US-based tech companies are altering their engagement and investment in smaller communities outside of the US and English-speaking countries as a result of the current US administration’s push into “competitive authoritarianism,” and Europe is questioning its overreliance on US tech.
Recent research shows that social media platforms fail to detect gender-based violence in various countries, particularly regarding smaller languages, as social media content moderation systems are primarily trained on data from the English-speaking world.
Civil society groups are calling for more community-driven AI approaches, including chatbots and data sets designed for specific languages and cultural contexts.
European policymakers are planning to accelerate “Euro Stack,” a plan to reduce the region’s technological reliance on US-based tech companies, following the appointment of its first commissioner for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy and several motions by Dutch lawmakers to untangle the country from US tech providers.
China recently launched an AI chatbot, Manus, that interacts with users in a conversational and intuitive way, and research shows it is advanced at completing tasks via voice command.
However, there remains a need for government intervention to improve language models to avoid potential biases that could affect a model’s worldview.