(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


ai – Dropsafe

2025-07

Just like the BBC launching a desktop computer or Quaero the EU Search Engine (such a great success) we need a period of flag-waving & failed ongoing state investment before Governments can learn to ignore tech again:

Via LinkedIn we learn:

Switzerland’s national large language model … is about to launch. Purpose-built for environments where compliance, trust, and control matter more than scale, it has been developed to serve strategic sectors and reduce systemic dependency on foreign AI platforms.

I wrote this whimsical piece in February 2024 because it seemed only a matter of time before some other kool-aid drinking would actually propose it:

the problem is Capitalism, and Monopoly, and apparently all these companies giving away foundation models for free is all about establishing dominance or something … countries should build their own and give them away for free themselves, therefore the marginal cost of creation (or something like that) means that people will stop using risky corporate-sourced foundation models, and instead will obviously use ones created by sensible countries like Norway or Sweden or Switzerland or something like that

So we find the Swiss LLM, powered by Alpine glacial melt and goat-farts, and fluent in Rumantsch to boost the Graubünden creator economy:

Again, I gently mock, but this is not bad … it’s just likely pointless.

“Digital Sovereignty” at the nation-state level is a dogwhistle for states which understand that “having to rely upon the USA is a strategically bad idea” but who have not yet realised that “what we risk doing is making an expensive cage for ourselves and our people.”

Once the dust has settled and a few politicians and civil servants have won awards for innovation and sovereignty, how happy will the Swiss taxpayer be to try and compete with commercial AI services in 2030?

Or will they simply be content to leave their LLM to go out-of-date and senile?
[END]

[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/tag/ai
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

DropSafe Blog via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/alecmuffett/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.