Is Asia’s sovereign AI push an exercise in futility?

IT IS a rallying cry that every government can get behind. As artificial intelligence (AI) seeps into more facets of society – including critical industries like defence, healthcare and financial services – countries want more control over the underlying technology.

There is also a fear that embedded values in the training data of foreign AI models can now spread at scale. This risks erasing cultural and linguistic nuances at a time when these tools are increasingly relied on by everyday citizens for search, drafting emails or completing homework assignments. These sensitivities are especially prominent across Asia, where even the names of major bodies of water are heatedly contested. (OpenAI’s ChatGPT still refers to the “Sea of Japan” instead of Seoul’s preferred “East Sea.”)

Many smaller nations are also wary of having to pick a side and further entrench the supremacy of US or Chinese tech giants, which could lock in their dominance for decades to come.