[Me & X] Open Source AI and Sovereignty
X : Any thoughts on open source AI?
Me : I've already explained my position on open source in AI, I would legislate for it, I would have done so long ago and that includes the training data. "The real danger of AI comes not from mythical frontier AIs but from the concentration of power into a few, very human hands."
I haven't changed my position.
X : You don't seem very positive about the UK's moves.
Me : I'm not. In my book, handing over the sovereignty of future generations cheaply to US tech giants on the promise of unsubstantiated growth is a policy that started with Sunak and not one that I'd agree with. It's unclear whether Labour will play the China card yet, hopefully they will.
X : Reform UK?
Me : Lol. If those horrors ever got into power, they'd sell our sovereignty quicker than a heartbeat. I've been watching their incompetence in Kent (my local council) with their farcical DOGE efforts. Scale this up and .... well, you might as well start calling the nation Airstrip One.
X : What's the China card?
Me : UK has already sold its future sovereignty cheaply to the US. We don't have a time machine, so we can't go back and correct those mistakes or the lunatic ramblings of the guardrail / vendor lobby. The damage has been done, you can't get that sovereignty back easily (and no, data centres on UK soil don't buy you anything). The way you counter the mess that has been created is now to sell your sovereignty not to one player but many players at the same time. For example, UK needs to encourage an equivalent investment and adoption of China based services, on par with what we have done with US based services. Even better, encourage Europe to provide AI services and adopt all three of the great houses.
Originally published on LinkedIn.