Why the push for AI sovereignty still remains so elusive

In my experience as a technology journalist, I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s the seemingly smaller announcements that speak volumes about the status quo and what to soon expect from the sector.

The feeling was bolstered by a recent development concerning OpenAI, which helped to put AI on the map with its ChatGPT tool in late 2022, and the UAE, which has made no secret about its ambitions to be a leader in AI development.

OpenAI said it was offering data residency services to its business customers in the UAE. The company, rapidly ascending to unprecedented heights of technology influence, said that its residency services will allow for businesses to store their data in the UAE, which many say is a step in the right direction of fulfilling the ideas of data sovereignty.

Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, at a the Federal Reserve Integrated Review of the Capital Framework for Large Banks Conference in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 22. In recent years, AI has given us all the tools that rival the human mind in terms of problem-solving and critical thinking. Bloomberg via Getty Images

As is the case with most developments in technology, data sovereignty can take on a few definitions depending on who you are. But most reasonable minds would agree that it can broadly be explained as a way for countries to ensure they can enable the use of computer tools and access to data without having to rely on external factors, companies or geopolitical elements beyond their control.

It’s important to point out that OpenAI is hardly the first company to talk about the idea of data sovereignty.

Several years ago, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang spoke about it in the context of AI sovereignty, and later also touched upon data sovereignty as the AI sector matured at a breakneck pace. Microsoft’s chief, Satya Nadella, has also spoken about it at length as the company builds out its data centres around the world, often boasting of “sovereign cloud capabilities”.

Amid this corporate push for AI, tech, data and cloud sovereignty, it would be easy to chalk up the discussion to just a polite way for these companies to sell more of their products and services. It’s naive to think that’s not the case to some extent, but it’s also a gross oversimplification of how the technology sector has evolved over the years, and how we as consumers have ultimately factored in sovereignty in most of our technology purchases.

In many ways, sovereignty has been at the h