Digital sovereignty in the age of AI | WEF26 | Global Stage — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Talal Al Caesi, you are the group chief
2. 0:02global affairs officer at G42. I have to
3. 0:06say it's impossible to have almost any
4. 0:08conversation here in Davos this year
5. 0:10without geopolitics coloring it. And
6. 0:12when I think about digital sovereignty,
7. 0:14which is a conversation happening both
8. 0:16on the main stage and in many sideline
9. 0:19events, is this push toward sovereignty
10. 0:22being motivated by that uncertainty?
11. 0:24>> It absolutely is. And I think it's not
12. 0:26just geopolitics that is involved here.
13. 0:27whether it's geocconomics and
14. 0:28geotechnology in the world we live in
15. 0:30today. I come from the world of
16. 0:31geotechnology and today increasingly it
17. 0:34is an intertwined system right so I
18. 0:36think what we're trying to do at G42 is
19. 0:38really help propagate intelligence to
20. 0:40provide equitable access to intelligence
21. 0:42globally and so that's what we we stand
22. 0:44for as a company
23. 0:45>> yeah and so let's just level set for
24. 0:48everybody when we talk about digital
25. 0:50sovereignty means different things to
26. 0:52different people to consumers to
27. 0:54countries to companies so why don't you
28. 0:56define it as you understand it
29. 0:58>> so you know sovereignty is a matter of
30. 1:00having a level of control over
31. 1:01everything from data to operations to um
32. 1:04deploying systems and being able to
33. 1:06leverage those systems so that they can
34. 1:07underpin because this digital
35. 1:09infrastructure is really what underpins
36. 1:11the enablement of AI native societies at
37. 1:13large. And so when when we talk about
38. 1:15digital sovereignty, we do things at
39. 1:17least in in G42 where we create
40. 1:19innovative models that allow us to
41. 1:21deploy that infrastructure in one
42. 1:23country but be able to serve it in
43. 1:24others like the digital embassy program
44. 1:26that we announced a couple days ago here
45. 1:28at Davos.
46. 1:28>> So explain how that works. So that's
47. 1:30sort of like treating your digital world
48. 1:33as though it has a legal status
49. 1:34>> in a sense. I mean it's kind of
50. 1:36analogous to an embassy, a regular
51. 1:37embassy, right? There's a Vienna
52. 1:38convention that provides sovereignty
53. 1:40over the land and the building that an
54. 1:42embassy hosts and similarly in the
55. 1:44digital world you have to think
56. 1:46creatively about what that really means.
57. 1:47So there are a couple of elements. Legal
58. 1:49status is one of them. But then you have
59. 1:51technical and policy controls that can
60. 1:53allow um you know the companies that are
61. 1:55having their data hosted outside of
62. 1:57their borders. So you're losing data
63. 1:59residency but gaining sovereignty
64. 2:00through those controls and the G2G
65. 2:02agreement on top of it that then
66. 2:04solidifies the commitment in terms of
67. 2:07protecting that uh other count's data
68. 2:09sets.
69. 2:10>> So obviously conversations about data
70. 2:12sovereignty, digital sovereignty in
71. 2:14general are not new. They weren't
72. 2:16created by AI nor were they created by
73. 2:18the current geopolitical tensions
74. 2:20indeed.
75. 2:20>> What about AI is putting this
76. 2:22conversation on steroids? So it's a very
77. 2:24good distinction that you drew because
78. 2:26in the cloud world you did have to have
79. 2:28multiple different cloud regions and
80. 2:30there were only a handful of cloud
81. 2:32providers predominantly from two
82. 2:33different countries, right? And so it
83. 2:35was much harder to enable sovereignty
84. 2:37unless you had a private cloud, a
85. 2:39disconnected cloud in every country that
86. 2:40could be airgapped as they call it so
87. 2:43that you can protect the imperatives.
88. 2:44But that's inherently limited from a
89. 2:46feature set standpoint and a scalability
90. 2:49one by definition. So with AI, it's a
91. 2:52little bit different because you could
92. 2:53potentially have a world in which in
93. 2:55like in the UAE where we're deploying a
94. 2:565 gawatt AI campus, that's not going to
95. 2:59be for 5 GW worth of compute and tokens
96. 3:01that are manufactured in that AI factory
97. 3:04to be domestically consumed. A lot of
98. 3:06that is going to be exportable tokens.
99. 3:08But then how do you inspire confidence
100. 3:09in the countries you're exporting to
101. 3:11that that data that they are processing
102. 3:13through our systems are also going to be
103. 3:16protected? And that's where we come up
104. 3:17with those innovative solutions. That's
105. 3:19like this hybrid model of I'm a little
106. 3:21bit sovereign, I'm a little bit in the
107. 3:22cloud. How do you make decisions about
108. 3:25what to put where? Well, you have data
109. 3:27classifications and you know the
110. 3:29ultimate use cases here are going to be
111. 3:31public sector and regulated industries
112. 3:33because they are of a level of
113. 3:35sensitivity not top secret that still
114. 3:37requires a completely disconnected
115. 3:38setting in any country but you want to
116. 3:40reduce that footprint to a point where
117. 3:42the plethora of other workloads that can
118. 3:44benefit from the AI revolution and the
119. 3:46AI compute that's being deployed can can
120. 3:49uh uh you know benefit from that type of
121. 3:51deployment in a sovereign way. So it'll
122. 3:53be your genomics data, energy data,
123. 3:55financial services, the public sector,
124. 3:57government services. Those are the types
125. 3:59of things that we target through these
126. 4:00types of deployments.
127. 4:01>> Yeah, cuz I was going to say obviously
128. 4:02the technology is moving so much faster
129. 4:06than the construction of the
130. 4:08infrastructure or even the regulation
131. 4:09around it can, right? So for a country
132. 4:12that's not yet there with its own AI
133. 4:15stack
134. 4:16>> um how can they participate in the
135. 4:19advances that are happening right now in
136. 4:21healthcare in finance in digital
137. 4:23government right now and not wait for
138. 4:26that data center to get built
139. 4:27>> and that's also a very good point
140. 4:28because it is prohibitive I mean these
141. 4:30data centers that we talk about if you
142. 4:32look at it on a per gigawatt level these
143. 4:34are about a $50 billion capex when all
144. 4:36things are included and so not every
145. 4:38country is going to be able to even
146. 4:39deploy those data centers it's not a
147. 4:40matter of how long it will take to
148. 4:42deploy them in the places that they'll
149. 4:44end up going. But how do you accelerate
150. 4:46time to value and allow there not to be
151. 4:49a digital divide in a sense and that's
152. 4:51where these types of deployments allow
153. 4:53us to um provide that service from afar
154. 4:56in a virtual sovereign way that allows
155. 4:58the company the regulators the
156. 5:00government institutions in those other
157. 5:02countries to embrace those technologies
158. 5:04and adopt them early. So you talked
159. 5:06about the digital divide. I mean this
160. 5:07has been a omnipresent topic right for
161. 5:11the past year. We saw from Microsoft's
162. 5:14AI diffusion report the end of 2025 one
163. 5:17in six people on the planet are already
164. 5:19using generative AI. That's a huge
165. 5:21adoption rate for a relatively new
166. 5:24technology. But that also means five and
167. 5:25six are not right. I think we all know
168. 5:27what the problem is. Are you hearing any
169. 5:31real world beyond just identifying,
170. 5:33okay, we know there's a divide? How do
171. 5:35we put proverbial boots on the ground
172. 5:37and start to do something about this?
173. 5:39>> Absolutely. We're not only I'm not only
174. 5:41hearing about these things, we're
175. 5:42actually doing something. What we
176. 5:44defined a few Davises ago, I think it
177. 5:45was two, uh we coined the term the
178. 5:48intelligence grid, somewhat analogous to
179. 5:50an electric electricity grid, right?
180. 5:52>> And the idea is that intelligence will
181. 5:54eventually need to be served like a
182. 5:56utility. People need to be able to plug
183. 5:58in and get that. But unlike electricity
184. 6:00where till today you have 770 million
185. 6:02people without access to electricity and
186. 6:03there is that divide. What we need to do
187. 6:05is be able to serve countries where even
188. 6:07data centers wouldn't ever be able to uh
189. 6:09operate whether there's it's an economic
190. 6:12issue or an energy issue and that's
191. 6:13where we're able to then provide that
192. 6:15access immediately through that
193. 6:17intelligence grid and enable AI native
194. 6:19societies with or without a data center
195. 6:21physically located within their borders.
196. 6:23>> 5 years from now what does success look
197. 6:25like for AI diffusion in your mind?
198. 6:27Well, diffusion in general, I think this
199. 6:30should propagate to the point where you
200. 6:32are pricing intelligence in a very
201. 6:34similar fashion to pricing electricity.
202. 6:36So, you will see prices go down, access
203. 6:38go up, uh, diffusion start to
204. 6:41proliferate in a very safe and
205. 6:42responsible way. uh but more importantly
206. 6:44I think it's the use cases that these
207. 6:46unlock and drive in particular in
208. 6:48healthcare and education and other areas
209. 6:50where we want to move the needle on some
210. 6:52of those bigger issues like cancer
211. 6:54research genomics and how you would then
212. 6:56benefit from those types of data sets by
213. 6:58having countries be able to access those
214. 7:00technologies without physically having
215. 7:01to have everything in their country ala
216. 7:05thank you so much for stopping by
217. 7:06>> my pleasure thank you for having me
218. 7:07great to see you [music] You too.
219. 7:12[music]