Every country should be urged to establish sovereignty over artificial intelligence (AI), Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said during a presentation at the World Government Summit in Dubai in February.
He called this concept “sovereign AI,” which emphasizes a nation “training its own AI by itself.” Countries ought to develop their own national AI infrastructure, data, human labor and business networks to produce AI capabilities that satisfy their national goals and needs.
Sovereign AI includes not only bolstering a nation’s abilities in technical innovation, but also using AI to protect and expand a nation’s culture, language and knowledge, Huang said.
In an era of marginalized economies fracturing under globalization, competition between superpowers the US and China is growing ever fiercer.
The first phase of their competition is mainly a low-level digital sovereignty competition to collect “small yard and high fence” data. Technology is primarily the highlight of this competition.
“Small yard and high fence” refers to the US’ key technology enclosure against China, concentrated in domains such as extreme ultraviolet lithography and advanced AI chips, prohibiting the US private sector from aiding China’s advanced chip development.
However, due to the sharp rise of “sovereign AI,” Sino-American competition has become fiercer.
The US and its allies are set to establish a self-sufficient AI ecosystem institution and digital enclosure against outsiders, forming a “big yard, high fence” alliance.
Meanwhile, through its “new nationwide system,” China has developed its own sovereign AI ecosystem, roping in countries that are dissatisfied with the West with itself at the helm, to challenge what it sees as a Western-centric world view.
Several other countries are also racing to develop sovereign AI. India last month approved the IndiaAI Mission, investing US$12.5 billion. It has also launched computing infrastructure and large language models (LLM), and is planning to build a supercomputer with at least 10,000 GPUs.
Singapore has partnered with Nvidia to build its Sea-Lion (Southeast Asian Languages in One Network) LLM. Through training a data set based on 11 languages in the region, it plans to adapt to Southeast Asia’s diverse linguistic environment to support its newly announced National AI Strategy 2.0
Meanwhile, the Netherlands is developing an open LLM called GPT-NL, with the goal of promoting its nation’s values. The Netherlands is also jointly promoting a European sovereign AI plan to become a world leader in AI.
Taiwan’s sovereign AI development policies are focused on establishing sovereign AI technological capabilities and boosting national security.
The National Science and Technology Council is developing its Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE), the purpose of which is to fend off the skewed political misinformation suggested by China’s Baidu search engine, which is based on its Enhanced Representation Through Knowledge Integration LLM.
By developing an integrated Taiwanese culture and traditional Chinese character script-derived model, Taiwan aims to protect its national digital sovereignty, culture and worldview.
However, because of copyrights on content written in traditional Chinese characters, the amount of digital information that Taiwan can consolidate in its language models is limited.
Moreover, the speed performance of the nation’s AI supercomputer is still not fast enough. Taiwan must build an LLM that could rival OpenAI.
Liao Ming-hui is an assistant researcher at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research.
Translated by Tim Smith
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
After declaring Iran’s military “gone,” US President Donald Trump appealed to the UK, France, Japan and South Korea — as well as China, Iran’s strategic partner — to send minesweepers and naval forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. When allies balked, the request turned into a warning: NATO would face “a very bad” future if it refused. The prevailing wisdom is that Trump faces a credibility problem: having spent years insulting allies, he finds they would not rally when he needs them. That is true, but superficial, as though a structural collapse could be caused by wounded feelings. Something
Former Taipei mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) founding chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Thursday, making headlines across major media. However, another case linked to the TPP — the indictment of Chinese immigrant Xu Chunying (徐春鶯) for alleged violations of the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) on Tuesday — has also stirred up heated discussions. Born in Shanghai, Xu became a resident of Taiwan through marriage in 1993. Currently the director of the Taiwan New Immigrant Development Association, she was elected to serve as legislator-at-large for the TPP in 2023, but was later charged with involvement
Out of 64 participating universities in this year’s Stars Program — through which schools directly recommend their top students to universities for admission — only 19 filled their admissions quotas. There were 922 vacancies, down more than 200 from last year; top universities had 37 unfilled places, 40 fewer than last year. The original purpose of the Stars Program was to expand admissions to a wider range of students. However, certain departments at elite universities that failed to meet their admissions quotas are not improving. Vacancies at top universities are linked to students’ program preferences on their applications, but inappropriate admission
RSS