AI Public Option

Description

< "Don’t confuse public AI with “sovereign AI”, the notion that every country needs to invest in domestic AI infrastructure." > [1]

Nathan E Sanders and Bruce Schneier:

"As to the goal of reshaping AI in the public interest, we have proposed an AI Public Option. The concept is for governments, be it federal or state, to establish publicly developed and operated AI models run by public institutions under democratic control. The idea is not to eliminate corporate AI or to seize it as a public asset, but rather for government to provide a competitive baseline that private AI offerings must meet or exceed to win business – just like the notion of a healthcare public option."

(https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-public-ai-can-strengthen-democracy/)

Example

Apertus, Switzerland

"The Swiss have trailblazed this approach. Apertus is a large language model built by Swiss public servants, researchers at Swiss universities, using appropriately licensed training data and pre-existing Swiss public supercomputing infrastructure powered by renewable energy.

While Apertus doesn’t seriously compete with the latest OpenAI and Anthropic models on performance benchmarks, it blows them out of the water in transparency, sustainability and compliance with EU regulations including adherence to copyright. It’s a nascent project, but suggestive of how public institutions can apply competitive pressure for corporate actors to behave responsibly."

(https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-public-ai-can-strengthen-democracy/)