Falconpowers – Europeans are racing to develop conversational robots in European languages to curb American technological dominance and preserve European culture and languages.
The latest tools in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, such as the famous chatbot, rely on “large language models” that are primarily language-dependent and form the essence of these innovations.
The European Union and its 24 official languages are striving to catch up with the dominant English language in most AI programs.
Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister of Economy, stated at a technology conference in Cannes in February of last year, “We do not want to settle for just the English language… We do not want our language to weaken due to algorithms and AI systems.”
The United States leads major AI projects like GPT-3 by OpenAI, Microsoft’s GPT-3, Google, DeepMind, Meta, and X.ai, among others.
Thirteen European countries announced their development of local models focusing on their own languages in 2023, according to Politico. France formed the Altaïc alliance, consisting of 12 countries in the union, to develop and focus on European languages.
Carlos Romero-Merino, a former AI negotiator for the European Union, said, “Having models in the local language also means encouraging more people in your country to program and develop more AI products.”
OpenAI’s deals to develop European languages, such as Weltbild for German and Le Monde for French, have raised concerns among European countries about American dominance over AI languages.
According to a study by W3Techs, the English language monopolizes over half of the pages on the internet.
Sebastian Ruder, a research scientist at Canada-based multilingual AI company Cohere, explains, “There is an imbalance in the power distribution in terms of the quantity and quality of data. Just look at the size of the English Wikipedia compared to its versions in other languages.”
