From self-driving cars to AI agents and transformative drug discovery, humanity is entering a fourth industrial revolution, powered by artificial intelligence.
Nations around the world have taken notice. Leveraging generative AI promises enormous socioeconomic, cultural, and geopolitical benefits, but modernizing a government's ability to enable and enhance its AI capabilities requires creating accelerated nationwide IT infrastructure at a level as basic and critical as energy grids. and water. Countries that do not invest in sovereign AI not only risk falling behind their more AI-literate counterparts, but also resign themselves to dependence on other countries for critical 21st century resources.
Vice President of Global AI Initiatives at NVIDIA
What is an AI factory?
While the first industrial revolution brought us coal-powered factories to make work more efficient and the telegraph to power broader communication, this latest revolution is driven by the most computationally demanding task humanity has ever faced. : Generative AI. Generative AI allows users to quickly create new content based on a variety of inputs, such as text or images. Due to the huge amounts of data involved, our current computing infrastructure simply will not be sufficient. European nations must prioritize creating a sovereign AI infrastructure to meet demand. In practice, this means creating AI factories.
At a basic level, an AI factory is where data goes in and intelligence comes out. It is a completely new generation of data center that uses a full-stack accelerated computing platform to perform the most computationally intensive tasks. Just as heavy machinery is needed to refine raw materials into more useful resources, substantial computing power is required to convert huge amounts of raw data into intelligence. The AI factory will become the foundation of modern economies around the world.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputers are clustered, and most of the AI computing power is located in prestigious universities, research laboratories, and a handful of companies. This scenario prevents many nations from creating generative AI that leverages valuable local data to understand local language and its nuances. The Future of Compute Review, commissioned by the UK government, found that for the UK to project its global power as a leader in science and technology, it needed to ensure its own sovereign computing capacity.
Cooperating with national champions
The AI sovereign race is already underway. Japan, India and Singapore have already announced plans to build next-generation AI factories. While these countries enjoy an advantage, the race is far from over. Real progress is already starting to be made in Europe, with the European Commission recently announcing its support for a network of AI factories.
However, governments alone cannot drive this new industrial revolution. Developing generative AI at this scale requires vast resources in material wealth and technical skills, so partnering with the private sector will be critical to success. Each country already has its own strong domestic sector, full of local technology champions. Making the most of your experience and capabilities is the first step to success.
The telecommunications industry is one such industry that is well positioned to support generative AI infrastructure efforts by evolving into AI factories. Major telecoms operators, such as Orange in France or BT and EE in the UK, are reliable service providers with large customer bases in the region. The demands of the telecom industry have prepared these companies to effectively assist the generative AI infrastructure revolution. Telcos are already accustomed to intensive cycles of infrastructure investment and replacement, such as the recent launches of 4G and 5G solutions. Additionally, they have access to secure, high-performance distributed data centers located near large metropolitan areas, which helps combat latency issues.
If Europe wants to sit at the wheel of the latest industrial revolution, rather than simply be a passenger, European countries must make investment in AI infrastructure a top priority.
A new understanding of sovereignty
Although we are in the midst of a generative AI boom and interest continues to grow, development and deployment tools remain limited in terms of accessibility. Most, if not all, of the most popular AI tools are available primarily in English. In a geographical area as culturally and linguistically diverse as Europe, artificial intelligence tools must be accessible to everyone, not just those who speak English. Making this a reality means using local data, implementing local languages and, above all, bringing translation capabilities to do so within your own borders.
Changing the perception of sovereignty to include computing power is not an easy task and certainly cannot be achieved without action. The move to sovereign data centers preserves native cultures and languages in AI tools and ensures that GenAI applications can function accurately within their specific context. But it will require generational investments and ongoing support. The AI infrastructure on which tomorrow's economies will be built simply does not exist yet, and those who start building it first will have the most to gain.
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