Microsoft and Google said they needed the centre to help build capacity across the region to use the AI services being delivered by the infrastructure that they had spent tens of billions of dollars building. 

“The Nordics are an attractive region for us. We are investing loads of money in building AI capabilities in the Nordics. We’ve put billions in, and we definitely want to do more,” Christine Sørensen, head of Google Northern Europe, said at the launch.  “There’s a lot of technology innovation in the world. It takes capital investment. We have in this region a unique opportunity to stand on the ground-breaking scientific innovation being done to create new value.” 

Google co-funded NNAI because it wants the Nordics to “lead the pack on innovation in AI”, said Sørensen. It was offering AI systems to do that, and the fact Nordic countries need to train people to use them necessitated their collaboration. 

Google also hoped to use NNAI’s political connections to reform AI regulation, said Sørensen, adding that nearly two-thirds of Nordic companies say regulation is the biggest barrier to their using AI, and that it should be easier for them.

NNAI is charged with representing the region in EU policy debates. The scheme was first conceived as a means to help Nordic firms develop and implement AI ethically and responsibly, as per EU rules. Lobbying by Google and other bigtech firms has helped pressure the European Commission to water down AI regulation that is being adopted across the Nordics. 

Nordic countries need to develop skills and acquire computing infrastructure – such as what Microsoft is building in Finland, Norway and Denmark – so they can use AI to innovate, said Teemu Vidgren, chief operating officer at Microsoft Finland. “Organisations like New Nordic AI are crucial to actually facilitate this quick learning we need right now,” he said. 

NNAI’s co-directors were unembarrassed that the only AI firms to fund the centre and present at its launch were two of the US firms whose domination of the AI industry has concerned a primary part of the European Commission’s programme to revive European industry. 

“We need to find the resources to do what is right for our region. We will work with other players where we have common goals. We want access to the best technology. It’s important to find a balance,” said Iada Lähdemäki, NNAI co-director and chief operating officer of AI Finland, one of six national Nordic trade associations instrumental in the centre’s creation. 

She insisted that no funder would be permitted to influence either NNAI’s strategic direction or its work. NNAI directors could not say exactly what it plans to do because it is still being worked out. 

“We have to admit that there are still a lot of open questions,” said Mikael Ljungblom, NNAI co-director and policy director of AI Sweden, which will host the centre’s headquarters. It was clear though that Nordic countries needed to collaborate to compete. “Global competition is fierce. The EU is not in the lead. Nordic-Baltic countries [are] not in lead, even in the EU. We need to pick up the pace. We have a lot of work to do.”

Yet Nordic-Baltic countries combined are the fifth largest economy in Europe and tenth in the world, he said. They could gain competitive advantage by collaborating. 

A question remains, what funding Nordic countries would put into NNAI, and what commitment they have for it? Finnish ministers declared full support because it promised to strengthen regional security. Other countries have been more muted. Baltic countries remain unmoved. 

Nordic-Baltic countries shared an ambition to be world leaders in AI research that produced fundamental technology, as well as applications that used it, said Finnish economic minister Sakari Puisto. 

But private sector investment had produced AI and would continue to lead its development, he said. NNAI therefore needed to help Nordic companies “scale up and compete globally”, which required their pooled resources. 

NNAI had agreed with Google, Microsoft and Nordic Innovation not to disclose their funding, Lähdemäki told Computer Weekly. The big tech donations were significant but not as great as the £3m put in by governments. 

“We are talking about amounts that really make a difference. We are really lucky to get more partners on board,” she said. NNAI did not expect to be building world-beating general AI systems with its budget. Its plans primarily involved developing applied AI systems to solve specific problems in big industry. 

“We are not trying to build a competitor for OpenAI,” she said. “We are trying to help national operators be more competitive in the use of AI. We see the biggest impact we can make is to bring companies and the public sector from different countries together to work on joint AI frameworks or models.  We can build consortiums and get investment to build something in industry that is relevant to the rest of the world.”