Interviewer: Hi everybody. Today I'm joined by Joel Helmar who is the founder and CEO of Sana which is an a really important Swedish AI company. They specialize in knowledge management and Joel is behind the very important new Swedish AI reform. Now this reform will bring AI models to 2.3 million Swedes. Wow.

Joel Helmar: What is the Swedish AI reform? The history of the Swedish AI reform goes back to the 90s where Sweden introduced the PC reform. The PC reform was was focused on providing a a personal computer in every household. Um through um you know clever tax uh setups, we managed to get one million households with pieces and a lot of folks credit you know the Swedish tech wonder if you like coming from the Swedish PC reform. So what we started thinking about is what does the equivalent for AI look like? What could we do for AI to make it democratic across Sweden? And so we set up uh the Swedish AI reform. We're providing frontier models to 2.3 million Swedes for free. So that's all universities, all schools, all public servants that gets free access to all of the frontier models.

Interviewer: Who pays for this?

Joel Helmar: So we decided to set up a structure uh where the foundation paid for it. So through the generous support of um some of the Swedish some of Sweden's most successful business folks uh we set up a foundation that ultimately funded uh the the access to these models that enabled us to move super quickly. So uh during the time of six weeks we managed to set up the foundation get it funded and and then start distributing these models to to to the Swedish population.

Interviewer: And how much money are we talking here if you have to put a number?

Joel Helmar: I think for a nation like like like Sweden um it's in the sort of millions of of dollars to to distribute it but then of course it depends on the the usage of the services.

Interviewer: So 20 30 million Swedish.

Joel Helmar: Yeah it it can can range uh as you scale it up but that would be a ballpark.

Interviewer: How do you split the work between the private sector and the public sector here?

Joel Helmar: So the private sector is is funding it. The private sector is also building the tools and we're collaborating with the public sector to distribute it and so um what what we want to focus on is can we get the speed of of funding that we can get for these initiatives can we get the speed of the development the quality of the development uh if these tools are not consumer grade tools people are not going to adopt them they they need to be at the very frontier of of AI too but then if we can combine that with the public sector that of course powers our societies and has all of the distribution and has all of the trust. Um, that's where it can be the most effective. So, we're taking care of the funding. I don't want to wait for government approvals to fund this. I don't want to wait for a long process for governments to develop these tools. That's what I think we can do great in the in in the in the private sector. However, there's a lot of trust required for this. There's a lot of distribution required for this and that's what I think the public sector can do can do really well.

Interviewer: Is the public sector willing to distribute this? Are they doing a good job distributing it in Sweden?

Joel Helmar: Uh I I I think so. And we we have two approaches. So um it's part bottoms up, part tops down. So uh bottoms up, anyone can sign up on the website, just instantly get get access, they get access to these AI tools that can support them in their daily work. And then there's other aspects where we're doing more top down where we're talking with with the leaders of different government um institutions and then they are distributing it in in their in their organizations.

Interviewer: So just to get it straight the tool basically you you uh you signed up to your tool and behind the tool you have different type of models, right? So it's not dependent just on one uh one uh large language model. It's just like a range of tools. Is that correct understanding?

Joel Helmar: Exactly. So you get access to all of the frontier models. Whether you want to run on anthropic or or Gemini or open AI models or anything else, we have access to all of the front frontier uh frontier models. These are models that in some cases can cost you hundreds of dollars a month to get get access to. Combined with that, we also enable you to connect those models to your data or your knowledge. And we've built this system in a way that respects all of the guard rails that you for example need in public sector.

Interviewer: So given that I'm a bit thick u what's going to happen Sweden here with all the tools Norway here not applying the tools what's going to happen to the two countries

Joel Helmar: I think you get a compounding advantage of using these tools and that advantage will just compound uh over over time. So um my expectations is the companies that adopt these tools more effectively, they're going to have more successful companies, both new companies being founded. That's what happened after the PC reform. People learned how to program and then when they learned how to program, they founded Spotify and Cla and and other companies like like that. But secondly, the Swedish companies are going to be more competitive because they know how to use these tools. They can, you know, ultimately it starts eating at at your margins. are going to be able to provide a better better better product more cost- effectively. Um and then third, I think um as a society, we're going to have higher quality healthcare, higher quality education, and higher quality research. And this every single year will just keep compounding. And so I think the countries that adopt this slower will will take a very long time to to catch