Digital Sovereignty, an interoperable AID for competitiveness
Chief (Accenture): 'Need to govern data, models and infrastructure along the entire chain'
Key points
Sovereignty in artificial intelligence is starting to move out of the perimeter of regulatory compliance and become a strategic lever of competitiveness. This is an important assumption that emerges from the study 'Sovereign AI: Own your AI future' by Accenture, which photographs a Europe that is aware of its technological dependence on the United States and China, where almost all advanced AI models are born (just under 70% in the US and around 25% in the East).
71% of Italian companies increase investment
A concentration, experts note, that raises questions about security and the ability to generate economic value in the long term, and to which Italia 'responds' by placing itself among the most dynamic European countries. Indeed, 71% of domestic companies plan to increase investment in sovereign AI solutions over the next two years, ahead of Switzerland and Spain in this ranking (at 64% and 63% respectively) and trailing Germany (73%). There is, however, a paradox hovering over Europe: on the one hand there is a need to accelerate AI to support growth and innovation, on the other hand there is a growing perception of the risk involved in adopting technologies developed outside the borders. And while a sovereign approach is the way to protect critical assets, it is also true that - as the report states - only a third of AI workloads actually require a high level of sovereignty and that 65 per cent of companies recognise that they cannot remain competitive without collaborating with technology providers and using non-European cloud infrastructures.
Looking for sovereign solutions
On the other hand, another figure is very indicative: 62% of continental organisations are looking for sovereign AI solutions, especially in regulated sectors such as finance, public administration and energy.
The game is therefore still to be played - not least because 48% of companies nowadays act defensively and only 19% consider sovereign AI to be a real advantage - and the main challenge facing companies is to integrate it into their strategies in order to foster the development of models that are more closely tailored to local contexts.
Chief (Accenture): "Governing data, models, infrastructure"
"It is not enough to host data in Europe," explained Mauro Capo, Head of Accenture's Cloud First division in Italia and Greece, "but we need to govern data, models and infrastructure along the entire chain with the right level of control. And this, according to the manager, is the decisive step towards verifiable sovereignty, where transparency, audit and accountability become enablers of speed. "The real goal," Capo concludes, "is to build a European AI that is interoperable and capable of extracting value from the data generated by production chains, while maintaining the advantages of scale and the capacity for innovation offered by global providers. Digital sovereignty is the necessary condition to innovate and compete'. And governments and institutions, this is the conviction of three quarters of European companies, must play an active role in this respect, through regulations, incentives and investments.
