February 21st, 2025

Following The Belgian AI Strategy Report, loads of AI projects were supported by local and federal authorities during those last years.

The current situation with a lot of usage of "Imported AI" supplied mainly by the GAFAM are drawing our attentions because of the lack of guarantees regarding the protection of EU and therefore Belgian data.

The Belgian R&D Sector (with Universities and Research Centers, as well as the one performed by private companies) has a huge potential of differentiation and expertise about AI developed from scratch with local and private data.
We feel concerned about the immense use particularly of GAFAM's LLMs (and soon of LVMs) through APIs with very limited technological added value for companies integrating it into their portfolio and therefore important data leaks in terms of sovereignty of data.

We are also concerned about the fact that the different labs initiatives cited in the The Belgian AI Strategy Report should normally concentrate their forces and efforts to put all the strengths to the differentiation of our Belgian AI's and should be more protective and chauvinistic.

At the end, local initiatives about AI computation in Belgium with GPUs should also be more supported by local authorities.

The goal of that petition is to gather our concerns, as AI R&D Experts, and alert our decision-makers.

Laurent RENARD
CEO & Founder
PHOENIX AI (AI Expert of Digital Wallonia)

Note : the picture illustrating the petition hasn't been gerenated by GenAI