Governments are spending billions on their own ‘sovereign’ AI technologies – is it a big waste of money?

<p>Many US-built AI systems fall short but competing against tech giants neither easy nor cheap</p><p>In Singapore, a government-funded artificial intelligence model can <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.05747">converse in 11 languages</a>, from Bahasa Indonesia to Lao. In Malaysia, <a href="https://www.ilmu.ai/">ILMUchat</a>, built by a local construction conglomerate, boasts that it “knows which Georgetown you’re referring to” – that is, the capital of Penang and not the private university in the US. Meanwhile, Switzerland’s Apertus, <a href="https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/09/press-release-apertus-a-fully-open-transparent-multilingual-language-model.html">unveiled in September</a>, understands when to use the Swiss German “ss” and not the German-language character “ß”.</p><p>Around the world, language models like these are part of an AI arms race worth hundreds of billions of <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/mckinsey%20digital/our%20insights/the%20top%20trends%20in%20tech%202025/mckinsey-technology-trends-outlook-2025.pdf">dollars</a> mostly driven by a few powerful companies in the US and China. As giants such as OpenAI, Meta and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/alibaba-invest-more-than-52-billion-ai-over-next-3-years-2025-02-24/">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> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/09/governments-spending-billions-sovereign-ai-technology">Continue reading...</a>