During the Mobile World Congress, Pedro Sánchez announced that Spain will have an LLM developed in collaboration with the technology sector. It was a somewhat surprising announcement, because until now there had been no news that the executive of our country was itself involved in plans to develop an artificial intelligence model. This of course meant that we have been thinking about this initiative ever since.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the doubts in this regard began to be clarified, and today was a key day in this sense thanks to the participation of José Luis Escriva, Minister of Digital Transformation and Public Service. , in an informative breakfast organized by the Europa Press agency, a meeting in which revealed to us some important aspects of the development of this model and when its development is expected to end.

He did not give a specific date, but Minister Escrivá confirmed that the Spanish LLM will be ready after the summer, which tells us that its development must be progressing at a good pace. Another very important fact we learned is that the main technology partner of the project is IBM, who also told us that they use between 20% and 25% of materials in Spanish and other co-official languages ​​of the state.

Escrivá focused on the importance that artificial intelligence has already acquired, which will only increase in the future, but also on the risks associated with this technology. In response to this problem, the minister reminded that the executive is working on implementation Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligenceentity for which the selection process for its top manager is currently open.

As for transparency, the minister signed that he will have «standards of openness and transparency that do not exist in the world«, undoubtedly a promising statement, but we will have to wait to see what materializes and that yes, we understand that it will be completely in line with the law on artificial intelligence recently approved by the European Parliament. And it confirmed, yes, that this LLM will be aimed at companies and public administrations to allow them to have a tool of this type without having to make their data available to other technology companies. I.e We are not talking about the Spanish ChatGPT, although some media have presented it as such.

Does it make sense for the state to want to develop its own LLM? That’s probably the most relevant question right now. It’s true, as the minister said, that AI wants to be a key technology for competitiveness in the coming years, so we have to ask how convenient (or inconvenient, whichever you prefer) that is. in private hands or, conversely, offer a public alternative. Personally, I think that the measure is successful because it can help to maintain the competitiveness of the Spanish business sector without having to face the risk that the services used for this purpose may fall into “enemy” hands.