Estonia should build its own language model

Lately I have been following a debate among the heavyweights of Estonia’s technology world about creating an ID code for AI agents. The idea is that artificial intelligence could act safely on a person’s behalf, with clear accountability.

A necessary thing, probably. But if that is our big ambition for the AI era, we are flying very low.

In my view the Estonian state should set itself a much bigger goal: to build its own national large language model.

Not to adapt American technology, but to create, inside a state-owned company, the capability to develop and run a language model of our own.

To do that, I believe we should aim for at least a billion euros a year. Not to train one model, but for the whole capability: computing centres, secure infrastructure, data, top specialists, research, and putting it to work in state institutions.

Yes, a billion is a huge sum by our standards. But if AI does a growing share of our work, the alternative is to buy this critical capability from abroad. The funding should come in stages, with measurable results and clear accountability. Over the longer term, part of the investment could come back as savings for the state and as income from services. It would be a security and economic programme, not a single software project.

However modest our first language model turned out to be, it would be our own. Under our control. Ours to develop. Built around our needs.

State institutions could use it first, to automate how they work, and then Estonian companies. If it proved competitive, it could also be offered to companies and governments in other countries.

There is an economic side to this that gets far too little attention.

A growing share of the work that people used to be paid wages for is now done with AI. But who do we pay for that AI? Mostly American technology companies.

Part of the money that used to pay wages in Estonia, and bring in taxes, may in future flow abroad to pay for AI services. That touches our future tax base, our economic independence and our security.

We could offer our own language model as a paid service to Estonian and foreign companies. Instead of only being buyers, we would also own the technology and provide the service.

And most important of all: we would not be tied by an umbilical cord to the decisions, the pricing and the availability of services of a handful of American technology companies. The deeper AI reaches into the economy and into how the state is run, the more dangerous that dependency becomes.

I do not think Estonia could compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta or Google tomorrow. But it would be a strategic mistake to leave our own capability undeveloped simply because others are ahead today.

We have experience of building a digital state, and the technical competence. What we need now is an ambition to match.

Creating an ID code for AI agents is digital infrastructure work. Building our own language model would be an investment in Estonia’s technological independence.

We should not aim only to be the world’s most skilful user of someone else’s AI. We should want to own and develop the technology ourselves.