Good morning. Nicholas Gordon here, reporting from Hong Kong. “Sovereign AI” is the buzzword of choice in the global tech sector—at least if you’re based anywhere other than the U.S. and China. Government officials and companies are increasingly worried about tying themselves too closely to one country’s AI systems.
But what “sovereignty” is meant to protect varies by geography. In Europe, it’s data, keeping personal information at home. In the Middle East and much of Asia, it’s local industry, part of a bet that a homegrown AI sector will pay economic dividends. And for smaller economies, it’s autonomy to ward off the fear of being cut off by a supplier in another country.
“AI has become such an essential need, and so you don’t want to be tethered to anybody else who can turn it off,” Pak-Sun Ting, the founder of Hong Kong-based Votee AI, recently told me. (Ting is joining our Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau on Sep. 8, where he’ll join a panel on how businesses can think about AI adoption and move beyond “tokenmaxxing.”)
Votee AI’s main product is an AI model that operates in Cantonese, the Chinese dialect spoken in Hong Kong and the surrounding Guangdong province. “The whole AI revolution is in English and Mandarin,” he told me. “Cantonese is used in education, health care, and police communications. If those don’t get covered, then AI is essentially useless.”
