🤖 One year since the AI Commission

It’s now one year since the AI Commission delivered our report and 75 proposals to the government.

In Dagens industri I go through what has happened – and what hasn’t – since then.

After just over half of the investigation period, the AI Commission submitted Färdplan för Sverige (Roadmap for Sweden) to the government with the words: The situation is urgent. We delivered it early because we had realised things were moving far too slowly. Sweden was about to fall behind. Unfortunately, that hasn’t changed – but a light in the darkness has appeared.

What was urgent then — and still is — is the low adoption of generative AI among Swedes, tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. Usage is rising, but far too slowly. Several countries we normally stay ahead of have now overtaken us. And the problem is broader. In a major global index, Sweden dropped from 17th to 25th place.

What dragged Sweden down the most was the absence of a national AI strategy from the government. In 200 meetings with 150 different societal actors, the AI Commission heard the same message again and again: people were eager to get started but were waiting for the government to act.

We are all still waiting.

The brightest light in the darkness comes from the startup world. When the AI Commission delivered its report a year ago, Lovable had only existed for a week. This summer, they reached one billion SEK in annual revenue after just eight months in business. Forbes wrote that they were the fastest-growing software startup ever.

In major technological shifts, like the internet and now AI, it is crucial to be early.

That is why it is so important to get broad adoption among Swedes. One of the AI Commission’s proposals is especially important here: the “AI for All” reform. Inspired by the home-PC reform, it would give every Swede free access to the paid versions of the best AI tools for a certain period of time.

Mathias Sundin
Angry Optimist