[michaelt]

> Maybe sovereign AI was always going to look like this. I hope not.

I worry we'll soon realise that modern AI is trapped in an inescapable web of politics, and the tech industry is sleepwalking into it.

We're living in an age where even asking the president's height is a political question. For the makers of 'traditional' software like word processors, all writing was the user's own - if someone used Microsoft Word to write a controversial history textbook and campaigned to get it adopted by high schools, the political quagmire was nothing to do with Microsoft and the rest of the tech industry.

That's not the case any more - now every high schooler researching anything from evolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict to the name of the gulf of Mexico is going to ask ChatGPT.

The political controversy over Gemini's image generation is just a preview of things to come.

[PeterStuer]

"the tech industry is sleepwalking into it"

I would say the opposite is closer to the thruth. They were/are enthousiastic enablers and supporters of (their prefered) political messaging.

[intended]

> the tech industry is sleepwalking

The average person on HN, perhaps. From what I know of the interactions between government and tech, they know. Not only have external policy and research reports made this clear, their own internal teams keep them aware, and senior leadership is directly talking to political leaders.

Tech has developed a barrier between people who do the ugly work like Trust and Safety, and the engineering org. Every single tech platform deals with at global level crises regularly.