[timruffles]

Firstly, congrats! As a Brit this looks cool, and I'm happy to see it. I wish you every success.

Secondly: I get that 'sovereign' is probably an important sales term for your company. But this, in common with the government's 'sov/ai' fund, does not deserve to be described as sovereign. This is other countries' models served on chips designed and manufactured abroad, powered by a grid which imports 44% of its power.

Of course this isn't your company's fault. Last week I went to an event where the sovereignai.gov.uk people presented. In a very Keir Starmer way (spiritually, he wasn't there), they said in as many words 'oh but I'm sure all reasonable people would agree _really_ sovereign AI would be too hard. So let's all agree to pretend that just popping a bit more money into the AI startup ecosystem is a sovereign AI strategy'.

I'm unsure if the UK does need to be sovereign in anything; it certainly doesn't seem to want to be. But I will continue to poke fun at anything using the pompous phrase 'sovereign' for anything that isn't.

If sovereign AI is a problem you're in earnest about, I hope you go after it seriously, and fix the rest of the stack. I'll cheer you on!

[quietbritishjim]

Sovereign capability just means that no foreign government can pull the plug. Who cares where it was copied from?

If it were somehow legal for a company to provide MS Office (not a clone) fully in the UK with no control from Microsoft, that would also count as a sovereign capability, even though none of the code was written in the uk.

Maybe that's not how you like the term to be used but it's widely used that way and widely understood.

[timruffles]

> Sovereign capability just means that no foreign government can pull the plug

OK, fair enough on 'pull the plug ~instantly'. But models and chips age fast. If another country can stop you getting new models and chips, this means you're sovereign in state-of-the-art AI for only a window of a year or two (maybe this will widen if model progress tails off).

If it is a short window, strategically, that doesn't seem worth much given the timelines of: a) inter-state conflict, or trade wars b) cold-start time to be able to make your own models and chips

> Maybe that's not how you like the term to be used but it's widely used that way and widely understood.

Noted. But as a data-point, the audience at the event I mentioned (various AI builders and founders) made it clear from their questions to the speaker that the 'sovereign' that sov/ai was aiming at was hollow, for exactly the reasons I've stated.

[quietbritishjim]

> But models and chips age fast. If another country can stop you getting new models and chips, this means you're sovereign in state-of-the-art AI for only a window of a year or two

OK, that's a fair point.

[carderne]

The UK grid does not import 44% of its energy.

Gell-Mann suggests I should treat the rest of your post with skepticism.

EDIT: maybe you meant the UK total primary energy? I feel like that's extending the boundary a bit far. Should we start digging for uranium? Or stick to renewables, but only with locally sourced silica and rare earths?

[timruffles]

Import dependency. The UK government put it at 43.5% in 2025 and 43.8% in 2024: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69cd1451b5210...

> EDIT: maybe you meant the UK total primary energy? I feel like that's extending the boundary a bit far.

If we're talking about 'sovereign', is it too far? I think the history of conflict in the modern era, hot and cold, shows that your rivals' ability to disrupt your energy imports matters a lot.

[bcjdjsndon]

If I could give prizes for comments you'd get one. Too much fart sniffing goes on in these parts, it's always a pleasant change to see dissent

[jonplackett]

Tbf the title only says sovereign _inference_