Can Europe achieve AI sovereignty?

(Image credit: Future)

AI deployment is inextricably linked to the United States of America. Many of the major frontier labs are based there and the cloud providers that businesses depend on to access the latest models are majority American.

But all over Europe, businesses are considering questioning the extent to which their critical workloads should be dependent on the US.

In a recent edition of the podcast, we covered all things digital sovereignty. In this episode, we're zooming in on how this push for sovereignty is compatible with AI adoption for European businesses. What does ‘AI sovereignty’ mean in practical terms? And how can businesses isolate workloads from the wider world without falling behind?

In this episode, Rory speaks to In today’s episode, I’m joined by Rene Buest, senior director, analyst in Gartner's Emerging Market Dynamics practice, to explore how European CIOs can balance sovereignty, agility, and compliance.

Highlights

"So if you look at the spectrum, we also see that the global providers are of course making some steps, because money talks in the end of the day, and they have opened here more sovereign offerings by, for example, partnering with local system integrators or local vendors."

"You can be 100% compliant, but at the same time 0% sovereign, because if someone else has a kill switch and can shut your environment off, you might be still compliant, but you won't exist anymore, right?"

"[T]here are more providers across Europe than I think the public knows about. And this is, of course, also an issue but this is absolutely one of the strategies that some have started to follow, or which which can be followed. But of course, it comes also with a cost, because one thing [that] is also true is that the more innovative AI models or AI technologies are still coming from the United States or from China. So there is a trade off, and CIOs then have to make compromise to say, 'Do I need really a lot of sovereignty, or can I balance the risks that way that I'm okay by using foreign AI technologies?'"

Footnotes

TOPICS

Rory Bathgate is Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He can also be found co-hosting the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory at rory.bathgate@futurenet.com or on LinkedIn.

Highlights

Footnotes

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