Joelle Pineau on Why Sovereign AI Just Got Real

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**Joelle Pineau** (0:30)
So good, so good, so good.

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**Jason Howell** (1:08)
Hello, everybody, and welcome to AI Inside, the show where we take a look at the AI that is layered throughout the world of technology. I'm one of your hosts, Jason Howell. Jeff Jarvis, unfortunately, is out today. So, you know, I'm sitting here in my studio, flying solo, but I've got an amazing interview for you. My guest is Joelle Pineau. For years, she ran FAIR, which we've talked about. Jeff's definitely brought up FAIR a lot on the show, Meta's Fundamental AI Research Lab, one of the most respected research operations in the field. Last year, she walked away from that to become the first ever Chief AI Officer at Cohere, which is a Canadian company that's making a very different bet than a lot of the big US labs out there. They're not, you know, chasing AGI.
They're developing enterprise AI for efficiency, security, and in many cases, openness. She's a lifelong champion of open science. Her career actually started in health care AI, intelligent wheelchairs and seizure detection, which we actually discuss and tie into her current role at Cohere. She's also very outspoken about the need for sovereign AI. And well, the timing could not be any crazier. Just a few days ago, you've probably already heard the US government forced Anthropic to cut off foreign access to its two most popular models. Anthropic pulled them entirely for everyone.
And mind you, this is all at the point of this recording. News may have changed because this isn't going to go up immediately, but this is a real argument for sovereign AI. Joelle shares her thoughts on that and how it actually impacts companies like Cohere. And Cohere has been on a tear as well, open sourcing a powerful coding model just last week, a move into drug discovery, deals putting its agents inside banks. Oh, and Joelle picked up an honorary doctorate and gave a commencement speech about facing uncertainty in the industry, which is where we're going to start. So let's dive right into it. Here's my interview with Joelle Pineau.
Joelle, thank you so much for hopping on AI Inside today. It is such a pleasure to meet you and have you on the show.

**Joelle Pineau** (3:32)
Thank you for having me.

**Jason Howell** (3:34)
Yeah. Well, you've had a big week. I was looking through your LinkedIn, of course, and you just posted, first and foremost, congratulations on receiving the honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa. Just last week, that's amazing.

**Joelle Pineau** (3:52)
Yeah, that was on Friday. Ottawa is my hometown. Lots of people in my family are graduates of the University of Ottawa, and it's really special to be affiliated with them, in particular with the School of Engineering there. They do great work, and so it was really an honor and of course, always great to see the graduates walking the stage and all the families.

**Jason Howell** (4:13)
To be in a position to be able to share some of your knowledge and inspirational wisdom and everything. It's a cool opportunity to do that.
You shared your entire speech in text on your LinkedIn, and I was reading through it, and the focus of it is optimism in the face of uncertainty. You said that the graduates are stepping into one of the most uncertain and consequential moments in human history. Certainly something we've talked about, me and my co-host, Jeff Jarvis, who could not be here today, he would have loved to talk with you, but he had something come up. But we've definitely talked about that uncertainty, and I have brought up a number of times on the show about what it's like to be a graduate in this moment. Like never in my lifetime has it been the case where you go to school, you work super hard to make all of these achievements and set yourself up for what your future, what you think your future is gonna be. But here is this like moment in technology that really kind of puts a big question mark on things, whether rightfully deserved or not. I'm curious to kind of hear your perspective on that.