefiting from AI on small use cases in Ireland. What we’re missing is the big investments.”
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This is where the Government could step in. In France, Mistral has had heavy support from the French government, building its large language models housed in France for the benefit of France and the wider European ecosystem. Get it right, the thinking is, and Ireland’s nascent AI ecosystem could perform a similar role.
“But the challenge is, how do we create an environment, an infrastructure platform, to allow that to happen? And this all boils down to energy,” says Ward. “Because the whole thing about AI is you need a massive amount of energy.”
Energy and data centres is a hot-button issue. Ireland’s sovereign AI Achilles heel could prove to be data centre capacity. A number of data centre projects have been rejected by planning authorities, including Google’s proposed extension of its existing facility in south County Dublin.
The discourse around data centres has largely focused on the unwelcome pressure it is putting on the electricity grid – and in turn, on politicians to act in one way or another.
A recent report from Barclays said delays in planning and a lack of big grid upgrades have left the State “struggling to keep pace with global peers in building AI-ready infrastructure”. Demand for energy to power data centres has surged to 22 per cent of current capacity, up from 5 per cent in 2015, and it is forecast to reach 31 per cent by 2030.
But Ward says data centres are an essential building block of sovereign AI. Without them, you can’t build AI infrastructure.
One solution could be making the data centres themselves more energy efficient, with new technology that does more with less. Current data centre technology can store more and use less energy than technology from five or 10 years ago. That brings a bigger density in capacity and a reduction in power use, without having to break ground on new centres.
“The data centre conversation is one that gets kicked around as a political football, but the fact of the matter is AI is here. It’s here to stay,” says Ward. “And the critical thing is that AI in its current form is the dumbest it’s ever going to be. It’s only going to get smarter, smarter, smarter. So AGI (advanced generative intelligence), that’s the next coming wave.
“Ireland has sufficient wind and hydro capacity to drive megawatts and megawatts and megawatts of green energy that will supply data centres. We have it in abundance in the country. The problem is we just need to get that connected to the grid, to allow the grid to then supply that to lots and lots of different providers.”
Even if the political will is mustered, it may not be a quick turnaround, given the scale of the task. The Government earlier this year approved a €3.5 billion investment in the national grid between 2026 and 2030. That includes €1.5 billion for ESB Networks and €2 billion to EirGrid, to futureproof the network by expanding onshore and offshore electricity transmission and distribution network infrastructure.
In the meantime, changing the narrative is important, Ward says.
“We can still lead in this coming wave of AGI. But we just need to understand that there’s no risk to the people of Ireland. Data centres are actually hubs of employment, economic value to the country at the moment,” he says, “We’ve got the people, we’ve got the resources, we’ve got the skills, we just need to open that up.
“And the Government needs to make a decision: how important is technology and AI going to be globally, and how important is it going to be for Ireland?”
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There is another aspect to this push for sovereign AI. While the emphasis has been on the use of the technology for the good of the society it is intended to serve, that may not always be the case. There is a fear that development of these sophisticated systems may help authoritarian governments in their efforts to control digital technologies and their governance.
There is also the underlying problem that, regardless of the control of the data and models themselves, countries will always be reliant to some extent on overseas providers. Many of the AI technology companies are themselves based outside Europe, and without European companies to challenge that aspect of the market, countries building sovereign AI will still be reliant in some way on a foreign entity.
In the meantime, controlling the data seems to be the key concern, particularly in a volatile geopolitical environment. Ireland, as a country that has tried to build a reputation for innovation, stands to gain if the Government can strike the right balance.
“Ireland actually has a really positive base to build on around AI but we just need to get out of our own way,” says Ward. “There’s a massive opportunity, if we grasp it.”
