Just open weights are not enough, I think as a nation state you'd at least want a whole sovereign training pipeline. Otherwise you are stuck when Kimi K4 stops releasing their weights.

But I don't see why this needs to be done on a state-by-state level, a sovereign EU model seems to be much more realistic in terms of funding.

We have lots of capable open weights models, but very few have actual datasets and pipelines open for reproducibility. This is a major issue that even if big companies addressed, policies could well just change, as you also acknowledge.

Society can't depend on the whims of the private sector.

The first thought that comes to mind is biases that are baked into the weights.

The next thought is culture-specific workflows, requirements etc that are best trained into weights by people that actually understand those needs.

Like it or not, AI has become part of modern warfare and well as part of the surveillance state (good for crime fighting, not for privacy), so it is an important part of national security, and you'd prefer to be as much self-sufficient for that as you can be.

Not all needs are going to be met by using or finetuning general purpose models, so ability to build your own SOTA ML models (LLMs or not) is also important.

Open weight and -source models aren't without biases. Giving a model away for free would be a good way to distribute an agenda. With a sovereign model you can at least control the agenda and align it with your values.

amazing to see blunt unfiltered commentary about making war and society level propaganda as important and necessary for a political state.